Brett Evans is a great resource to our agency and we wanted to share some of his talent with our audience. Brett recently wrote about writing compelling cold emails and we wanted to share some of his do’s and don’ts here.

1. Don’t let emails take over replacing prospecting calls.
2. Do some research and get some information on the person and company you’re prospecting. Find out 3 compelling things about them to help you write a relevant email.
3. Don’t pitch in a prospecting email. You don’t The purpose is to get the interest of the recipient.
4. Don’t lie in a prospecting email. Trying to capture attention with an RE: subject line is a great example, or pretending that you already have a relationship with the recipient. Violating trust will lose you more opportunities than gain you since trust is key to every sale.
5. Do write about your recipient. Never start off writing about who you are… your prospects don’t care about you or your products and services.
6. Do take advantage of mobile email previews. The majority of email recipients are reading from a mobile device so utilizing the preview feature of mobile email to capture their attention with your first sentence… no more than 3 lines.

Structure of Your Prospecting Email

The opening paragraph is the most lengthy, the second paragraph lets the recipient understand how your goals align with the prospect’s goals. The third paragraph should be concise with a call-to-action, such as:

When, on Friday, would you be available for a 15 minute consultation?

I’m going to call Wednesday at 3 PM, would you be able to take my call?

Brett recommends following Jeff Hoffman, where he’s learned many of these strategies. Jeff is a renowned sales executive, educator and entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience inspiring professionals at companies like Google, and students at institutions like the Harvard Business School.

I made a couple of platform recommendations to Brett.

• Charlie App – Charlie combs through 100s of sources and automatically sends you a one‐pager on everyone you’re going to meet with, before you see them.
• Crystal Knows – Where Charlie finds research, Crystal Knows analyzes the personality type of your recipient. This can help you tailor the conversation to increase engagement and likelihood of response. It can also provide input into the differences and similarities of your personalities. Oh… and it’s pretty scary how accurate it is!

Brett also discusses a fantastic Prospecting Email that he recieved that worked well. I’d recommend following Brett Evans on Twitter as well!