Cold Email Outreach Guide (incl. Tools & Templates)

When done right, having a good cold email outreach strategy is a great way to generate new leads. This way, you can reach many potential customers and generate tons of qualified leads at a very low cost.

However, most people avoid it thinking it’ll be spam. Other people do it and end up with terrible ROI because of a failed strategy. After all, with the average worker receiving 121 emails per day, avoiding their spam folder is not enough. If you want results, you need to get them to open your cold email and engage with it.

So, is cold emailing spam? How can you create your own effective cold email outreach campaign?

In the following article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about cold emails.

Table of Contents

1. What Is a Cold Email?
2. Coming Up With an Ideal Customer Persona
3. Finding Your Prospect’s Email Address
4. Segmenting To Make Your Email Relevant
5. Building Rapport Before You Reach Out
6. Writing a Cold Email: 
The REPLY Method
7. The Art of the Cold Email Subject Line
8. Mastering Cold Email Intro Lines
9. Personalizing Your Cold Email
10. Improving Your Email Deliverability
11. Setting up a Second Domain for Your Cold Emails
12. Automating Your Cold Email Campaign
13. Email automation tools to use
14. Sending Follow Up Emails
15. A/B Testing to Improve Your Campaigns
16. Common Mistakes People Make With Cold Email
17. 10+ Cold Emails That Actually Work
18. Conclusion

What Is a Cold Email?

Before we discuss how to kickstart your cold email campaign, let’s first define the term “cold email”.

This is fairly straightforward: a cold email is an email that you send to a prospect or lead that you haven’t previously communicated with.

You know how some companies do cold calling? A cold email is essentially the same thing – it’s just that you’re reaching out via an email (instead of over the phone).

Now, you might be wondering… do cold emails count as spam? Is it even a good idea to cold email prospects?

You’ll be glad to hear that cold emails are not spam. The most significant difference is that spammers send the same unpersonalized email to thousands or tens of thousands of people. However, with cold emails, you’re customizing your emails to the specific prospects you’re trying to reach out to.

That said, it’s possible for cold emails to get trapped by spam filters. We’ll address this in a later chapter, and teach you some tips and tricks to ensure that the email deliverability of your cold outreach is high (and that your emails don’t get flagged as spam).

For now, let’s move on to Chapter 1.1, where we discuss the CAN-Spam Act, and teach you how to craft cold emails that are compliant with it.