Worldwide, the number of business-related emails sent per day is forecast to exceed 347 billion by the end of 2023, so the cold emails you send have to stand out.

No matter what your cold email is trying to achieve, the best way to save time piecing that winning formula together is with cold email templates.

In this article, we’re going to look at what makes a great email, with nine effective cold email templates you can use to supercharge your cold email campaigns.

What is a cold email?

A cold email is a lead generation strategy and an integral part of the sales process. It’s the way a company or service provider introduces itself to a potential customer and hopefully starts an interaction.

Cold emails tend to have lower response rates than other forms of communication, such as cold calling, but they also require less effort on the salesperson’s side (especially when using sales automation).

Effective cold emails can be difficult to master, as the sales reps who send them typically have no prior relationship with the person they’re reaching out to.

Thus, crafting a cold email outreach campaign that speaks to recipients on a personal level is key. To achieve this, cold emails must be personalized, include compelling content and contain a strong message about your product or solution.

Cold calling vs. cold emailing: which is right for my business?

While cold emails don’t offer the same level of control a sales rep has during a phone call, the cold email has a major advantage over the cold call – reps can send messages to their entire email list in a short span of time.

The scalability of cold emailing is great for sales teams that don’t have the resources to make lots of cold calls.

Heather R Morgan, CEO of cold email company Salesfolk believes the trick is to do your research, and not to be spammy. The important thing to remember is that you’re trying to start a conversation with your new customer.

Email copy should feel personal and thoughtful, and should always be targeted (if not at a specific person, at least at a specific buyer persona).

Morgan believes in building comprehensive buyer personas that succinctly define your ideal customer. On her strategy, Morgan says:

To adopt Morgan’s approach, aim for a positive/neutral response rate of between 10–35%. If the response rate is less than 10%, something in your outreach is off.

Morgan believes there’s no downside to being good on the phone – most reps will have to get on the phone with their customers at some point. Still, as people become more reluctant to pick up the phone, many reps are less and less interested in cold calling as a way of drumming up new business.

On cold calls, Morgan says:

The winning formula of a cold email (that gets opened)

A good cold email includes two factors: it’s well researched and it has a well-defined strategy.

Whether you want to build a relationship, offer a discount, or go straight for a sale, cold emails should always aim to move a sales prospect down your funnel. In order to achieve this, reps must conduct thorough research to personalize their communication.

The email should reinforce not only that you’re informed about the prospect, their company and their pain points, but also that you can identify exactly how your product will help them.

Without these things included, it’ll be hard to convince a stranger over email that they should invest time in reading what you’ve sent them.

To find out what makes a cold email great, Contently’s Shane Snow tested out various email templates on 1,000 C- and VP-level executives from Fortune 500 and Inc. 500 companies. The goal was to see if there was a correlation between the email structure (subject line, word length, email request, etc.) and its open rates and response rates.

Here’s what Snow concluded:

• The tactics we use to optimize sales emails are less important than personalized research and sender-sendee fit.

• It doesn’t matter how busy your prospect is. The same principles apply for winning the trust of every type of person you email: be personal and do your homework.

• The cold email subject line matters less than we may think, the important part is piquing personal interest that elicits curiosity.

These findings center around a focal point: you can warm up a cold email through personalization. By making it clear that you’ve done your homework, cold emails can quickly turn into the first meaningful interaction you have with a prospect.

How to write the perfect cold email

The main goal of a cold email is to get your prospect to open and read it.

Each sentence should have a purpose and draw the reader in. Without making the email too lengthy, any cold sales email template should include three crucial elements:

1. An opening line. Something that will catch the reader’s attention, like “Quick question?”

2. A value proposition. Your value prop must clearly explain what the email is about and what’s in it for them.

3. A call-to-action. Make it clear whether you want them to reply to the email, book a call or take another action.

Your cold emails should also share these five characteristics:

1. Personalization. You need to show that you understand and can relate to what interests them by referencing it in a conversational way.

2. Validation. Your recipient might receive a lot of requests for their attention. Quickly explain who you are and why they should give you their time. If you have any impressive results, this can help validate why they should read the rest of your email and follow your CTA.

3. Pain points. Show you understand the prospect’s pain points and can fix them. This will give you a better chance of making a connection.

4. Next steps.Respect your prospect’s time. Make your email short and easy to respond to or take action on.

5. Appreciation. Thank your prospect for reading your email. This will help start your relationship off on the right foot.

Including all of the above ingredients might seem like a lengthy process, but sales reps now have tools to help. With the emergence of email marketing software, the level of personalization and nurturing required to build relationships with prospects can be automated using templates.

With a CRM tool like Pipedrive, sales reps can automatically send emails to prospects when they enter their sales funnel. Using pre-made cold templates, the emails will already be personalized using merge fields, so prospect details like their company name and industry will fill in the gaps.

Automating cold emails helps you work more efficiently, reaching out to prospects with an email that ticks all the boxes, without having to write every line from scratch.

The dos and don’ts of cold emailing

Avoid the most common pitfalls by sticking to the following dos and don’ts.

Do

• Start with the subject line: Grab the reader’s attention and ensure they open the cold email. Be exceedingly clear and concise, as it’s worth taking time to perfect the best cold email subject lines.

• Be succinct and direct: Introduce yourself clearly upfront. To evaluate whether it’s the right length, read your email out loud. If it’s longer than a minute, it’s too long. Try writing like you’d talk if you saw them in person – introduce yourself, be nice, connect.

• Get personal: Connect with an engaging hook or show you have a connection in common right away. You can also mention a competitor if you know the lead is using their solution and believe would help.

• Be credible: Avoid big promises and marketing speak. Offer real results you’ve delivered for similar clients.

• Call to action: This is the equivalent of the home stretch and, arguably, the most important part of your pitch. You won’t get one if you don’t ask, so if you want a 15-minute meeting or a call, be sure to include this at the end of the email.

Don’t

• Blind email: Nothing screams “copy and paste” more than using “Dear Sir or Madam”. Research your prospects online or call up the company’s reception and ask who the decision-maker is, then use the appropriate person’s name in your opener.

• Waffle: Keep things short and sweet. Long-winded emails are unlikely to be read so make sure you get to that all-important CTA as efficiently as possible.

• Be pushy: Coming on too strong from the outset is a common pitfall. Don’t go for the hard sell in your email and instead focus on building a relationship.

• Just list: A common mistake is reeling off your brand name and the features of a product or service. You’ll need to explain how your product can help and the specific benefit to the client before asking for a meeting, or your prospect will have no idea why they should say yes.

Improve sales team performance by following a process

Establishing a clear cold emailing testing process is key to improving sales team performance, management and optimization. So is having intuitive software to manage workflows when sending cold emails and utilizing open and click tracking.

Opt for a more scientific approach than simply “try and fail” over and over again. Instead:

• Have someone create versions of emails and include the subject line, email body and call to action (perhaps someone from your marketing team).

• Provide context as to why the sales team should adopt these emails (a winning cold email strategy will help them get more deals). Their commitment is essential to get data and improve performance.

• Ensure everyone has a tracking tool: one that tracks if an email gets opened, what links were clicked, and traces the call to action.

• Depending on the size of your team, set a clear goal and test until you reach that statistical significance.

• Analyze the results (e.g. open rates and response rates) and plan your optimization for the next cold email campaign. If possible, A/B test your emails by changing up just one element to see if metrics improve.

10 cold email experts reveal how to get noticed

Cold emails are both a science and an art. Many businesses have been successful off the back of cold emails, but many have failed.

To give you the best chance at succeeding, here is some cold emailing advice from industry experts who have perfected their craft.

Barry Moroney, CEO at Leadable

Ahmed GabAllah, Business Development Executive at Athena Capital

1. Never buy a list. Don’t get me wrong, I purchased lists many times and achieved some results, but I am not proud of that. If you think a list of the contact info for 500 Investors for $50 from someone who reached you via LinkedIn is the answer, then think again.

2. Scrub your list. Scrubbing is easy and cheap using tools like Bulk Email Checker or Voila Norbert.

3. Use personalization. It is enough to separate you from the majority of the lazy sales reps. Use merge tags and go beyond the “first name” and “company name”. Use “location”, “info pulled from social accounts” and the “last news and activities for your contacts or their companies”.

4. Follow up. I don’t mean with meaningless “touching base emails”, every follow-up email is an opportunity to warm your lead or to establish a good relationship.

5. Go omnichannel. The smart cold emailing camp is the Omni-Channel one. In parallel, use email, social media and InMail to grab attention and to deliver more value.

6. Don’t be boring. While everyone sends lengthy wordy emails, send smart 6 lines max messages and follow up with a valuable message like a case study, an infographic, or even a personalized video. If you are smart enough be funny, follow up with GIFs or even memes. Just make sure you don’t offend anyone.

7. Capitalize on the P.S. This is my favorite. If done right it is a game-changer. It doesn’t matter what is within your email, the P.S. section is your opportunity to shine, use a charm offensive, or be impulsive... with magic copywriting you can be on top of their mind.

Dipak Vadera, Sales Manager at Leadfeeder

“Do not neglect the importance of the subject line.

Most unsolicited emails (cold emails) will end up being deleted. If you want to stand out from the other hundreds in prospect’s inbox, you need to start with the subject line.

If your subject line is [bad], your e-mail might as well delete itself. Even if you have a personalized hook, a low-commitment call to action and a value proposition that solves the prospect’s problem.

If your email doesn’t get opened in the first place, having all the above is totally useless. Subject lines are therefore the gateway to your cold email’s success.”

Richard Roma, Sales Manager at ONBORD

• Research. Ensure you understand who you are messaging and don’t just spam.

• Relevance. Keep the message relevant to the person and organization being approached.

• Refine. Both in the sense of keeping to the point and being polished.

James Davies, Sales Manager at Stylo

Sarah Brazier, Sales Development Representative at Gong

“For cold outreach, I try to keep my first email short, sweet, and to the point, i.e. three sentences long.

The first sentence ties whatever events are happening in the business directly to something I’ve learned about them (usually lifted from their LinkedIn profile).

The second describes how folks in their role who are experiencing a business event leverage our solution to remedy the accompanying business pain related to that event.

The third sentence is my ask, which, if it’s for time to talk, is about a conversation around how they can not only solve their business pain but achieve a goal related to their business event and specific role.

The whole email should maintain continuity from the first sentence to last, and be read on a phone screen.”

Gaurav Patel, Founder at Pipe Bagger

“In my opinion, email marketing must be designed in a sequence of at least 8–10 emails. And the content should be educative, provocative and personalized.

The emails must be short, to the point and the reader must get clarity that it was written just for them and is not a copy-paste job—basically they must get a clue that the sender has done some homework.

If a human is triggering human emotions and making sense then I’m sure the campaign will yield good results.”

Joshua Herbert, Partner Sales Manager at Xactly Corp

Kyle Racki, CEO at Proposify

“Avoid being broad.

We’re now programmed to ignore emails that are obviously generic, mass emails. One way to stand out in someone’s inbox is to make the subject line and the opening line customized to them as a person.

The subject line should be thought of kind of like a headline: don’t give away the punchline, but create intrigue enough for them to open the email.

The opening line of the email should be heavily customized to the prospect. Statements like below work really well and show that you are a real person:

• I saw you…

• Read your post about…

• Noticed you had talked to [shared connection] a few months ago…

• I heard you...

• [Specific name] told me X about you…

Only then can you get into the meat of the pitch. Keep it light, less is more. Ask about their problem, let them know it’s what you solve. They aren’t going to read a book on features.

Finally, the CTA. Don’t ask for a meeting or offer a proposal yet. The goal of a cold email isn’t to close a deal, it’s to find out if the prospect is right for you.

If the prospect is interested and desperately wants your solution, they will ask for a call.

Instead, make a very light ask: ‘Any chance you’d be up for helping me make an introduction to [specific name]?’

The key here is to know who you want the intro to. A vague ‘Can you intro me to your VP Sales’ or, worse, ‘Who in your company should I talk to?’ won’t have the same effect.

If they indeed are the right person they’ll let you know. If not, it’s as simple as an email intro for them.

Finally, closing with an open-ended question like: ‘What are your thoughts?’ is all that’s needed to start a dialogue. If they want to talk, they’ll reply.”

Dale Dupree, Founder of The Sales Rebellion

“Emailing is still going to be extremely effective in the year 2020 for sales and marketing professionals. It is also going to continue to be one of the noisiest mediums being used!

To create effective emails, reps are going to have to embrace what might currently feel uncomfortable. And, most importantly, no more clickbait, generic outreach copy, safe subject lines, or jam-packed newsletters that continue to go straight to the trash bin.

Create undeniable curiosity, drive relevance, bring a level of familiarity with your outreach that the prospect feels compelled to respond to and start changing the game. Use GIFs, memes, emojis, and talk to people like a normal human being that they would encounter in real life - because emails are beginning to feel fake and straight out of another universe.

One that was abandoned by people ages ago because of how boring and weird the sales world eventually got. Stop taking us back there!”

9 highly effective cold email templates

The following cold email templates sourced from Pipedrive sales experts will help you scale your prospecting, drive more replies, stay out of those spam folders and increase conversion rates.

You can use these email examples as inspiration to create your own templates, or simply copy and paste straight from us.

1. The introduction email

Let’s start with a cold email that’s primary purpose is to introduce you and your company to a new decision-maker for a B2B sale.

The email should begin with both you and your prospect’s basic information (your names and companies), showcase a touch of your research and then inquire if they’re interested in learning more.

Remember that an introduction template is a starting point for your discussion and you don’t want to overwhelm your prospect with too much information early on.

Instead, show them something of value. In the above template, it’s the revenue percentage that your product or service can bring to the table. Show the prospect that, above all, you just want to help them achieve their goals.

How to get a response:

• Make your offer jump out. The email isn’t about your business; it’s about theirs. Offer a single insight on what your product or service can help them with, like revenue or productivity. Ask yourself, “how is your company going to help them?”

• Do the research. Adding the prospect’s company name and industry are must-haves to any introductory email. Go a step further and include where you came across the company to add a personal touch. In this example, it was the company’s reviews on G2.

Leadfeeder Sales Manager Dipak Vadera says writing how you talk and avoiding buzzwords and sales cliches can make all the difference with cold emails like this. He also says that writing two to three-sentence paragraphs is important because it allows the reader to scan the content quickly, especially on mobile.

Lastly, don’t add a ton of links and attachments to the email. “This could trigger your email being inadvertently marked as spam,” Vadera warns.

2. The personalized email

The aim of a personalized email template is to let the reader know that you follow their industry trends, have studied their company and know exactly why your product can help them.

Emails don’t need to be hyper-personalized, but they do need to give enough information to show the reader that they aren’t receiving a generic blast. A personalized cold email template should do a lot of the heavy lifting of breaking the ice with a prospect, by adding:

• The names of products and people at the company

• Discussing what the prospect’s company does and what their goals are

• Flagging any problems, concerns or risks they’re battling (i.e. changes in their industry)

• Including any specific details you’ve kept on file like a recent LinkedIn comment or blog post

Here’s a cold email template based on this advice:

This level of personalization goes beyond adding a company name and works for two reasons:

• It’s in-depth. The information you’ve outlined proves you’ve gone beyond a quick Google search. Even if the person isn’t ready to chat about your product at the time you send it, the least you can hope for is a reply. Then you can tag the lead to follow up with in the future.

• It’s not generic. The problem with templates is that it’s hard to make them look like they aren’t automated. With personalization, some prospects will believe that the email is only being sent to them.

When Woodpecker studied 20 million cold emails over two years, their number one takeaway was the impact of personalization:

3. The before-after-bridge email

The before-after-bridge email is a way to tell a story by weaving your product into the narrative.

This is done using a tried and tested copywriting technique:

• Before. Here’s where your company stands now (i.e. highlighting the problem)

• After. If the problem was solved, this is what it would look like

• Bridge. How to get there (i.e. your product/solution)

The key to setting up this email correctly is describing a problem that the prospect is facing and presenting the path beyond it.

The reason why this approach is successful boils down to basic human behaviors. According to behavioral psychologists, the human mind is spurred to action based on two feelings: pleasure and pain. This cold email template targets both, and triggers a response.

This example ticks all the boxes:

Rather than just talking about the product, the email flips the problem back onto the prospect. The result is the prospect feels empowered by your outreach and solution rather than agitated by an overly pushy sales pitch.

4. The useful content email

Not all cold emails have to be about selling.

One of the best ways to build a relationship, especially when you’re cold emailing, is by adding value to your prospect’s inbox. Your aim should be to provide value every time a prospect opens one of your emails. Instead of pitching your product right off the bat, send them a valuable resource instead.

Keep it short, and to the point:

Content emails work largely because you’re not asking the prospect for anything. You’re not trying to book a meeting or see if they’re interested in your product. The only aim here is to provide the prospect with a piece of content that will be useful to them and their team.

However, it’s essential to not just push your own content onto them. Share the most useful, actionable and valuable content you can find on the topic matter.

5. The mutual-connection email

Plugging a mutual connection into a cold email is an ideal way to defrost it.

If the target audience recognizes they have a mutual connection with you, it builds an instant level of trust that adds to the relationship-building process.

That doesn’t mean you should talk about yourself. As with all cold emails, you must put the focus on your prospect and their pain points. Use your commonalities to open the email, then quickly move on to why you’re emailing:

Highlighting a mutual connection is one of the best ways to leverage social proof, so if you have connections mention them.

Salespeople generally send cold emails to prospects they’re yet to have contact with. The main alternative is making a cold call, but usually a cold call and a cold email have different uses, so the question of cold call vs. email is normally decided for you.

However, sometimes you’ll be asked to send an email instead while on a cold call. Here’s a video explaining how to deal with this objection.

6. The social media email

A prospect’s social media channels can be a goldmine.

They offer insight into their thoughts, company and interests. It makes sense to use them as a research tool for your cold email outreach. They can also help your email stand out in a crowded inbox. If everybody is emailing your prospect about an offer or a discount but you’re mentioning one of their Twitter posts about blogging it can pique their curiosity.

Here’s an example of this in a cold email template:

Tip: Don’t pick the most recent post on their social media feed (that could be perceived as lazy). Instead, take a few minutes to see if there is a recurring theme or product mention within their posts. If so, choose one that discusses this overarching point or product.

If you can intrigue them with their own subject matter, it will only increase the chances of them replying to you.

7. The competitor email

Going after prospects who use your competitor’s products is a proven tactic, however you must walk a fine line.

You don’t want to accidentally throw your competitors under the bus and risk your reputation. Instead, your aim needs to be getting the prospect to draw their own conclusion that your product is a better fit.

LeadIQ recommends highlighting your company’s strengths in the email as they relate to the prospect.

“If you are writing a cold email, tell a story of a customer who was going through a similar experience with a competitor.”

Here’s how to position your product against a competitor’s:

This cold email is unique because you already know the prospect has a need for your product. After all, they’re using one of your competitors. This means you don’t have to put in the groundwork proving how useful it will be to their business.

Instead, you can use the email as an opportunity to show them your product’s USP and highlight your customer’s achievements since they made the switch to your company.

8. The results email

This cold email shows your prospect, in real numbers, how well your product and service works. The data points might highlight the revenue you’ve added to a customer’s business or their increased customer count, for example.

This email is all about driving the message home that your product gets the job done:

This cold email template works because it mixes content with results. It acts as a small case study, showing how companies similar to your prospects have achieved an outcome using your solution.

9. The demo email

Use this cold email template to explain concisely what your product/service is, outline exactly what you have to offer and show how it can help your prospect. If you have a short demo video or a webinar recording, sharing it is often a great way to do this.

Final thoughts

Successful cold emailing is an investigative task that requires reps to add personalization and depth to cold outreach.

Every prospect that enters your sales funnel is unique, so you should pitch them with the cold email template that has the best chance of converting them into a customer.

Once you get the formula right, your cold email templates will become your secret weapon when connecting with prospects and turning conversations into sales.