How to write cold emails and LinkedIn inMails that get responses

All right. So today we're going to talk about how to write cold emails that get responses. So in the context of this one, I'm going to talk about emails and also InMails as well, which is where you hit people up through LinkedIn. So before we start, if you enjoy videos like this on marketing, hit the bell button and the subscribe button, subscribe button first, then the bell button, and we'll go from there. All right. So here is what I'm looking at. Uh, LinkedIn actually just did a report. And so I'm using LinkedIn because these numbers are very similar to what I've experienced through email. And this is a report that just came out. So you can see here, it says shorter InMails get above average response rates. So you can see if it's 200 to 400 characters, 16%, and then 400 to 600, about 9%, and it goes down from there, right? Because logic is, I mean, look, if you're writing really long emails or InMails, if you have a lot of text, it's a wall and it's just, it's very overwhelming and people are busy. They don't want to read something that's an essay from someone that they just they don't know, right? What I try to do instead is I try to go for something that is maybe— could be one sentence or maybe 3, 4 sentences or so. Or if I'm sending a DM to somebody, if I want something, I want it to be in the first 4 to 5 words because that's what they can see in the DM, right? Like basically what I'm asking for there. And you want to get right to the point because people are busy. If you can get to the point, maybe you'll get their attention a lot faster because you get that one shot right there, right? So you decide what to do with it. Okay, as we go down here, you can see these are a couple examples over here just to visualize, but you know, personalization obviously helps quite a bit too. So you can see here it says, hi Jocelyn, as soon as I saw the Ogilvy, David Ogilvy quote on your profile, I knew I had to get in touch. We actually have the same quote framed in our office. I think that's a great way to start off a conversation when you lead with a little bit of personalization. So obviously the name first, getting that right is important, but obviously something that, that, that speaks to them right now. If you're talking about a David Ogilvy quote on my profile that I posted, I know that you've at least looked into me a little bit. So I'm a little more interested in you now because you're a little interested in me, right? It's kind of reciprocity. And so I'm currently building out a paid media team. I think you'd be a great fit. Do you have some time to talk next week for a quick call to talk about the role? And you know, of course the wise words of Mr. Ogilvy. So even personalization at the end as well. Look, it gets to the point. There's a little bit of, hey, I've done some research on you. I think it's great. It's a great ask. What I would change maybe if I'm trying to recruit somebody is I'll say, hey, Jocelyn, we're actually looking for someone to join our paid media team. Would you happen to know of anyone? Instead of getting on the phone, right? You know, your mileage may vary. I like doing that because they might have someone in mind or they might volunteer themselves. In that case, then I'll say, hey, you know, let's go ahead and get on the phone, right? That way I kind of get the best of both worlds. I think if I just say, hey, you know, you know, we think you'd be a great fit, they might just say, hey, not interested, right? So I like to kind of COVID my bases with, with my response at least, right? This one I don't like as much. So I think the first one personalization is great. Hi, Pat, I'm blown away by your sales skills at T-Mobile. Coincidentally, that's where I started working after college too. When you say something like that, it sounds a little insincere. So you're saying you're blown away by my sales skills, but what are you talking about? You don't know how I've performed. How do you know about my sales? It sounds templated. And so for me, when I read that personalization, it sounds a little more robotic. And so maybe I'm not so interested at that point. So make sure your personalization is actually something that is genuine and something that people don't see through. That's what I would say. So keep it short, keep it sweet, add the personalization. That's going to help with your response rates. In general, what I like for response rates is about 10% or so, whether it's negative or positive, that's totally fine. And you can see 90% of all InMails. So this is for LinkedIn are above 400 characters because people haven't thought about how to do it. People haven't thought about how people tend to behave. Right. And so you have to be that 10% of people that actually thinks about it. Okay. Which is why you're watching this video right now. And it doesn't matter what day you really send an email, just avoid Saturdays. I find this to generally be true. Generally we go for, You know, Tuesdays, Mondays, we try to go for maybe, you know, starting at 10 AM local for their time. Mondays, Tuesdays are pretty good. But, you know, generally throughout the week is pretty good too. But you can see Saturday is just huge drop-off, right? For obvious reasons. And I generally don't hit people up on Sundays, but if it's an entrepreneur, when I try to reach out to them on a Sunday, they'll typically respond. So just, you got to think about who you're hitting up. But I think this is fine, right? Monday to Thursday to get the best response rate makes sense. Cause Friday, you know, people are checking out already Saturday, fully checked out. Sunday still kind of checked out, right? Middle of the week is the most popular time to send emails. Fine. And InMails sent individually performed nearly 20% better than InMails sent in bulk. So again, these are through LinkedIn, right? Which is their— we'll call it their email. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense because when you're reaching out to someone individually, you're going to put a lot more care into that message versus when you use a big sales enablement tool where you're bulk sending, it's not as personalized. So your response rate is not going to be as good. You're going for more volume. And you might go for more numbers that way. But look, if you're reaching out to 10, 20, 30 really qualified people per day, you're going to get something better than that, right? To show that you put a little more time into each one is going to go a long way. So that's what I would say. Emails written without a template perform nearly 20% better than templated emails. Now that makes sense. But what I would say, the caveat here is you can use a template, but just make it super simple. 2 to 3 sentences and you're good. It's hard for people to see that it's a template at that point. And what you would do is maybe you make the first sentence a non-template. You make that one custom and then the rest of it is templated. And then that's considered not really a template, right? You're kind of using a template, but not really using a template, but you're getting the time savings and you're also personalizing at the same time. So that's what I would say to that. Yeah. I think that the key takeaways here at the very end, keep your emails or your InMails short. Love that. Don't send on a Saturday, write and send these emails or InMails individually and then target open candidates. Not really relevant here because We're talking about emails as well. Okay, so let me know what you think I might have missed in the comments below, and don't forget to check out the next video over there and hit the subscribe and the bell button if you enjoyed this video, and we'll catch you later.