Perfect Cold Emails with AiSDR: An Actionable Guide for Email Campaigns

Cold email can sometimes seem like shouting into the void. No matter how hard you try, you never know if you’ll get an answer.

While you can play the numbers game for cold email (i.e. the more you send, the more likely you get a result), it’s inefficient and suboptimal.

Instead, you need a strategy. With the right plays at your disposal, you stand a better chance of winning. 

Here’s a closer look at cold email outreach and how you can use AiSDR to power outbound campaigns.

What are cold emails?

In simple terms, cold emails are messages sent to potential customers with the goal of closing a new deal. 

But the reason why they’re “cold” is also why they’re challenging.

You’re writing to someone you have no connection with and who presently has no intent to do business with your company.

Example of a bad cold email

A bad cold email will come across as stiff, almost like a desperate robot wrote it. Good cold emails should be capable of breaking the ice and sparking a warm relationship.

Here’s an example of a bad cold email that will likely get sent straight to the trash.

Subject: A GREAT OPPORTUNITY

Hello,

I noticed your company and read about your services.

My name is Mike, and I represent Company X. Our sales automation software optimizes lead management and helps find and nurture new prospects. We offer a wide range of sales automation services that could boost your outreach.

Interested in learning more? Would love to talk more about your needs.

Sincerely,
Mike

What’s wrong with this email?

• No indication the writer did research into the company before writing
• The email is focused on sales instead of delivering value
• Zero personalization
• No clear call to action

What are the parts of effective cold emails?

An effective cold email piques a lead’s interest by answering four key questions:

• How can you help?
• Who are you?
• Why should your recipient care?
• What should your recipient do next?

Here’s a rundown of the key parts of good cold emails.

Clear goal

Unless you have a clear goal, why send an email in the first place?

A cold email needs a clear goal to guide its structure and content while ensuring the message stays concise and relevant. Doing so increases the chances that the recipient will engage, making it easier to assess the impact of different approaches.

Some common goals for cold email include:

• Scheduling a demo
• Getting a positive response
• Increasing familiarity
• Starting a conversation
• Setting up a discovery call

Prominent subject line

What do you do first when you get an email from a stranger? Right: you read the subject line to understand what’s in it for you. 

These are some ways to catch the reader’s attention with the subject line:

• Personalize it with the recipient’s name (e.g. John, how’s your lead qualification going?)
• Show that you can help your prospect achieve their goals faster (e.g. There’s a faster way to qualify your leads.)
• Offer value right in the subject line (e.g. Can I help you qualify your leads?)
• Focus on the customer pain (e.g. Not satisfied with your email open rate? )
• Keep subject lines as short as possible, possibly even no more than 3-4 words

Focus on the audience

If we were to give just one tip for writing cold emails that get responses, it would be “Do your research.” 

And we’re not talking about simply finding the company’s industry and products. Research is also about uncovering your customer’s needs and pain points. 

Imagine you’re helping an email marketing platform find influencers who are looking for brand partnerships. A good research plan would be:

• Scout LinkedIn and social media for profiles of influencers.
• Record websites and email addresses of relevant influencers.
• Identify possible pain points by checking if they have a partnership team and other specialists who could help with email marketing.

With this information in hand, you can start a conversation and explain how your solution would help them.

Mention of benefits and value

Cold emails should quickly outline the benefits and value of working with your business. Specifically, your emails need to highlight their problem and why their results will improve thanks to your product or service.

Hard data and numbers are the most compelling, followed by types of social proof like testimonials and case studies.

For instance, you can highlight the financial benefits of your product (e.g. cost savings, positive ROI) by explaining how it does the same tasks at a lower cost with similar results.

Compelling call to action

What do you want the person to do next?

After all, a good CTA tells the reader their next step.

Here are a couple of CTA examples:

• Do you have time to connect this week?
• Who’s the right person on your team to talk to about [topic]?
• Open to having a chat? Here’s my calendar link: [link]

The trick to a good CTA is that the action should be as clear and easy as possible. If it requires readers to navigate several pages, they won’t convert.

Professional email signature

An email signature is the icing on the cake. And just like the icing, it should leave a pleasant aftertaste while looking professional. 

Typically, this includes your name, title, phone number, and email address, like this:

Mike Dee
Account Manager | Company X
[Phone]
[Website]
[Social media links]

Rewriting the bad cold email

With these key parts in mind, here’s how we might try to rewrite the bad cold email example from earlier:

Hi Jack!

I saw your strategy for [company]’s lead management on LinkedIn. Loved the approach, but wanted to ask about your lead qualification and if you’ve struggled to scale it. 

At [company], we’ve helped N sales teams like the one at [customer] speed up lead qualifying by N% while saving $[amount].

I’d love to show you our platform and hear your thoughts. How about over a call?

Best,
Mike Dee
Account Manager | Company X
###-###-####
Website

This message has all the ingredients of a “warm” cold email:

• Greater focus on the customer, not on the seller
• Shares social proof
• Mentions benefits and value
• Has a clear call to action
• Shows prior research was done

What are the benefits of using cold email?

The challenge of writing cold emails is that it takes humans 20-30 minutes to craft a personalized email. 

But even though reply rates are often under 5%, cold email is an efficient way of driving business growth.

Time savings

Email is still the easiest, fastest, and most cost-effective channel for contacting decision-makers.

You don’t need to write ebooks or guides. You don’t need to attend conferences and man tables.

You just write a simple, clear message, enter the address, and hit send.

However, researching leads, segmenting your audience, and sending personalized emails manually takes considerable time. Fortunately, sales automation solves this by cutting the time from 20+ minutes to 1 minute while scaling personalization. 

Shorter sales cycles

Cold email is relatively easy and straightforward to automate, making it ideal for shortening response and follow-up times while accelerating your sales cycle. In contrast, cold calls are harder to automate due to legal reasons, as well as stigma against robocalls. 

Since cold email can enable shorter cycles, this triggers multiple opportunities for faster growth.

Easier email performance analysis

Email analytics are a gold mine for your outreach strategy. A good platform lets you track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion details, giving you more insight into email performance and which content interests your prospects. 

Cold email tools in AiSDR

AiSDR is an AI-powered solution that automates SDR tasks to help you book more meetings with less effort. 

Here’s how AiSDR can help you get your cold outbound up and running (and not only).

Mailbox warm-up

Email warm-up involves sending emails from a new email account to increase your tolerated sending volume and improve deliverability. AiSDR automatically warms up and rotates your inboxes so your domains don’t burn and your campaigns keep running.

Multiple mailboxes

As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t send more than 30 emails per day per inbox (potentially even no more than 5 if it’s completely cold). 

Any more than 30 and you run the risk of your account being blocked.

AiSDR lets you connect as many mailboxes as you need. For example, if you connect five warm inboxes, AiSDR will send 150 emails each day for you.

Lead discovery 

Using AiSDR’s Lead Discovery engine, you can connect to the Apollo and RocketReach lead databases and access 700M+ leads. Set the filters to match your ICP criteria, and AiSDR will search for leads who match your target audience.

Intent-based AI prospecting

AiSDR helps you significantly cut the time spent researching companies and leads for different intent signals. Using AI prospecting, you can pinpoint leads via:

• Hiring intent
• Web search
• News search
• Technology stack

You can even prioritize intent signals, or instruct the AI to only add prospects who meet multiply signals.

Persona Creator

With AiSDR, you don’t have to stick with the same old generic sales persona. 

You can go granular and create as many personas as you want for specific positions like account executive, head of sales, and SDRs. Then you can have them run hyper-personalized outreach targeting a specific buyer or customer segment.

LinkedIn personalization

AISDR’s virtual assistant uses your lead’s three most recent LinkedIn posts and their bio to create a personalized email that shows you’ve done your research about them.

You can even configure AiSDR to use LinkedIn data for initial emails, follow-up emails, or both.

How to launch an email campaign with AiSDR

Setting up a cold email campaign in AiSDR is a simple process.

Here’s how you do it.

Create a sales persona

All it takes to create a sales persona is 7 questions that cover:

• Your persona’s position (e.g. CEO, Head of Sales, SDR)
• Your outreach goal
• Your target audience
• What you’re selling
• Pain points and how your product solves them
• Good emails or email templates with spintax

AiSDR walks you through the entire process while giving you different options for inspiration. You can even copy and paste your website, and AiSDR will crawl your website and generate the persona using the information.

Add leads to your customer email database

There are several options available for you when it comes to adding leads:

• Uploading your own CSV file
• Syncing leads from your HubSpot
• Finding leads in Lead Discovery
• Researching prospects with intent-based prospecting

Simply choose your option and follow AiSDR’s instructions on adding leads to campaigns.

Configure campaign settings

AiSDR provides many options for configuring campaigns to meet your needs:

• Number of follow-ups
• Days between follow-ups
• Open rate tracking
• Subject line configuration (all lowercase)
• AI smart replies
• LinkedIn personalization
• AI memes
• AI videos

Set email campaign goals

As we shared above, there are many possible campaign goals for cold email.

AiSDR provides several pre-set goals, and you can specify your own.

Using the goal you’ve selected, AiSDR will write cold emails with the help of relevant sales frameworks and success scripts. 

Launch the campaign

Upload your leads, sync your HubSpot lists, or find prospects in the AiSDR database. Add your campaign goal, content, and calendar link, and you’re good to go!

Analyze results

Aside from tracking key email performance metrics like open rates and meetings booked, analyzing your results helps you figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Our CEO Yuriy Zaremba frequently uses AiSDR to run his own A/B tests to figure out which email tactics get results.

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FAQ

How can you build your first cold email campaign?

Follow these steps to build your first email campaign:

• Create a list of relevant prospects
• Set up your email account
• Authenticate your email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
• Warm up your domain
• Design your email framework
• Outline a follow-up strategy
• Monitor your email activity and analyze the results

What are the most effective CTAs to add to a cold email?

The most effective cold email CTAs:

• Provide a specific date and time for a call
• Request a connection with the right person
• Ask yes/no questions (e.g. Is this something you’re focusing on right now?)
• Ask open-ended questions related to your offer (e.g. What are the biggest pain points in your outreach strategy?)

What cold email marketing software can I choose in 2024?

There are many software options available depending on what you need for cold email marketing. For example, AiSDR is an AI-powered sales automation platform that helps you book meetings with prospects and send personalized messages using LinkedIn activity, HubSpot data, and business pain points.