13 Things You NEED to Know to Get Responses from Your Outreach Emails

Almost any online marketing campaign these days includes email outreach. While social media has its place, email is universally the most personal form of contact you can make online.

Well-written outreach emails can get links, joint venture opportunities, clients, and just about any other good result you can think of.

The only problem is that most people can’t write a good outreach email. If you have a business or you’re planning to start one, reaching out to people in your niche is inevitable. This is how marketing works and everybody does it.

But if you’re not getting any replies, you’re probably sending the wrong outreach emails.

The good news is you found this article before swearing off cold emailing forever due to a practically nonexistent response rate.

While there is not a very specific formula that guarantees your outreach strategy will be successful, you still need to go by a few unwritten rules to improve your chances of engagement.

After years of doing outreach and experimenting with various ways of addressing people in our industry (and receiving quite a few outreach emails ourselves), we learned some hard lessons about writing successful outreach emails that we wanted to share with you today.

Want to learn what those lessons are? Keep reading to find out how to write better outreach emails that catch people’s attention and get replies.

Why it feels like cold email doesn’t work

To understand why too many prospects are ignoring your emails, let’s take a look at the workplace. A study from the University of Waterloo found that the primary reason people deferred emails was as follows.

• The time or effort required to handle the email
• The sender’s identity
• The total number of email recipients
• The recipient’s workload and context
• The urgency of the message

In most cases, you’re reaching your prospects at work and even if not, all of the aforementioned reasons apply. Cold email outreach is about communicating with and influencing people. 

This is easier to do when each prospect is approached with the sincere intention of helping them.

Sometimes marketers and salespeople forget they’re dealing with other people with feelings and their own challenges in life. 

Start viewing your prospects as more than a number to get more responses. In other words, you need to introduce empathy to your cold emails. That’s what it all boils down to.

Avoid randomly scraping emails from the web and sending a pitch to everyone even though many aren’t qualified to begin with. 

And don't be overly focused on yourself and what you want. Instead, take the time necessary to qualify your prospects and craft emails that come from a place of empathy, not selfishness.

Use the following tips to increase your email marketing campaign response rate.

How to write outreach emails that get replies

Now that we’ve shared why outreach emails are important, let’s look at some excellent tips that will bring you immediate results.

1. Reach the right audience 
2. share a specific proposal – not a generic collaboration
3. Make a proposal that benefits them
4. Are you a liar, or do you seem like one? 
5. Personalize your message for each company
6. Try not to use the general contact form of a company
7. Do not send outreach emails on Friday or weekends
8. Write a clear, actionable email subject line
9. Follow up, but not more than twice
10. Don’t use worn-out templates
11. Introduce yourself and show your expertise
12. Don’t sound sale-sy and marketing-like
13. Check the outreach emails twice before sending them

Reach the right audience

You have to know your prospects to make sure you’re reaching the right people. This is true for any marketing campaign.

A common thought process is that to win business you have to reach the big boss or final decision-maker. While this may be true in some situations, it isn’t in most. 

Companies have several individuals that handle different areas of the business. You’ll get better results by reaching the person in charge of the department that corresponds to your area of business.

For example, a salesperson that is selling POS (point of sale) systems to restaurants can schedule a free demo with the General Manager (GM). 

The GM is the person that can influence the owners or others above them about adopting the product. So they have to love it first.

You want the person that’ll most likely listen and move your offer up the chain of command. This way, you’re also giving them the opportunity to be a hero. Top executives love resourceful people who are able to identify what the company needs.

Optimize the opening line

There are two reasons why your email copy’s opening line is critical. First, the opening line is what the recipient sees as a preview on their email client.

Second, your opening line has to capture/hold the interest of your prospect.

Avoid beginning with something that may make the reader disinterested. For example, you don’t have to begin your email with “Hello, my name is” even though an introduction is necessary. 

A better approach would be something like “Noticed you offer landscaping services in Atlanta and thought I'd introduce myself."

The goal is to hold their interest long enough to read past the first sentence. After that point, the recipient is paying attention. 

So if your email copy is well-written, they’ll most likely read the rest of it. That being noted, always aim to hold attention throughout your copy.

One more thing on the opening line.

It’s not “black and white” or without complexity. In some situations, it may be appropriate to start with “Hello, my name is."

Write a clear, actionable email subject line

It might convince them to open your email or delete it without checking it, based on how clear and summarized it is.

Again, do not be very formal, vague, and corporate-like (e.g. “partnership request”).

Try to make your subject line intriguing and interesting to the recipient. When you say “check my article”, that’s not very interesting. Why would I care to check your article?

Instead, using something like “have an idea to improve your content” or “I have a question about your work” or “feedback on your latest TV sketch” might make the recipient open your email out of curiosity.

This is an example of a subject line that makes you open the email to find out more:

Email subject line for outreach
Our post on how to write great email subject lines provides some good general best practices.

Follow up, but not more than twice

When someone doesn’t reply the first time, they might have missed or forgotten about your email. It happens to all of us when we’re busy.

Some people do reply after you follow up the first time because they remember. Some still do not. So you send another follow-up whose result should give you the answer you were looking for, no matter if you get a reply or not. Not replying is an answer itself.

When someone doesn’t reply at all after the second follow-up, there’s no point in trying again because this is where you will annoy people. Their lack of interest in your proposal is more than evident, so going on with “What do you think about my proposal?” will put you directly in the spam folder.

A method that might increase your chance to succeed with your second attempt is to offer the recipient something extra that you didn’t mention in your initial email. 

Share a very specific proposal – not generic “collaboration”

When you want to partner with a site, then you must have a plan or at least an idea of how you could promote each other.

Actually, that’s the point of sending an outreach email – presenting a business idea that you already have in mind.

If your email doesn’t contain an exact partnership plan (i.e. describe how you would approach the partnership and why), the chances to get a reply are close to none.

Why? Because it puts the recipient at work, making them send extra emails asking for more details about your intentions, which in most cases won’t happen.

Don't be vague in outreach emails

What are these opportunities? Why should I be interested in learning about your site?

No one wants to do extra work, especially when there’s nothing that piques their interest. If you’re not able to pitch your idea in a professional way to begin with, why would anyone play back-and-forth with you?

Be specific and present your offer clearly, with bullet points, examples, and benefits.

Make a proposal that benefits them, too

While this might sound like the obvious thing to do, I’m still getting emails where people ask for something big and, in return, they will just “share your article on Twitter”. That indeed sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime — *not*.

So if your email is only about you and the recipient doesn’t get anything beneficial from this deal, then do not send it. By benefiting the other I don’t mean instant traffic or money, but it should be at least something that will help them in the long-term.

For example, the possibility to enter a new niche and target a new audience or an invitation to work on a project together.

Just don’t make your outreach emails all about you. Earn the deals, do not beg for them.

Are you a liar? Or do you seem like one?

I get several cold outreach emails a day. By now, I’m pretty good at spotting an outright liar or even someone who is just stretching the truth.

In a large portion of those emails, I see an opening line that sounds like:

I’m a huge fan of Bloggers Live Online…

Okay, cool.

The only problem is that I don’t recognize your name from comments (on my posts) or from social media.

Surely, a “huge fan” would at least be subscribed to my email list. Surprisingly, a fairly large percentage of these emailers are not.

Right away, I feel lied to and usually delete the email.

A lie like that makes me assume that the emailer just searched for the top marketing blogs to pitch something to—no thanks.

Can you validate your claims? I’m always talking about creating data-driven posts and backing up all your claims with charts and studies.

Emails are no different.

If you claim you are a fan of someone or you enjoyed their work, prove it.

Here’s one example:
I’m a huge fan of your work on Bloggers Live Online. Your emails Monday morning always get my week off to a great start.

Assuming you’re actually on the email list, so far I believe you’re not lying.

READ -How to make Money with Mailchimp Newsletter Subscriptions

Another common opener is to tell someone you liked one of their articles. If you really liked it, you would have shared it on social media, left a comment, and, most importantly, applied it.

Don’t just say you liked an article with nothing backing it up; no one believes it.

Instead, try something like:
I loved your post “xyz.”

Since I read it, I created a profile on Quora and have already driven 400 visits to my site.

The hardest thing to fake is sincerity. Don’t say you’re a huge fan or you love a post if you don’t mean it.

Personalize your message for each company

Coming with a partnership plan is a type of personalization itself, but you can take a few other aspects into consideration when writing outreach emails:

 Do not write one message and send it to all the companies on your list.

Based on how well you know the person you’re contacting, your message can change. You can be casual with people you’ve met or collaborated with before. You can actually mention “I’m X, we’ve met last year at the Y conference, we talked about marketing and pizzahut”.

Using the same message but changing a link and a name does not count as personalized. E.g. “I found your post about X and loved it. Very useful tips. Would you consider adding our tool?”, where X is the first article you see when you enter someone’s blog. It’s definitely not original.

Generic outreach emails

Avoid standard and overused corporate language like “Hope this email finds you well” or “Looking forward to your reply”.

Actually, think like this: if there’s a sentence you wouldn’t use in a live conversation with that person, then do not use it in your outreach emails either.

Try not to use the general contact form of a company

This is not necessarily a total failure, but there’s a risk your message won’t ever get to the right person. If the company has a policy in place that doesn’t accept business proposals, then the support team will close it without asking for a second thought.

If you have something interesting to say and you’re contacting the right person via their own email address, they might make an exception for you.

What’s even better is to directly contact someone you know from a company. They will remember your name and will open your email. The chance to get a reply, even a negative one, is higher.

Sending your proposal to a person that’s part of the department you want to contact also implies that you were motivated enough to do a minimum of research about the company and you didn’t just use the first contact form that came in handy for you.

Do not send outreach emails on Fridays or weekends

Sending outreach emails on Fridays or during weekends will just decrease your chances to get a reply. No one will be in the mood of reading, let alone answering, business proposals on Fridays. 

People just want to wrap up their week and finish other important things they had on the agenda. You’re their least important task.

Most of them will simply delete your email, others will keep it in their inbox in case they will give it a look next week, while others will read it but probably not answer because it’s Friday and no one wants to start a deal on Friday.

Saturday and Sunday? That’s out of the discussion. People have personal lives, too. When the next business week begins, your email won’t be the first thing they will do or check, so it can get lost easily.

Don’t use worn-out templates

Among hundreds of emails that I’ve received during the past years, I can count on one hand those that were not using one of the classic email templates that we all spot in our inboxes.

While I briefly scan through an email that uses a standard template, I automatically hit delete because I recognize the pattern. I don’t even care about the proposal.

Sending the same template over and over again means that you are not targeting a specific company. You just send tens of emails hoping that someone (whoever that is) will eventually answer.

The recipients notice that they are just another brick in the wall, so why would they care to invest in a superficial collaboration?

Here’s an interesting way to approach a company, where the sender introduced himself by forwarding an internal email:

Introduce yourself and show your expertise

Together with all the essential details that you propose, write a few lines about who you are and what recommends you. Show some examples of your work, but do not get too lengthy. A paragraph and two to three links will do.

Whatever your job title is, link to some examples of your portfolio so that the recipient can analyze your work quality.

Don’t sound salesy and marketing-like

If you are hoping to get replies to your outreach emails, don’t act like those salesmen who try to convince people to buy a product. It doesn’t really work like that.

Start a normal conversation, where you state what you need and what the other can gain out of the deal. When you’re being too pushy, forget about any feedback. Talking superlative also won’t work.

When you contact someone, the more human you sound, the more chances to replies you’ll have. No one wants to start a conversation with someone who writes like a robot and tries to impress. You can spot fake emails from a distance.

Why sound like a robot when you’re a human? Be respectful, but friendly and natural at the same time.

Check the outreach emails twice before sending them

How many times do you get emails that spell your name wrong or address to a completely different person/company?

Check twice before sending outreach messages
What about receiving praise for an article you didn’t write or a project that’s not yours?

That’s an immediate turn-off. You only had one job, to copy-paste my name and link to the right company website, and you failed. Who wants to collaborate with someone who can’t handle at least that?

Put some effort into writing better outreach emails
With all that in mind, it’s time to try harder and write better outreach emails if you want to increase your success rate. 

Especially if you are genuine and really looking for honest partnerships with companies you like, don’t make these novice mistakes that can cost you a cool deal.

With time, it will come naturally, but you need a little exercise first. Get rid of all the templates in your head and be creative.