How to Cold Email: I'll give you feedback!

I regularly receive terribly written cold emails. Daily.

The ease of access of sequencing tools have - in my humble opinion - ruined the cold email. So I'm hoping to bring a little bit of structure to the practice.

Personalisation is the flavour of the moment and I'm all for it, but if you're wanting to take emails from 0-to-1 then it can be hard to know what to write. So that's what I'm covering in this guide.

And if you want more help, you can email me (below) and I'll guide you through some improvements.

This isn't some covert sales pitch, I'm just a firm believer that giving comes back around!

Without further ado, here's my formula:

Subject
There are two options. Either make it look like an internal email (i.e. 're: next quarters results') or personalise it (i.e. Improved sales at whomso for Alex). Subjects are part art, part science but try not to make them about yourself or your business.

Line 1
Hey {name}

Line 2
Mention an industry specific stat, benchmark or fact that the persona you're emailing would be interested in solving. The kicker here is to aim for something that they're not aware of. As an example, "Did you know that 75% of B2B buyers surveyed in 2024 would prefer to avoid direct conversations with salespeople?" is better than "Did you know that 62% of buying decisions are made without the sellers?"

Line 3
Hook this stat to a personalised pattern-interrupt. Quote it back to them. As an example, "As the CEO of whomso, I'm sure you'd want to make sure that you can still sell to that 75%."

Line 4
Call to action. Here, you'll want to offer a barter. Too many times, sellers go for the close. Offer something softer. "Would you be interested in talking about how we can help improve X or Y, or shall I send some information over that you can check out in your own time?"

Line 5
Root for them either way. "Regardless, I hope you're tracking well for Q2 and look forward to listening to your next podcast episode." Try hard to make this as personal as possible. It shows that you're not using their story as a way to get to them - you're genuinely interested.

I've had great success with this formula. Obviously it's a bit more involved than just spamming out 100 emails a day but effort = reward.

If you're struggling with the template you have and want some feedback, as promised you can email me at alex @whom.so and I'll give you a hand.

And obviously, goes without saying that if you're struggling to keep sales moving after you get a reply then sign up for a free beta account on https://whom.so and we'll give you all the tools you need ;-)