In the professional sales environment, cold outreach presents a significant challenge for organizations.
Similar to initiating an unexpected conversation with an unfamiliar individual, cold email outreach requires skill and strategy to execute effectively.
For sales professionals new to the field, initiating first contact with prospects can be particularly daunting. Yet perhaps more challenging than the initial outreach is securing meaningful responses to these communications.
Consider this: the average professional receives 32 emails, 20 instant messages, 12 one-to-one calls, and 13 text messages daily.
Within this volume of communication, many emails remain unread or unanswered. Success in such an environment requires ensuring your outreach stands apart from the substantial number of unattended emails in recipients’ inboxes.
Luckily, cold outreach doesn’t have to be ineffective.
With the appropriate methodology and techniques, organizations can substantially improve their email response rates and achieve greater success in their sales initiatives.
What Is a Good Cold Email Response Rate?
According to Backlinko, the average response rate for cold emails is 8.5%. However, this rate can be significantly improved with optimized outreach strategies. Backlinko also found that sending follow-up emails can increase response rates by up to 160%, highlighting the importance of persistence in cold outreach campaigns.
It is important to recognize that email response rates are influenced by multiple variables.
The nature of the communication, industry context, target demographic, value proposition, and quality of email distribution lists all contribute to response outcomes.
Organizations should not accept substandard response rates. Instead, they should adopt an approach of continuous refinement through experimentation with various cold email methodologies until identifying effective templates. This process involves systematic testing, measurement, analysis, and iteration to determine optimal approaches.
Let’s examine three crucial tactics to improve response rates from your cold outreach campaign.
Craft Effective Subject Lines
The subject line represents the initial point of contact between your organization and potential clients.
It functions similarly to an introduction in professional settings, where individuals who create distinctive and memorable impressions are more likely to be recalled than those who remain passive and communicate minimally.
To achieve success, avoid ambiguity and vague messaging that fails to capture recipients’ attention. Subject lines should convey authentic intent to provide value and offer solutions that enhance recipients’ operational efficiency.
Examples:
Why your cold email strategy doesn’t work?
Are you happy with your response rates?
The trouble with your cold email marketing is…
Need any help with your cold email copy?
X ways to improve your cold email response rates
Thought you’d find this content useful
Want to talk about cold emailing challenges?
These examples communicate the content’s purpose with clarity and address significant concerns for sales professionals — specifically, cold email effectiveness and response rate optimization.
Communications with such subject lines should substantively address the identified issues and provide recipients with actionable methodologies for improvement. Circumlocution and excessive self-promotion are counterproductive approaches, as recipients engage with your communication based on the expectation of receiving assistance.
To generate responses, it is imperative to deliver significant value that fulfills the implicit promise established in your subject line.
Add Videos to Your Outreach
Email communication serves as an effective channel for business outreach initiatives.
Unfortunately, 93% of the way we communicate is nonverbal, which presents a considerable challenge for email-based correspondence.
Video content provides a strategic solution to this communication constraint.
Professional video presentations convey numerous nonverbal elements including vocal tonality, physical expressions, gestural communication, and additional paralinguistic features. These components significantly enhance audience engagement with both the subject matter and the presenter.
Since the advent of television, video has been widely recognized as a powerful medium for driving revenue. This established communication channel can be strategically implemented to enhance response metrics within cold outreach campaigns.
To facilitate the implementation of this approach, our email feature offers the recording functionality directly within our campaign management system.
This integration enables users to create personalized video content, perform necessary edits, and incorporate these videos into email communications — all within a single operational environment.
Don’t Ask for Anything in Return
Establish this approach as a fundamental principle within your outreach methodology.
Consider the counterproductive approach frequently observed on professional networking platforms: individuals who, immediately following initial contact, engage in direct promotion of their products or services. This behavior typically generates negative responses and disengagement.
To differentiate your approach, avoid replicating these practices. Recipients typically respond to such communications with dismissal and disinterest.
Instead, clearly communicate that your primary objective is providing value to recipients — and substantiate this claim through your actions and content.
Avoid employing value-oriented messaging solely as an attention-capturing mechanism before transitioning to promotional content. This represents an inconsistent approach to professional communication.
The substance of your email must maintain consistency with the value proposition established in your subject line. Failure to maintain this alignment may create a perception of disingenuousness.
For example, if your subject line says:
X ways of getting your prospects to respond
make sure to address this topic and deliver on your promise. Provide value and offer your recipients some useful tips and tricks that you know will work.
Don’t Be Misleading
Employing a subject line that doesn’t accurately reflect the content of the email is similar to using a clickbait approach.
Such tactics are generally perceived as misleading and can negatively impact recipient engagement. Discrepancies between the subject line and the email body are likely to diminish response rates and may result in the email being classified as spam.
While acknowledging the challenges of capturing attention within a high-volume email environment, it is essential to maintain transparency and clarity in communication.
The purpose of the outreach and the value proposition offered should be clearly articulated.
Follow Up
Although sales professionals know that following up is important, this tactic is so crucial that it’s worth mentioning in every cold email discussion.
You already know that your recipients are very busy, distracted, or absent-minded and that their schedules are hectic.
That’s why it’s only logical to worry that you’ll cross the line eventually.
There’s always the possibility of the worst-case scenario in which some of your recipients will unsubscribe or tell you to stop emailing them.
However, this doesn’t have to be bad, because, if that happens, the odds are, they aren’t a good fit for your company, and they disqualified themselves from your pipeline.
Leverage the Before and After Bridge
One of the most effective copywriting techniques for boosting email response rates is the “Before and After” approach. This method creates a compelling contrast between the reader’s current situation and the improved state they’ll experience after taking your suggested action.
Start by acknowledging the reader’s current pain points — their “Before” state. Perhaps they’re struggling with low customer engagement, inefficient processes, or inadequate results. By demonstrating an understanding of their challenges, you establish credibility and connection.
Then, vividly illustrate the “After” — the positive transformation that awaits. For example:
Before: “You’re spending hours crafting emails that disappear into the void, with response rates hovering around 10%.”
After: “Imagine opening your inbox to find thoughtful replies from 40% of recipients, creating new opportunities and conversations.”
This technique works because it taps into the psychological principle that people are motivated both to avoid pain and to gain pleasure. By highlighting this contrast, you create an emotional investment in the outcome.
Keep your Before/After scenarios specific, realistic, and relevant to your audience’s actual circumstances.
Exaggerated claims will undermine credibility, while concrete, achievable improvements will motivate action and significantly increase your response rates.
Add Credibility to Your Email with Numbers
Incorporating specific numbers and social proof into your emails significantly enhances credibility and motivates recipients to respond. When you transition from vague assertions to precise statistics, you transform your message from mere opinion to compelling evidence.
Consider the difference between “Our solution helps businesses grow” and “Our clients experience an average 27% increase in revenue within the first 90 days.” The latter creates a concrete, measurable expectation that resonates with recipients.
Strategic use of social proof — evidence that others have achieved success with your approach — further strengthens your case. This might include:
- Client testimonials with specific outcomes
- Case study snippets highlighting measurable results
- Industry benchmark comparisons
- Number of current satisfied customers
For example: “Join the 5,000+ marketing professionals who increased their email engagement by an average of 32% using this approach” is substantially more persuasive than “Many marketers find our method effective.”
When incorporating numbers, focus on metrics that matter most to your audience. If they value time efficiency, highlight time saved. If revenue growth is their priority, emphasize financial impact.
Remember to keep your statistics honest and verifiable. Credibility once lost is difficult to regain, but when established through accurate, relevant numbers and authentic social proof, it becomes one of your most powerful tools for improving response rates.
Send Emails at the Right Time
Sending emails at the right time may be the difference between high and low response rates to your cold pitches.
Let’s start with the best day to send emails.
According to a study by Coschedule, prioritize your send days in this order:
- Thursday: This is the best day to send emails according to the majority of the data from these studies.
- Tuesday: If you send two emails a week, choose Tuesday for your second day.
- Wednesday: While no single study showed that Wednesday was the most popular, it came in second place several times.
What about the best hours to send emails? The same study showed the following:
- 10 a.m.: Morning send times generally perform best, with 10 a.m. ranking as the top time in 4 out of 10 studies.
- 9 a.m.: Another strong morning time, ranking in the top five spots in 6 of 10 studies.
- 8 a.m.: People may check their emails as they begin their workday, making this an effective send time.
- 1 p.m.: Many people check their emails right after lunch, making this a popular time for email opens.
- 3 p.m.: Sending emails later in the day can be effective as people start to disengage from work and look for distractions.
Clearly, the best time to send emails is at the beginning of the workday and during breaks.
At these times, people are usually available and checking their emails. However, as more users are opening emails on their mobile phones, evenings are also an excellent time to send mails.
Most mobile users are active during the evenings.
While there are various suggestions on the best time to send emails, it’s best to test what works for your target audience and create your sending schedule based on this data.
In Conclusion
Cold email outreach can be challenging.
The tactics outlined in this guide provide a solid foundation for transforming your cold outreach efforts. By implementing these evidence-based strategies, you can significantly improve your response rates and build more productive relationships with prospects.
Remember that effective cold emailing is both an art and a science. These principles give you the framework, but your unique voice and understanding of your specific audience will ultimately determine your success. Start implementing these techniques today, measure your results, and continuously refine your approach. With persistence and the right tactics, you’ll soon find your inbox filling with responses from previously unreachable prospects.
