How to Write a Cold Email Your Prospects Can’t Resist

This email landed in my inbox recently:

Subject: Good Day!

Hi, Josh,

I started following you on Twitter because I noticed that you shared (SEO guru’s) guide on (SEO technique).

I love that guide. In fact, I started offering the exact process they lay out in that guide as a service.

Your website looks great and I’ve put together (based on this guide) a plan on how to increase search traffic on your website using (SEO technique).

Here’s link to the full plan

I know you’re an expert at this, but if you don’t have time to do this for yourself. I would love to help you to implement (SEO guru’s) awesome technique to increase your search traffic.

Is this something you want?

-Jeff

If you’ve ever registered a domain name, I’m sure you’ve had the “pleasure” of getting hammered with SEO spam:

“Dear sirs, You have a great site, but I can’t help but notice that you are not showing up on front page the Search results. I can get you teh Googles your business needs to grow…”

Awful stuff. Delete on site.

Jeff’s email, on the other hand… I read it through in its entirety, and I even decided to reply to learn more about his service.

Here’s why it worked:

1.Personal touch. He addresses me like we’ve already met. Note that this isn’t Jeff’s first interaction with me—he followed me on Twitter first.

2. Relevance. Jeff tracked me down because I tweeted a link to a specific blog post, and he mentions that immediately. This tiny bit of homework opened the door for me to consider his proposal.

3. Borrowed credibility. Jeff is a new SEO consultant looking to land his first few clients, so he’s piggybacking off a popular technique that a lot of people are familiar with. This technique is one that I’m a big believer in but haven’t implemented because it’s time consuming and difficult.

4. Giving me an action to take. The Google Doc that Jeff included wasn’t specific to my site, but the way he framed it made it seem like it might be. I had to check it out to find out.

5. Opening a dialog instead of closing the sale. Instead of a limp “let me know if you’re interested” signoff, or an aggressive “let’s get started now” assumptive close, Jeff asks if this service is something I want. (He already knows the answer is “yes,” because I tweeted the blog post.)

It’s amazing how far 3 minutes of research and a touch of personality will take you in reaching prospects.

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