Expert Insights from StrategyBrain on Cold Email Best Practices

Are you a recruiter, HR manager, sales team, or talent consultant? A well-done cold email can change your professional life. If affluent and meaningfully written, it may capture the recipient’s attention and initiate a valuable conversation. However, since your goal depends not only on emailing but also the engagement and response received, as well as the outreach tactics and strategies, crafting a cold email that will add to your professional network and bring an opportunity to you requires a comprehensive approach. You should know the target audience, personalize the work, and present value, as well as follow up on the results and responses received to continually improve and advance.

The Evolution of Cold Emails

In the beginning, a cold email might represent a pushy sales pitch, an email with too many current anniversaries or throttling offers. These emails would paralyze recipients by their aggressiveness, creating an atmosphere of nuisance that was put aside as spam and never addressed. Industries were not interested, as these messages rarely provided real value, as the companies and entrepreneurs crating the messages only thought about their benefit, promotion, or sale, trying to push an agenda and multiply relationships in a way that was detrimental and insolent. Today, these attitudes are not relevant, and the emails for companies are evolved. Now, the cold emails should be considerate, and it is impossible not to see the change in many corporations’ policies and email outreach strategies. The warm, groomed, and well-prepared email focuses more on the recipient, their needs, and providing them with a solution, rather than promoting and concentrating on the sender, their wants and business benefits. The precious outreach suggests value, sets relations, and tries to become the start of a partnership and long-term committed communication.

What is Cold Emailing?

Cold emailing is sending an introductory message to any individual who has never had any interactions before. It has often been called unsolicited spam and many people perceive it as invasive. Over time, the approach to this element has always been changing significantly. However, email length can sometimes be challenging. In fact, with the avalanche of new strategies, individualized emails, and effective approaches, more people have become better at cold emailing. It may take you some time to discover specific details on how you can do it correctly.

Key Statistics

• A significant number of sales professionals report that they only use email.
• Additionally, many users prefer to be contacted via email by buyers.
• A considerable proportion of users are interested in receiving emails from others, as they aim to improve their business results.
• Most clients will open their messages in hopes of finding solutions to their inquiries.

However: Do not be misled by the results. Despite the above sections, the above authors have not yet been able to unite their buyers with their providers. For instance, three-quarters of email is on phones, but only one-quarters of email is on phones. Marketers and companies do not often understand their customers’ needs.

Cold Emailing Best Practices

Well-done cold emails are groups of non-manipulation strategies and personalization. Always personalize your posts.You need some independence to make each email based on who the email is going to.Remember that you should take some time to get to know this person and their emails. The best practices are:

• short emails, not very detailed;
• burden email and give value;
• practical guidance or helpful insights for a person or reference.

Cold emails should be proactive, not indiscriminate. They must be sent only qualified leads that are aligned with their needs. The reason for that is that these emails have to initiate and provide value to the conversation. It makes the chances of success much higher. On the other hand, spam emails are sent to recipients randomly, regardless of their intention at all. Cold emails, when sent, instead, are longer and more efficiently targeted. Every aspect of spams proves that they are both cheaper and less effective tools to deliver one’s message.

• Example: Although a generic email sent to dozens of people is less likely to end in sales, more advanced AI technology enables cold email senders to write and send emails more efficiently. One such example is Artisan AI Sales Reps. They come with built-in contacts. For instance, in order to write an email to LinkedIn user, who reached out to a sender after receiving the cold email, have written an email for sending first. Upon that, when that recipient sends the email and states the interest in the service, another automatic email is sent to them. In this way, time is saved and a significant number of potential clients contacted.

Cold emails should be personalized, not generic. That task is feasible since prior to reaching out, one must have learned all about the recipient’s needs and how they can assist. Various studies confirm that correctly implemented, cold emails make subject lines with the recipient’s name perform best. Details about a recipient, such as the recent graduation, a friend met the other day, and them both liking tennis, have also been known in advance and used to make future contact more engaging and likely to spark a recipient’s interest.

• Example: As shown in the example, it is essential to learn in advance that one’s prospect likes tennis. As a conclusion, it is crucial not just to send those emails in the first place but to do so in a way that engages the recipient to want to continue developing a relationship and a potential business deal. The previous shows how a great cold email setup looks like. You first send an email that lists ten prospects one has plans to interact with in the future. All of them are amiable and kindly reply that they are willing to connect. Then follow the pages of contacts. The recipient then responds to everything with enthusiasm and asks if they are working with the correct department. The prospects’ details are then promptly submitted, and the remaining pages of the first emailing are sent out, and all the prospects contacts are added to the list.

Application of Cold Emailing in AI Recruitment

As far as AI recruiting is concerned, cold emailing might prove a powerful medium of networking, recruiting, and establishing partnership. First, with cold email, companies will be able to get in touch with a wider range of potential candidates. Second, due to the individual nature of the approach, companies might forge stronger connections with other businesses, thus establishing the foundation for lasting professional relationships. Given the specifics of the modern-day AI market, therefore, cold emailing could be a particularly beneficial tool, since it will give organizations the leverage of carrying out a proactive recruiting strategy. The list of potential applications is as follows:

• Networking – cold emails can provide an opportunity to get in touch with industry influencers who might otherwise be out of reach, as well as establish contact with someone who might be a potential mentor. Approaching professionals with a well-thought-out and personalized message, one might not only get useful tips or insights but also create conditions for further cooperation and job opportunities. Make sure that the idea of cooperation is proposed in a clear and concise manner and that you suggest what you could do for the recipient;
• Recruiting – is there someone you think would make a great candidate for a position at your company? Great, but chances are they have not seen your open job vacancy yet. By sending a cold email, you can put the job offer that you attached into the light and explain to the recipient what led you to believe that they would be a good fit, adding a clear CTA(Call to Action), e.g., “Let me know your thoughts”;
• Partnership – cold emails can also be a great tool for joint projects, so when reaching out, you can offer them to become strategic partners and tell why it will be useful for you and how you can help them. A carefully crafted and personalized message can open new opportunities for relationships with other companies or start a mutually beneficial exchange of resources or expertise, which will subsequently contribute to the development and growth of both parties.

Key Considerations for AI Recruitment

Understanding your audience

Before sending cold emails, it is important to know the people you are addressing, their pain points, what might interest them. If you know what problems your recipient has, what helps to motivate him, you will be able to create the best content which might force him to reply. If you know your recipient’s preferences and motivations, you can send him a highly relevant and personal appeal. This method helps you not only have a great reply rate but also helps the sender be trusted and form a good relationship with the recipient.

Providing Value

Try to offer the value of each cold email. It would be a product that helps to solve different life purposes, the service that helps to save time and efforts, some valuable information about interesting and meaningful industry trends. The situation when you know some informational solutions and suggestions for specific recipient problems is one of the most productive, as, in this situation, it will be highly likely to get feedback from the recipient. Try to offer the recipient anything important and valuable that may result in his benefits.

Ease of Reading

It is highly recommended to use the super-simple language. You do not know whether the person you are sending a cold email to knows all the industry-specific jargon and words. If the recipient does not know the meanings of some special or professional words or phrases, he might not read the whole email you have sent.

In this situation, some of your super-long and informative benefits and suggestions may require to be broken into two or even three emails if you still want to send them. It is always better to try to tell the recipient a few sentences instead of several paragraphs. It is also highly likely that the recipient does not always have time to read your email, but several sentences can be read at any point of time.

A/B Testing

Try to test different context, subject lines, format of the text, etc. to understand which one resonates with your audience. You can also check the open, click-through, and response rates.

Cold Email Success: How to Get Passive Candidates to Respond?

The Company: QuantumNext Inc.

A major AI recruiting company was successfully finding candidates for its clients. They had good conditions and a wide network of people they could tap into. However, there was one major problem – most companies are looking not for active job seekers, who are typically easier to find, but for passive ones, who are usually currently employed and not looking to go anywhere. The company’s AI and IT teams, therefore, needed to devise an effective way to find such talented individuals.

Problem

The company already had many channels they were using to passively source candidates. They contacted students who were doing well in AI-related courses, employees recognized by their firms, people known from conventions and other events where they represented themselves as professionals. All this helped them to source some excellent candidates, but team leads could not shake the feeling that they were not doing enough and that they were missing out on some talented candidates who did not use social networks or spoke to the wrong people.

Solution

We created a cold email template that would be sent to potential candidates who were likely to be interested in new opportunities but were not really active in the search for them. The main goal was to get the candidates to reply to the job. The main challenge here was to make sure that the mail did not read like an advertisement – people do not tend to respond well to spam. It also had to include the right level of information – too much and they could lose interest, too little – and they would ignore it.

Strategy

The team of recruiters engaged with making a recruitment campaign utilized a set of ten cold email templates, which revolved around a clear value proposition, personalization, and concise language. The team segmented the target audience of the campaign and identified industry values that it should be aware of, targeted the professionals involved in AI with specific skills, experience, and past initiatives. Each email started with a personal touch – an introduction where the sender would refer to a mutual connection or share industry insight. The body of the email consisted of a concise job total, where the exciting opportunities and employee initiatives relevant to specific experiences and expertise were listed. The firm used employee contributions to gather relevant information and industry insights and also encouraged their employees to provide short testimonials about their career growth within the firm.

Implementation

The firm engaged in the A/B testing of cold email subject lines, as well as email bodies to ensure that maximum relevant information could be spread before engaging in more direct forms of communication. The team also followed up with the candidates who opened their emails by utilizing AI-based tools to provide personal and time-sensitive responses. A portion of the cold emails sent to the target audience focused on sharing relevant industry trends, indicating that the sender knows the value-related information. The recipients, who responded the most to the campaign, were the candidates who did not express any intention to change their employment status. The follow-up messages resulted in the hiring of some key talents and an increased positive PR response to the firm that was involved in the campaign. The firm received over half more responses to cold emails within three months of the campaign launch, indicating a successful engagement with the target audience.

This case study demonstrates that a strategic approach to cold emailing in AI recruitment can help build connections and expand the pool of candidates significantly. If companies focus on personalization and value added, they can utilize cold emailing approach as a powerful tool. It can be concluded that cold emailing can be a well-thought-out and excellent approach to networking if taken seriously. Pros in AI recruitment should use this approach stick to personalization and delivering value. Besides, it is important to use all the benefits of AI technology to make this type of communication effective as possible. It is also worth subtending that each addressee can become a door to an opportunity, and it is vital to apply the best practices described above to each email. These approaches should be used NOW, and professionals can find even more approaches on StrategyBrain to expand their practice in AI recruitment and optimize their strategy.

Conclusion

As presented, cold emailing has grown into a refined and efficient strategy, provided it is used correctly. For professionals operating in the AI recruitment industry, concentrating on personalization, providing value, and using AI tech to their advantage will bring exceptional benefits. At the end of the day, every person who receives your email is someone who can potentially open a door to a new opportunity. Therefore, treat each email as a chance to make a meaningful connection. To learn more about AI recruiting strategies and tools to benefit your operation, proceed to StrategyBrain.