Crafting the Perfect MSP Cold Email Template

You have heard me say before that “cold email is not dead.” As a matter of fact, I have believed for some time that the advancements in marketing automation and hyper-relevant use of B2B data is pushing this strategy further than it has ever been. The perfect email delivered at the perfect time can open doors that few other mediums can. Data providers are making it much easier to source an audience, but crafting the perfect email to send is no easy task. We put together a few tips on how to fine-tune your cold email strategy and increase campaign performance.

Tips To Improve Your Cold Sales Email Results

• Scheduling – There are two factors that should go into scheduling your email; 1. The time your prospect is most likely to read it and respond, 2. The time you are most likely able to reply back if they do. For us, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at 7:45 am were the perfect times. Our email was sitting right at the top of the Decision Maker’s inbox when they sat down that morning and we were staffed and ready to take on replies.

• HTML/Plain Text – Include a plain text and html version of your email. This will help you control what it looks like in the recipient’s inbox no matter what their email client’s preference is. Also, do not “overdress” the html version. We tend to style ours the same way our employee’s emails look.

• Dynamic Text – Emails with properly used dynamic text can look almost exactly like they were manually sent. The key to pulling this off is in the quality of your data. Be sure to scrub it thoroughly for errors, formatting issues, and even capitalization. If these are not natural, the dynamic text will probably do more harm than good.

• Link Density – Linking too often to your website will not only be off-putting to the reader, but it will increase your overall spam score. We recommend only linking in the signature of your email. Most manual email exchanges are not peppered with links, so automated ones should not be either.

• Subject Line – The subject line is the highest contributing factor to the open rate of your email. That being said, it doesn’t have to be earth shattering. We find that something simple like “IT Quote?” or “Local IT Provider” works just as good as any clever copy we have come up with.

• Greeting – If you are following the advice of this article and scheduling your emails for specific times, use that to your advantage in your greeting. Starting the email with “Good Morning [First Name],” puts a surprising amount of contextualization behind it. Even better, when they reply back to tell you they aren’t interested, you may get a “Good Morning” in return which takes some of the edge off.

• Body/Messaging – This is probably the part that you are most likely to overthink. My advice: “Don’t.” Prospects will respond if they have the need for your services. There is no reason to be clever or over-informative in your messaging. Just let them know who you are, what general services you provide and ask them if they would like a quote. Including only 1 singular question in your email and having it be the last line of your email will make it easier for them to respond.

• Frequency – We found that emailing once per week until our contact opened five emails was the frequency that yielded the fewest frustrated replies and the most positive responses. Anymore often and you are likely to get some hate mail. If you stretch it out further you might be able to get longer use from your data but you lose relevance.

• Unsubscribing – Contacts will unsubscribe or will reply back telling you that they are not interested. Be sure to keep your list scrubbed of these updates at all times. The one thing that can blow up an email campaign is sending emails to someone that has already unsubscribed. They will report you as spam and you risk having your domain blocked from incoming mail hosts.

• Reply – You should always manually reply to every response you get regardless of if the prospect is interested or not. Circumstances change, and a prospect might remember you a few months down the line when they suddenly have a need. Giving them a quick, “Thanks for your time. Best of luck.” will increase the likelihood of this happening.

• Rebuttal – The folks that do reply and say they are not interested will give you one of a handful of reasons (ie. already working with an MSP, or have internal IT). Document these common reasons as you start to see them and prepare for them. We would create “rebuttal” articles that we hosted on our blog to send back with a polite note and then remarket to them if they visited.

Aligning your campaign with these best practices is a great way to optimize your return. If you aren’t already sending cold emails to prospects, we hope that this gives you the inspiration to fire up your CRM and give it a shot. If you find that these tips help improve your results, or if you have any thing else to add, feel free to comment below.