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14 Cold Email Templates to Skyrocket Your Pipeline

Your prospects are overwhelmed.

Think about it: 

All those cold calls. All those boring, reused cold email templates. And the same generic connection requests on LinkedIn.

Every. Single. Day.

No wonder 80% of prospects prefer to be contacted via email! (Rain Group)

But how do you stand out amongst the masses vying for the same prospect’s attention?

With a winning cold call email template, of course!

This article shares the best B2B sales email templates to get you noticed in the most cluttered inboxes.

Plus, we’ve thrown in a bonus section on creating your own, with tips from Kluster.

What is a cold email template? 

A cold email template helps you build a connection with a potential customer when reaching out for the first time through cold emailing.

As you’ve never met your potential customer before, it’s a great way to get in touch for the first time and start building a relationship. 

Cold email examples that get responses

We asked our sales team for their best cold email campaigns, and they gave us 14 templates that get responses.

Scroll 👇 to get them (or use the menu to jump to the exact template you want).

Top tip: Always personalise a generic template for your industry!

1. The cold introduction email

First things first, introduce yourself!

No one likes a random cold sales email landing in their inbox with no explanation of why they’re being contacted or by whom.

The trick to introductory emails?

Explain why you’re connecting and what your company does in two sentences or less.

Include a link to your site; it’s a nice touch because prospective clients can look at your product without feeling pressured into buying it.

Finally, ending with a question rather than a meeting request invites conversation rather than immediately pushing for a sale. This normally results in a positive response. 

2. The attention-grabber email

A classic formula for cold outreach email templates is hooking your prospect with the first line.

This is called the AIDA technique, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.

To do it well, your first line should grab a potential prospect’s attention. You can use any sort of hook here - ask a question, mention a recent event or success your prospect achieved or add a bit of humour.

Whatever you do, your first cold email line should engage your prospects enough that they continue reading to the next line. Here, you’ll entice them further with an interesting fact, link to additional resources that add value, or social proof of how you’ve helped others.

After you’ve intrigued them, build desire. Make them want to achieve the same results as your best customers, and then ask if they are free for a quick 10-minute call or a meeting to discuss.

Remember to follow cold call best practices when you ring them!

3. The competitor name-drop email

Sometimes, all it takes is a name-drop to get cold prospects interested. Whether it’s a fantastic client or a competitor depends on your cold email strategy.

If you know a prospect is using or demoing a competitor’s product, they might be interested in trying yours, too.

All it takes is a cold prospecting email template that highlights a product’s main selling points, done in a way that showcases why yours is better.

Here’s an example of a cold prospect email template:

4. The follow-up cold email template

Sent two or three emails in your sales cadence but haven’t received a response?

Then use a cold email follow-up template like this:

You want to be direct but still encourage your prospect to respond. Consider the information you’ve already sent. Have you left anything important out?

Sometimes, all it takes is pricing or a link to a case study, blog post, podcast, or ungated whitepaper to get a prospect interested.

Sometimes, they’re just busy and haven’t gotten a chance to reply, so the added value will be appreciated.

Just be sure to keep it short. If they have intentionally ignored your emails, you don’t want to bore a prospect or annoy one further with a long-winded sales follow-up.

5. The thank you email

This email template is to say thank you to a prospect after they downloaded gated content or attended a webinar.

The goal is to nurture the lead as they progress through your sales funnel. You don’t want to annoy them with an essay listing all the features that make your B2B company the best.

Rather, get straight to the point - say thank you and offer them another piece of content they might find valuable.

End this sales email template by asking if they’d like more insights like the ones you’ve just sent.

6. The solution to a problem email

Every prospective company has pain points that need resolution.

That’s why the PAS cold email template is always a winner! PAS stands for Problem, Agitate, Solve.

Follow these steps:

  • Start by highlighting your prospects’ largest pain point. In the cold email template above, the pain point is not being able to accurately report on how B2B marketing is bringing in leads.
  • Follow this sentence by reinforcing why their problem is so frustrating.
  • Then, explain how your product is the solution.

7. Is this the right person? 

At some point, you may have to ask yourself, “Is it something I said?” especially if your cold email outreach isn’t getting a response.

Or maybe you’ve just been emailing the wrong person. These mistakes happen.

Here’s an example of a cold email template you can use to double-check if you’re speaking to the right person:

8. The freebie email

No matter what industry you work in, potential clients love a freebie.

It doesn’t necessarily need to be your product. Freebies can include anything from an ungated eBook to a discount code or a coffee voucher - just as long as the sentiment is there.

Don’t be scared to get creative with your version of this cold prospecting email template.

This one is short and sweet, but you can go the extra mile by creating an interactive email. Use Quicktools by Picsart, try adding a humorous GIF or an emoji to catch their eyes

Top tip:

Never use the word “free” in your email or subject line! Spam filters will pick it up. Instead, use a synonym like complementary or on the house.

9. The flex email

If you’ve been able to help a potential client achieve a massive ROI in the past, of course, you’ll want to shout it from the rooftops.

While that option might be a little frowned upon, sharing this information with a potential customer isn’t.

Put together a groundbreaking case study and let your product or service speak for itself with a cold email marketing template like this one:

10. The knowledge-sharing email

Another fantastic cold email example is the knowledge-sharing template.

Like the freebies template above, this cold email enters prospects into a nurture campaign by sharing valuable resources and product features rather than pushing a meeting or sale.

It goes like this:

11. The referral email

According to Signpost.com, 65% of new business opportunities come from referrals and recommendations.

When you learn someone has referred your product or service to a friend or colleague, you can use this sales introduction email template to reach out to them.

Moreover, the email mentions a mutual connection, so they’ll be happier to respond.

12. The LinkedIn connection email

While InMail isn’t exactly a traditional form of email, it’s still worth utilising for B2B prospecting.

We’ve found that short, direct messages are the best, like this LinkedIn messaging template:


13. The email with a video 

Sometimes, the best cold email template doesn’t include much text. In fact, some only include an opening line and a personalised video.

This tactic works because it’s unexpected and hyper-personal for your ideal customer.

14. The break-up email

All your hard work has been for nothing! It’s time to break up 💔

But you can still end on a good note while asking for a small favour, like asking them to subscribe to your B2B sales podcast or giving you a follow on social media.

In this cold call email template, we used humour and emojis to close off a cold email campaign that wasn’t resulting in a conversion.

How do you write your own winning cold email template?

When it comes to creating your own email cadence templates, it’s vital you follow these seven key steps courtesy of Kluster:

1. Research
2. Subject line
3. First two sentences
4. Value proposition
5. Social proof
6. Call to action
7. P.S.

1. Research 

Sales cold email templates require in-depth research. There’s no spraying and praying if you want to generate hot leads

Start by researching three avenues: 

  • Business Personal – Get on your lead or prospect’s LinkedIn. What does their bio say, and what do they focus on? Take a snippet from there. It will add personalisation to your cold email outreach.
  • Business Business – What’s happened to your prospect’s company recently that you can use to tailor your cold email? Revenue growth news, acquisitions, and B2B recruitment will all work.
  • Personalised emails – This is the most important part. Let’s not forget we’re selling to humans, after all. Check their social media profiles, like LinkedIn and Twitter. What hobbies do they have that you can use to add a truly personal touch? Perhaps they’ve written or posted about something very specific recently.

2. Subject line

You’ve got to get this cold calling email opened, and your choice of email subject line will be your ‘open sesame.’

Here, you have a chance to get creative and really grab attention. It’s also where you should use the “personalised emails” part of your research.

Consider the following formulas when writing subject lines for sales emails:

  • One-word subject lines lead to higher response rates.
  • Your subject line can double as a CTA, directing the prospect to take a specific action.
  • Humorous subject lines are an excellent way to engage a prospect and get them to open your cold email.
  • Ambiguous subject lines create intrigue, resulting in higher open rates.

3. First two sentences

When your email pops up in a prospect’s inbox, they only see the subject line and the first five to ten words. That’s it!

So, it makes sense that the email subject line and the first five to ten words are the most important parts of your cold sales email template.

Why?

Because it’s where you’ll make your first impression.

For a start, rule out “I hope you’re well...” or “I’m getting in touch because...”

That’s no different from any other cold email template.

Instead, return to your research and grab the “Business Personal” information you gathered. Use this information to form your first sentence.

This way, you’re starting to create a hyper-personal and different email body from what your prospect is likely to receive elsewhere.

Your second sentence should use your “Business Business” research to hit the nail.

Once you’ve followed these steps, your sales email template should look something like this:

Using this tactic, you’ll have started to create a very compelling cold email.

The subject line is personal, the first sentence has taken an interest in their working life, and you’ve demonstrated a background knowledge of their company’s direction.

4. Value proposition

The next section of your email template is where you inform your prospect of what they need to do. This part needs to be concise and encourage them to keep reading.

There are typically two angles here:

An example is:

Note the appeal to the “Business Business” and “Business Personal” in this value prop message.

5. Social proof

Next, you need to offer solid evidence that you can do what you say quickly and with impact. Social proof enables you to use the “customer voice” to gain credibility.

Ideally, adding a quote or statistic to your cold sales email should do it. Stats give credibility, but people don’t always remember them. They remember the human or the story, and they remember it more so if it’s credible and believable.

Here’s an example:

6. Call to action

We’ve nearly crafted the perfect cold email example, but a couple of crucial steps remain.

The first is working out how on earth you will get them to reply.

Again, you have to be different here. If you go for the usual “When do you have 5 minutes to speak?” you’ve essentially undone all the good work by conforming to the average again, and that’s not what you want!

Here’s an idea we’ll add to the sales email template:

The above is interesting for a couple of reasons. While you’ll likely NOT get a 51.4% reply rate, it sounds good, doesn’t it?

In fact, it sounds so good, yet believable; there’s an argument to suggest one would feel compelled to reply because their peers are more likely to have than not.

Secondly, it’s an incredibly different approach and, again, stands out amongst the usual CTAs.

You could also try something like:

Again, it’s a refreshing approach, and although we’re suggesting a meeting fairly soon, your cold prospect still has the power of choice to pick a convenient time between the two days.

The key to this is experimentation and AB testing:

  • Write two versions of each cold email template.
  • Send them to two segments on your prospecting list to see which gets the best response.

7. P.S.

Time to bring this email full circle, landing right back at the subject line and leaving your prospect with that fuzzy feeling.

Ideally, this is your chance to make your prospects feel special, liked, revered, and generally good about themselves.

And it’s that good feeling, when matched with all your craft and attention thus far, that gives us a whopping great chance of a reply and increased conversion rates.

Try something like:

In the end, your cold call email template should read as follows:

Hopefully, this cold email template will help you fight for supremacy in your prospect’s inbox.

Remember to:

  • Keep it punchy and personalised.
  • Include social proof.
  • Make it relevant to their business.
  • Drop in a neat call to action.
  • Show them love!

⚠️ PS. Can’t reach your customer via a cold email template or cold call? These ten voicemail scripts might help.

More responses, less churn with Cognism

Get more responses to your cold email templates with GDPR-compliant, quality sales and marketing data!

Cognism can help you build ideal-fit audiences enriched with validated B2B emails.

So, if you’re ready to move leads through your sales cycle faster than ever, simply click 👇 to book a demo.

Lower your bounce rate with Cognism's verified emails. Click to book a demo.

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