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Eric Siu and Neil Patel break down cold email tactics: keep it short and personalized, lead with value not a pitch, ask questions instead of pushing for immediate commitments. They show how customized templates helped ClickFlow land customers.
Eric Siu and Neil Patel break down cold email tactics: keep it short and personalized, lead with value not a pitch, ask questions instead of pushing for immediate commitments. They show how customized templates helped ClickFlow land customers.
Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Su, and I'm Neil Patel. And today we are going to talk about the best way to write a cold email. So I'll start off first. I mean, I'll talk about what I like. So look, I remember when I first started emailing people, I would write novels. I would write them bricks of text, like da da da, like literally like hundreds of words. Okay, sometimes maybe even more than that. I think one time maybe I wrote like a thousand word like. Email. Okay. Like nobody's going to read your novel. Okay. So, the easiest way to do this is you make it short, sweet, to the point. Okay. And also you make it personalized in the beginning. And ideally you're talking about something that really resonates with them. Right? So, for Neil, for example, maybe Neil likes water bottles. Okay. So, Neil, I noticed that you really—
I do. Yeah.
You always bring me 2 water bottles every time we record the podcast. Look, he loves— look.
Appreciate it.
Look at this. All right. So anyway, look, he might like water bottles. So say, hey Neil, I really like— I just got these Fiji waters, whatever. I think they're delicious. I think you should try them, right? Maybe that's one way to start the conversation, icebreaker. Look, I'm giving you a terrible example right now. But my point is to personalize it in the very beginning, one sentence, and then maybe put in some kind of, maybe some kind of ask, but maybe your ask isn't that aggressive. You're not asking them to buy something immediately. Maybe you're just asking them to commit to a call, for example, or maybe just to click on this link just to check it out and go from there.
The way I like doing it is when I send off the first cold email, typically I don't make an ask. I try to just do something that's short, 1 or 2 paragraphs max, and it's something that just helps them, gives value, and it doesn't ask for anything in exchange. What I found is anytime you pitch in your first email, it's so much harder to close. A deal versus if you just help first, build a conversation, and then make your ask after.
I think what I've been trying recently is asking people a question instead of asking for something. And that does work better. Yeah.
Like, if you're also trying to sell people on something, this is a strategy that works really well. Ask people for their feedback on your product or service. And then when they get on the phone and you show them it, assuming they like it and they're like, oh, this is amazing. Well, like, You can ask them one simple thing. Well, if you think this is amazing and we want to take your feedback and continually modify our product and service to make it more customized to you, do you think your business would be interested in using it or signing up? Because they're much more involved and you've created a conversation with them, it's a lot easier to get them to say yes.
That's actually true and that's exactly what we do for ClickFlow and that's gotten us clients or customers completely cold by cold email and it literally took 2 to 3 emails and then a phone call to close them.
Yeah. And we can say the yearly revenue is in the 6 figures. Mm-hmm. And it's brand new, which is amazing and awesome. It's already fast growth and he's doing it by just sending emails that are helpful. Mm-hmm.
Look, hey, look, it's marketing school, but sometimes it's scale, it's sales school too.
And yeah, marketing and sales, they go hand in hand, right? So it's like when you're writing cold emails, you're going to see a lot of people be like, oh, you got to use this tactic and this is the best subject line. It really comes down to just being personable, helping people, getting to know them. Each person's different. You need to be short, of course, but there's not much more to it. There's not one template that's going to work for you. There's not this magic formula. The formula that really produces the most magic is customized shit that's just helping people before you make your ask. And everyone, or most people fail with emails, whether it's for link building, getting social shares, or selling, because they're making an ask in the first email versus just helping people.
Yeah, I think people are also really lazy too, to Neil's point. I mean, look, if you go find a template out there, I see so many Neil Patel templates out there just because people just literally cut and paste from what he has in a blog post. And if you can literally just take that one piece, that template, and customize 20% of it, make it your own, it becomes your own template. Then it's a completely different story. You do the same thing with any other emails you're sending out there. And because, look, people are out there all the time, they're learning great, but they don't want to take the extra step to personalize it. If you're able to do that, you're able to separate yourself from the pack. You're going to get better results and you're going to get more sales. You're going to get more customers, more leads, whatever you want to call it. And you're going to have a better time.
Cool. That's it from my end. All right.
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