I posted on my Twitter at the beginning of December about whether people would be interested in a blog post on how to write cold emails and messages and some appeared keen so here it is! It’s an incredibly long post so you might want to get a drink and some snacks...
The Bare Necessities
Electronic media, now more commonly known as email, is the method of exchanging messages between people. Social media is any tool or service that uses the internet to facilitate conversations. They can be argued as being both forms of communication, networking and marketing. Emails can be accessed and written through a web browser (the main two being Microsoft and Google) or through a desktop or mobile application making them Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) emails – the availability to manage your mailboxes from various multiple devices. As I have an Apple IPhone and Mac laptop, I can use the Mail app on both to read and write my emails.
Whilst email came first (started in limited use in the 1960s and then rolled out to all in the 1970s; credibly invented by Ray Tomlinson), there could be an argument that social media and email (and even messaging apps as well) are interlinked in that they are forms of personal communication mediums where you can talk to individuals back and forth. Though it may not be considered social media and is definitely not as entertaining, email is still very useful within a professional career. If you want to know more about social media and how I use it, I wrote a blog post on that which you can read here (and I’m planning on writing more on it in the future).
Warm versus Cold
One of the things I talked about in my blog post on social media and in a blog post on the language that was (and is still being) used during the lockdowns (which you can read here) was binaries. Although I myself have a slightly negative reaction to them as things, people and feelings are not one or the other but a little bit of both, there is a binary in the type of contact and relationship you have with others. They’re either warm or cold.
Whilst this post is particularly centered on the cold side, I’ll explain both as one can turn into the other and sometimes vice versa. Cold calling is when you contact someone who you have never met or talked to before – they are technically strangers (even those you have done research on). Whilst it is a type of selling that is usually done over the phone or face to face, it can also be done electronically. Warm contacts are those you have talked to or met before and that you have a sort-of relationship with.
The use of the word relationship is key in all of this – it’s what you are beginning to create with other professionals, whether you’ve talked to them before or not. It’s what networking is – building honest, trustworthy and open relationships with people whilst also selling yourself or your company. My boss once said to me that no business cannot survive without sales; this includes you as a person. You can do this in an authentic way and create your own brand (I wrote a post on this which you can read here). Find a way to talk about and sell yourself when you start emailing or messaging new contacts.
How I Write Them
I’ve split this into two sections as I use them a little differently as well as side by side. I find it best to use the two together when networking as you can get further by using different media in tangent than you can by just using one or the other separately.
A couple of years ago, an old mentor suggested that it might be a good idea to create some written templates for various networking situations. I thought of a bunch of situations in which I would usually network with people about and drafted messages in relation to each setting. When looking for examples of what to write as template wording, I found American career development websites such as Career Contessa and The Muse were the best in terms of giving tips and sample wording. 50 Ways to Get a Job and HubSpot also have some good networking and selling advice.
Whilst having already drafted text for networking emails is all well and good, particularly in relation to the difference between cold and warm, they are still time consuming to write as you don’t want your emails to every company and person to be the same text. Personalising towards the audience is key, whether you use a template or not. Being generic won’t get you very far – doing a bit of internet stalking is sometimes a good thing and, in the case of working out how to personalise a cold email, it helps.
Social Media
The two main mediums I use for this are Twitter and LinkedIn. I utilise Twitter to follow people and companies I find inspiring and to keep on top of what they are doing work wise (whether I know the person or not IRL is irrelevant on this network). As Mishal Husain says in her book The Skills, “people with particular expertise or knowledge [are] using the platform [Twitter] to demonstrate it and add to the understanding of others” – it’s a great place to feel connected, find easily accessible information, keep up to date with news and, if you follow lots of accounts, exposes you to a variety of opinions.
LinkedIn I use more professionally and rigorously. It’s a great platform to reach out to those professionals I have met or have had meetings with, past colleagues and people I went to or was taught by at university. It’s also a great place to discover who you know knows who aka those second connections or what Richard Bolles, in his book What Color Is Your Parachute, calls “bridge-people”. Whenever I met people face-to-face or I had informational interviews, I would always ask ‘are you on LinkedIn?’ – it’s the best place to follow up.
The Art of Following Up
What do you write to someone you’ve been given the contact details of by someone you do know or someone who you’ve now met? What do you say when people aren’t getting back to you? How do you turn the coolness to warmth? You follow up, either contacting through the same medium as you did before or a different communication mode. This is also a part of job searching, particularly when you get to the interviewing stages.
When following up with a professional individual or business, you are either doing it to increase the effectiveness of a previous message, to restate your call to action or your enthusiasm and the skills and experience that you have for a role, to gather any information or send more information or to see whether the recipient has viewed the email and what their response might be.
It’s usually good to wait between four to seven days to send this type of message. If they don’t reply to the first follow up, then wait another few days and then send a second one – if they don’t respond to that, then let them go. I’d also try to do the follow up in different formats – if the original message was by email then do the follow up on social, if the first was by social, second by email. Be pleasantly persistent and always say thank you.
My Tips (well more of them)!
Try to find actual names of people and their individual email addresses or social media accounts rather than emailing or messaging a main default address or account. DO NOT use ‘To whom it may concern’. It may even be good to write down a list of people you want to connect with and do some research on them and the company they work for.
Consider the time of day when sending – try to do it within working hours as no one reads emails or messages in the middle of the night (unless it’s from their significant other or it’s an emergency).
Is your email address/social media account username and content professional enough? You can have and create separate accounts if you want to keep your personal online worlds that you already have or you can manage and edit them to make them more professional (this may slightly depend on what industry you are/want to be in). However, it’s best to have ones that have your name in rather than having something immature – those won’t be read and replied to and recipients will probably get the giggles.
Have links to both your professional/mixed email address AND social media accounts on your CV, portfolio website, email signature and/or media kit (I wrote a blog post on media kits which you can read here and I’m planning on writing one on portfolio sites).
Keep the body text as short as you possibly can. 3-4 separate lines is plenty.
Use words that will be able to be searched within a email account or messaging system within a social media account.
Have a clear, concise and short subject line that tells the addressee what the email is about and that makes them want to read the body content.
What’s your call to action (CTA)? When asking for something, be specific. You don’t always have to ask what day or time suits them or what they think – you can suggest things.
Be helpful and add value. As Mary Portas says in her book Work Like A Woman, “you get as much, if not more, in return for what you give” – have something that will make them want to talk to you!
DO NOT expect an immediate response. Patience is key, particularly in the current climate.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog post all about cold contacting and that it is helpful to some of you in some small way. I’m not sorry that this post was way too long – there was a lot to cover but also still so much more I could have said... If you want to connect, talk about this more or say hello, drop me a message on my socials – linked in this post and at the top of all my site pages.
Beth x