Probing a new market, researching product demand, or warming up an old lead database – these are just some of the tasks you can use cold emails for. It may seem that this communication channel is intended only for online industries and serves mostly the purpose of generating leads and closing sales, however, there’s way more to it. Here are 7 of the most overlooked applications of cold emails.
What are some of the creative ways for using cold emails?
#1 Testing a new service
So you’ve been operating for some time now and are thinking of introducing a new product or service. You’d like to see what kind of market reaction you can expect so… instead of running time-consuming and unreliable tests, you can, for instance, run a cold email campaign.
This is exactly the way some of our clients approached market research. First, you can scale up the project, second, you can precisely target the recipients. One of the campaigns we’ve run for Listonic may serve as an example. The company wanted to introduce a new product – shopping coupons.
#2 Raising awareness in the market
An excellent example of how you can use cold emails in a non-sales way is the campaign for COCOZ Interactive, an agency dealing in online marketing, specializing in serving the e-commerce industry.
Mark Ekstowicz, the owner of the agency, wanted to expand his network of contacts and build awareness in the market of what professional SEO services, domain visibility, and driving website traffic are. He was keen on getting his potential business partners interested in his company’s offer, but more importantly, the aim was to show that online stores aren’t doomed to use only the most popular, often limited solutions.
As a result of the campaign, Mark has not only won valuable contacts, he’s also arranged a number of business meetings which have turned into closed deals (read more about the COCOZ campaign results).
#3 Gaining traction
“Will you have a moment to talk about sweets?” – My-Shop campaign results have confirmed that after receiving such a message, many of its addressees have been sold on Christmas gingerbread cookies with a custom company logo.
My-shop, a pastry delivering its products to every corner of Poland, wanted to inform its potential customers that:
- it’s launched its operations
- it now accepts orders for occasional cakes and Christmas cookies.
This customer case shows that cold emails also work with traditional businesses and perform an informative function. The goal of the campaign was primarily to get positive responses and create opportunities for contact at a later time.
#4 Call to action
Emails are also capable of prompting action and helping, say, SaaS businesses win new users. A client of ours was looking for experienced professionals in Warsaw. His goal was to encourage people to sign up for the GetMe app.
The campaign we ran for AuthorRemake, a business that provides professional ghostwriting services, had a similar effect. Cold emails were supposed to showcase the offer and encourage people to talk to their sales reps.
A whole 9% of the recipients were willing to talk after opening the message. The discussions initiated by cold emails and the work done by our customer’s sales department have led to a dozen or so signed contracts for writing a book.
#5 Warming up a cold database
You have a database of old leads you couldn’t convert and have written off by now. Why don’t you try cold emailing the way Booksy did?
Leads they considered cold and a target they thought doesn’t use email have turned out to be among the best-converting yet. This customer case shows there’s always something to be squeezed out of an old database. Well-written email pitch and a thorough strategy can, in fact, convince prospects.
On top of that, despite their campaign targeting mostly owners of SMEs who dwell offline, it’s still proved to be very efficient. Curious to learn more? Read on how we helped Booksy reach 30% conversion using cold emailing.
#6 Away game
Are you planning a trip to a business conference or a meeting with a strategic client abroad? Use the opportunity to expand your network of contacts and win new clients.
Plan your meetings using cold emails the way LamaMedia did. Fill up your calendar and arrange to meet prospects both during a particular event and a business trip.
So how did Michael from LamaMedia go about this? He wanted to reach decision-makers at agencies and startups in New York City. He was going there to attend a conference and decided he’ll use the visit to win some new clients.
The results clearly show that the campaign was a success. Michael had tens of meetings and won a dozen or so new deals. It was just the beginning of our client’s expansion into foreign markets. We’ve played a couple more away games sending emails before Michael’s other trips.
A similar strategy was assumed by SoftwareMill, who decided to use cold emailing to establish contacts before going to conferences and events. Read more: 20 meetings at a single conference thanks to cold emails.
Cold emailing can also work on a smaller, local scale. Here’s what the SoFine marketing agency did.
#7 Recruiting employees
Cold emails may prove to be an efficient tool for recruiting employees, especially in the IT industry. On LinkedIn, programmers and developers keep getting messages from HR people every couple of days.
So if you’re planning to expand your team, don’t stalk and send messages to your potential employees. You can better reach them via precisely-targeted custom emails.
Final word
There isn’t a single, most-efficient email message. There are, however, multiple applications of cold emails. Depending on your needs, they can not only generate leads, but help you arrange meetings, recruit new employees, or let the market know about your new product. There aren’t many media that allow for so much scaling while keeping the message content personalized.
