"What’s In It for Me?" Do This Before Sending Your Next Cold Email
In this article, we’ll walk you through this one ingredient you need to create cold emails that your ideal customers won’t ignore. Read on!
Chinwoke· · Updated
Do This Before Sending Your Next Cold Email
- WIIFM?
- One Thing You Must Do Before You Send That Cold Email
- 1. What Are the Pain Points of Your Prospect?
- 2. What Are Their Goals?
- 3. What Triggers Them to Accept Your Cold Email Offer?
89% of marketers say that cold email is their primary channel for lead generation
But unfortunately, many marketers are spinning their wheels when it comes to getting results from cold emailing.
And they've overlooked the primary ingredient needed to spice up emails that convert leads to customers.
Your cold email's success depends on how well you research your prospect's desires and wants.
In 2022, an estimated 333.2 billion emails were sent and received daily worldwide.
And this figure is projected to increase to 376.4 billion daily emails by 2025. Wow, huge numbers!
In this article, we'll walk you through this one ingredient you need to create cold emails that your ideal customers won't ignore.
WIIFM?
What's in it for me?
That's the question in the mind of your prospects. And if you can't answer it with your offer, you shoot yourself in the foot.
Do you know that top B2B sellers spend an average of 6 hours every week researching their prospects?
You see, It's not about you. It's about them (your prospect). They want solutions to their problems and are ready to go the extra mile to achieve their goals.
From the illustration above, your prospect wants to move from point A (I have this problem) to point Z (I've solved my problem), and your cold email stands between these two critical points.
And once you show them you can help them in your cold email, they are ready to leverage your solution.
Let's get to the main deal!
Ready? Let's go.
One Thing You Must Do Before You Send That Cold Email
Do you play the actual game of research, or do you make assumptions about your prospect?
If you are doing the latter, you must rethink and re-strategize.
First things first, create an Ideal customer profile and a buyer persona. Wait, there are two different aspects with different meanings though related.
Hubspot defines an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) as the perfect customer for what your organization solves for. This is a fictitious company that has all of the qualities that would make them the best fit for the solutions you provide.
Also, Hubspot defined Buyer persona as:
Semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based on data and research. They help you focus your time on qualified prospects, guide product development to suit the needs of your target customers, and align all work across your organization (from marketing to sales to service).
For example, you can create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) of Martech companies with more than 50-60 employees.
And within that ICP, you likely work with multiple buyer personas. Many roles may be involved in the buying decision at those companies, e.g., Chief Marketing Officers (CMO), Vice President (VP), CEOs, and marketing managers.
While demographics, job status, and company information are essential to generating your buyer persona, you must recognize the power of psychographics.
Psychographics is the collection of the psychological attributes, interests, beliefs, and values of your prospect.
See what ADELE REVELLA, founder of Buyer Persona institute, has to say:
She went further to say;
“If we’re doing a study for senior living, we care how old you are and probably even what gender you have.
If we’re selling a marketing automation solution, it’s ridiculous to care about your hobbies or how many kids you have.”
Also, In the words of Seth Godin in his book This Is Marketing, he said:
Begin by choosing people based on what they dream of, believe, and want, not what they look like. In other words, use psychographics over demographics.
So having studied these vital points, Here are three vital questions you must answer before you tap the email send button:
1. What Are the Pain Points of Your Prospect?
Below is an image of a post by George Terry, Co-founder of Winbox.
He talks about the power of nailing your prospect's pain point in a cold email.
Imagine when you sent an irrelevant message to your prospect, and think about the prospect's reaction. Rejection right? Yes!
Before you send your next cold email, find the main problem of your prospect. “But how do I find out?”
Ask your current customers what problems they faced before contacting you for business. Find out what questions your prospects are asking on platforms like quora, Reddit and LinkedIn.
Go where your prospects are and join the conversation. It will marvel you the level of insights you will gain about what problems they are facing
Now you know their pain points, what's next?
2. What Are Their Goals?
You are not the only person sending a cold email to your prospect; they receive from your competitors too.
So, you must decide to be the person that sends a unique cold email. Find out what your prospect wants to achieve.
Remember, they want to go from the point “I have a problem” to the point “problem solved,” so they find out what they want to achieve for their business.
Below Is a vivid example of a cold email that nails down on prospect goals…
This might not be the best cold email, but it nails down on “I want to help you achieve your goals”. This means he performed thorough research before sending me the email.
Even though I didn't need his service then, I saved his contact so I could message him when I'm ready to build an email marketing system. I did that because of the relevance of his offer.
That's how powerful researching your prospects' goal proves to be.
3. What Triggers Them to Accept Your Cold Email Offer?
If you don't know what triggers your prospect to see your email as delightful and unique, you are guessing way too much.
It sounds so simple when buying triggers are discussed, but the truth is, a lot of work is done to understand what indeed triggers your prospect.
Look out for cold email red flags your prospect points out, find a pattern interrupt and apply it in your cold emails.
Daily, founders and decision-makers in many companies are ranting about cold emails that suck. Find those rants and discover a unique way to do cold emails better.
That's how you stand out and become the chosen one. Your prospects want to feel understood, so make them feel special.
Final thoughts:
The marketplace has evolved, and the best way to create cold emails that not just stands out but helps you close deals is to conduct research.
If you act on the steps listed in this piece, then you are dancing your way to closing more deals.
And We are here to help you achieve your prospecting goals. Receive up to 200 FREE leads when you subscribe to one of our plans today!
