How To Create a Sales Cold Email Sequence To Boost Conversions?

There is no denying cold emailing is one of the best sales outreach methods. And it's not just SDRs who say this. Studies show that email not only earns an impressive $36 ROI for every dollar spent, but remains the preferred communication channel of an astounding 80% of consumers. 

However, an often-forgotten aspect of cold emailing is the cold email sequence. You see, cold emailing is an ongoing activity for each prospect instead of a one-time event. One that helps you nudge your prospect further down the sales funnel.

If you’re wondering what cold email sequence is, this article is for you. 

If you already have a cold email sequence up and running, this article is for you. 

After all, nobody ever said, “I wish I hadn’t double-checked!”

Here, we discuss everything there is to creating a great cold email sequence.

What Is a Cold Email Sequence?

A cold email sequence is a chain of cold emails sent to prospects as part of a cold email campaign. It can be understood as a consistent and strategic cold outreach effort that leverages emails to help engage, nurture, and ultimately convert prospects into paying customers.

An important point to note is that a cold email sequence doesn’t consist of random cold emails. It consists of multiple strategically scheduled cold emails that tie together to build a relationship with prospects. 

Cold email sequences are an essential part of a cold email campaign. 

Not convinced? Let’s give it another shot.

Why Should We Create a Cold Email Sequence?

You send one cold email to a prospect and receive no response. Maybe they’re just not interested. It's probably best to cut your losses and move on, right? 

Wrong! Stopping at one cold email is like getting behind the wheel but refusing to hit the accelerator. 

Following up and re-engaging your prospect is key. It lets them know you’re serious about their business and are willing to go the extra mile to deliver on promises. In other words, it helps convince them of your credibility. 

Let’s study some numbers. Backlinko finds that only 8.5% of outreach emails get a response, while the vast majority of outreach messages are ignored.   

Had the response rates been somewhere close to the nineties, we’d agree there was no point in badgering your prospect.

But it’s not, so it only makes sense for you to try a couple of more times before calling the time of death. And an effective email sequence helps you make your attempts to reconnect predictable and worthwhile.

Qualities of a High-Converting Cold Email Sequence

Coming to the real deal: What makes an effective cold email sequence? Here are 3 essential qualities your cold email sequence must possess to help drive conversions:

1. Engages Prospects

A cold email sequence helps you build a relationship of trust with your prospect. Unlike a single cold email, a sequence allows you to learn more about your prospect and build a rapport that puts you on a better footing to sell to them. 

Granted, you’re contacting them to make a sale. But ultimately, you’re dealing with people. And if you want to drive your conversion rate, it's important you convince them they’re not just a name on a checklist. 

With a cold email sequence, you engage with them repeatedly. Through this process, you build their curiosity in your offering, put their doubts to rest, and share valuable content and insight before expecting them to hit the ‘purchase’ button. 

Making a sale through cold outreach is a process that requires a careful and constant connection with your prospects. And a well-crafted cold email sequence helps you do just that. 

2. Ensures a Well-Structured Approach

A sales email sequence doesn’t consist of a bunch of random emails sent one after the other. Instead, it’s a carefully structured process, with each email tying to the previous one and aligning with your sales process. 

And so, it’s essential to create a well-planned cold email sequence that nudges your prospect further down the sales funnel, offering all necessary information and addressing any hesitations they might have. 

It is for the same reason that there is no specific number of cold emails that your sequence steps must have. 

For instance, Sam Holeman, an SDR who hit 150% quota, usually sends 4 emails per potential prospect, including the final email. But another top-performing SDR, Asatta Leggett, sends as many as 12 cold emails to contacts on a prospect list over a period of 2 months.

So, a well-structured cold email follow-up sequence for you will be one that factors in your target audience and your company’s sales process. 

3. Nurtures Prospects

You can’t jump into making a sale head first. You need to ease into it with your prospect. After all, if a random stranger comes knocking at your door and tells you that the product they’re selling is what you need, what are the chances you’ll invite them into your home and sign the check?

It's important to respect your prospect’s decision-making process and start by breaking the ice first. Once you’ve established a rapport with them and heard them out, they’ll be more inclined to hear you out, increasing your chances of making the sale. 

And so, one of the most defining qualities of a stellar cold email outreach sequence is being able to nurture the prospect gently down the sales funnel.

This means taking a step-by-step approach when connecting with your prospect. From introducing yourself and your solution and offering valuable content to scheduling a product demo, it’s all part of the cold email sequence.

Create an Ideal Cold Email Sequence in 7 Steps

For a B2B cold email sequence, an important point to remember is that your sales reps are ultimately dealing with humans, not organizations or robots. And so, coming up with the best cold email sequence that checks all the boxes can seem overwhelming. 

Steve Schmidt, CEO of Magnetic, says: “The hardest part of writing a sequence is taking the time to do it correctly.”

But as is true for most things, breaking it down into actionable steps is the way to go about your cold email sequence, too. And we’re here to provide the roadmap. Here are 7 steps to help you make your ideal cold email sequence:

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience is key to any form of sales outreach. And so, the very first step in creating the best cold email sequence is defining your target audience. 

And this doesn’t simply mean naming them, but rather defining them. The latter requires you to answer key questions. 

• What Problems Does Your Product Solve?

Jot down what your product offers and why your cold lead would need it. Answering this question helps you get a better understanding of those who might be interested in your product. And by extension, help you sell to them better.

• Who Are Facing These Problems?

Answering this question entails developing an eligibility criterion of sorts. Specify factors of your qualified leads, such as geographical location, budget requirements, and team/organization size.

For instance, let’s say your product is a solution that automates the sales outreach process. Simply saying your target audience is B2B SaaS companies doesn’t cut it. 

You need to specify what companies are facing the exact problems your product solves and their characteristics.

• Are They Looking to Solve These Problems?

Are there similar products in the market that your potential customers who fit your ideal customer profile are already using? Are they happy with your competitors? If your product is unique, are your prospects aware of your product? What could be holding them back from purchasing it?

Answering these questions will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of who your cold emails are addressed to, what their average decision-making time is, customer testimonials, and most importantly, what their motivations, goals, and pain points are. Remember to take a look at previous customer testimonials as well.

Get this sorted, and you’re safely done with the first step in making killer cold email sequence steps.

2. Set Goals for Your Cold Email Follow-up Sequence

Why are you creating a cold engagement email sequence in the first place? Do you want to drive sales? Generate leads?

Determining an aim for your cold email sequence helps you ensure all decisions you take are consistent in achieving that goal. Not only that, it can help you set the right metrics to measure the success of your cold email sequence. 

A great way to ensure you’re sticking to the overall goal is to make it measurable. For instance, let’s say your objective is to drive sales. Making it measurable would mean specifying the conversion rate you want to achieve through the cold email sequence during the average sales cycle.

Further, specifying smaller, more achievable objectives, such as a better cold email response rate through the sequence cycle, will allow you to take stock of how effective the sequence is and whether you need to take a second look at it. 

3. Fix the Duration of the Sequence and the Number of Emails

For the next step, you need to decide how long your cold email sequence will be, both in terms of the number of emails and the time duration. This differs based on product, target audience, budget, and buyer journey. 

And so, to fix the duration for your cold email sequence, you need to factor these in. 

Let’s take the perspective of another top-performing rep, Joel Thomas. Joel maintains a 5-email cold email sequence, with the first one highly customized, the second one concentrating on why his product is relevant to the prospect, and subsequent emails sharing other relevant but not product-related information.

Joel finds that while his first cold email step gets the maximum responses, his third and fourth ones also receive replies. 

As we discussed previously, Asatta Leggett sends 12 emails over 2 months as part of her cold email sequence. Whether you choose to send 5, 12, or 15 requires you to study what your buyer journey looks like. 

4. Integrate Email Sequence With Buyer's Journey

Where your prospect is in their buying journey matters considerably when it comes to creating the ideal cold email sequence. You need to know exactly where they are to understand how best to pitch to them and, consequently, what your cold email sequence should look like. 

To do this, you need to learn whether your potential customer is:

• Unaware: your prospect doesn’t recognize the problem your product aims to solve.
• Pain-aware: your prospect recognizes the problem your product aims to solve.
• Solution-aware: your prospect knows how to solve the problem they’re facing.
• Simply aware: your prospect might be aware of the solution but is not actively looking for one. 

After this, you need to ascertain how much of an effort it will take to nudge them down the sales funnel. For instance, let’s say your prospect is pain-aware, what priority does looking for a solution have for them? Would a single touch do, or would they require multiple ones to move to the next solution-aware stage?

Based on these questions, you’ll be able to create a cold email sequence that drives conversion rates.

5. Write the Email Content for the Sequence

Your cold email content is key to the success of your cold email sequence. Each cold email in the sequence must be optimized to ensure your prospect remains hooked as you nudge them further down the sales funnel. 

How? By ensuring every cold email in the sequence clears the following checklist:

• Optimized Cold Email Subject Lines

The easiest way to create the perfect cold email subject line is to keep Chase Dimond’s point in mind, 

“The subject line doesn’t sell the product, it sells the open.”

Your cold email subject line must coax the prospect to open your email. To do this, keep your subject lines short, personalized, relevant, and free of clickbait. It should inform the prospect what your email is about without giving too much away or sounding too sales-y. 

Some examples of winning subject lines include: Looking to boost {specific task} ROI?, Exciting opportunity {prospect’s name}, or {competitor name} is using this, are you?

• Personalized and Relevant Content

Your prospect likely gets enough cold emails for them to turn a blind eye to your message. And so, how do you convince them you’re different? Or make them notice you? By doing your homework and personalizing the cold email. 

This means addressing them by name, mentioning their company, and adding information to your email body that makes them feel you wrote the email only for them. 

• Includes a Value Proposition

This means you need to answer the WIIFT (what’s in it for them) in your initial email. Remember, you’re the one contacting them. You might know your product will help them. But you still need to convince them why they should listen to you. And so, you need to specify what you’re bringing to the table before asking them to give you time. 

• Is Short and Sweet

Your cold emails needn’t be a thesis. Research finds that 41.6% of email account holders check their email on their phone. This means a lot of scrolling for a long-winded cold email step. So, keep your email content within 100-150 words and to the point.

Your prospect will appreciate a concise message over multiple scrolls on their phones any day!     

• Ends With a Clear CTA

Lastly, your cold email must end with a clear call-to-action (CTA). This is where the nudging gets a little literal. Let your prospect know what’s the next course of action. Should they respond to your email? Sign-up for something? Or visit your website? Specify it in your cold email. 

6. Automate Your Sequence With Cold Email Software 

Once you have your cold email sequence in place and your cold email content taken care of, it’s time to put everything in motion. 

This means automating your sequence with cold email software. This ensures your prospects receive periodic emails as per your sequence without any interruption. While you can do this manually as well, integrating cold email sequence automation is a better option. This is because they ensure your cold email sequence continues running in a smooth cycle. 

Such solutions save SDRs time and effort by not only sending out timely emails but also tracking responses and open rates. 

This way, they can leave the monotonous task of scheduling cold emails to the software and focus on tasks requiring their particular expertise. 

7. Test Your Cold Email Outreach Sequence

Testing the effectiveness of your cold email sequence is essential to make it really count. 

And to do this, you need to conduct a simple A/B test on your cold email. Also known as split testing, it allows you to analyze two or more versions of the same email to identify which performs better against specified metrics such as response rate, open rate, click rate, etc. 

For instance, you might have one email ending with ‘here’s your webinar invite’ and another with ‘lastly, {prospect}, here’s your exclusive webinar invite.’ Do you know which one is better? Or the one that will likely get better engagement? Neither do we! 

And leaving something to chance after putting in all the work is just not a good idea. 

So, run an A/B test, and you’ll know which one makes it to your final cold email sequence. What’s more, a cold email tool can help you with this, too. 

4 Best Cold Email Sequence Templates

Now that you know what it takes to create a cold email sequence and how to go about it, how about we take a look at some ready-made Cold email templates that get the ball rolling? Here, we share 4 cold email templates that are sure to help you drive conversion rates. 

1. Introduction Email

Subject Line: Hi [prospect], great LinkedIn post!

Hi [prospect’s name],

I really enjoyed your LinkedIn post on [post topic] the other day and wanted to introduce myself and see if you could spare a minute to chat. I’m [your name] from [your company]. I noticed you work at [prospect company] and was wondering how you’re addressing [specific pain point]. 

Please let me know a suitable time to connect to discuss this. I promise I won’t talk your ear off!

Have a great day, 

[Your name]
[Your company]

Subject Line: [Prospect company] + [your solution] = [benefit]

Hi [prospect’s name],

Hope you’re doing well. I just wanted to follow up on my last email and talk about how [solution] can help you address [specific pain point] effectively. 

We’ve seen success with [competitor] and are confident it can help you tackle [specific pain point] too.

I’d be glad to walk you through [solution] and expand more on this. Please let me know when I can schedule a call this week.

Have a great day!

[Your name]
[Your company]

Subject Line: [Competitor] just fixed [pain point]

Hi [prospect’s name],

I thought I’d check in again to take my previous email forward and share how [solution] can help you solve [specific pain point].

[Competitor] recently integrated it and has already seen an X% rise in [business metric], effectively tackling [specific pain point]. I believe [solution] can achieve this for [prospect company]  too.

We also have a great case study on this. If you’d be interested, I’ll be most happy to share it with you. Let me know, and it’ll be in your inbox in the next 48 hours.

Have a great day!

[Your name]
[Your company]

4. Final Follow-up Email

Subject Line: [Prospect’s name], what would change your mind?

Hi [prospect’s name],

It’s been a while, and I thought I’d follow up one last time before I throw my hat in the ring. [Solution] has helped many companies including [Competitor 1] and [Competitor 2] improve productivity and address [pain point].

And I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t stress once again that [solution] can do the same for you. 

If you’re hesitant and have questions, just say the word. I’d be happy to schedule a call this week to discuss anything you have in mind about [solution]. 

Alternatively, if you’re just not interested at the moment, I understand. However, if your situation changes, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Have a great day!

[Your name]
[Your company]

A successful cold email campaign requires a strategic cold email sequence that helps engage and nurture your prospects further down the sales funnel. However, curating personalized follow-up email sequences for each prospect can be challenging, especially considering the number of prospects is rarely limited to how many you can count on a single hand.

At such times, SDRs can turn to sales engagement tools such as Klenty. It allows you to schedule, send, and track cold emails and their follow-ups. Further, its personalization abilities empower SDRs to customize their cold email sequence for each prospect, thus driving open rates and conversion rates. 

Book a demo now to see how Klenty helps you bring in the numbers you deserve for your cold email campaigns!

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