Heating Up Your Cold Emails and Calls – Tips on How to Direct Your Audience to Your Basket

Is cold calling really still effective?

In short: yes, cold calling can be an effective technique for reaching your ideal clients. Let’s dig a bit deeper though…

In the days of social media, email and text messaging, it can be hard to see how a company can still opt for the old cold call for marketing purposes. The stats behind it are also not terribly impressive, with analysts reckoning that only 2% of all cold calls actually result in a sale. There’s also quite a negative connotation to the practice now as scam artists use the tried and tested format to trick unsuspecting people into paying over money for nothing.

So, why do entrepreneurs, startups and well-established companies still persist with this method? Despite the low hit rate, many business analysts still believe that it is one of the most effective methods of gaining very loyal customers – if done right. However, that is the key here. Cold calling is an artform that takes practice, preparation and patience.

It’s all about who is doing the cold calling – the salesperson needs to at least be able to act like they are passionate about the product/service and the potential customer. Next up is doing the research – there’s no point in just randomly calling the next number on a list that’s been bought for you. Look at the list, find out who these people are and make sure they’re part of your target market before you pick up the phone.

Finally, the bounce rate on cold calls is real and it’s very difficult to get that percentage up from two. A good cold caller will be able to keep going with enthusiasm even after 100 “no thank you” – some firm, some polite, and some probably very rude.

Should you be sending unsolicited emails in light of data protection regulations?

While a cold email might seem less invasive to a potential client that you haven’t contacted before, it could actually be a lot worse in the eyes of the law. This is thanks to the strict regulations that are coming into play globally about data protection. These laws relate to how personal information of people is collected and what it is legally being used for. If you do not have permission to use a person’s email address, sending them an email is against the law in many countries around the world.

It’s important to make a distinction between an illegal email (often referred to as spam) and a cold email (also referred to as an unsolicited email to a potential lead). Now, spam is not actually an illegally sent email by the pure definition of the word.

Essentially, an unsolicited message is spam if the recipient’s personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients. Therefore, no marketer or salesperson should ever be trying to send spam as it just isn’t worth your time from a business perspective.

The real question is actually what constitutes a legal mail in terms of data protection regulations. The law tends to side with the fact that it is not considered illegal to send emails to business contacts you have never communicated with, or even those you don’t know. However, it is essential that the cold email honors certain elements, such as:

● The subject line is clear and doesn’t deceive the reader in any way.

● There is an obvious and simple way to opt-out of receiving more emails in the future.

● The email clearly states who is sending it and what the reason for sending it is.

Now that we know we can send cold emails legally, the question of “should we” still remains. The results of a cold email campaign can vary wildly. It all depends – as shown above in the cold calling section – on how the email is phrased and designed, and who it is sent to. If the database of email addresses is segmented correctly according to your target market, and the message sent to each demographic suits them specifically, you can see an incredibly high open and reply rate. There are a lot of cold email outreach tips out there that will help you improve your campaigns, generate leads, sales calls and build relationships.