The Anatomy of a Killer Email Sequence

In this oversaturated world, you get one chance to make an impression on a future customer. Every follow-up reduces your probability of a positive response. Multiple emails don't make you persistent; they make you a pest. If you want your message to be heard, make sure it's clear in your first email. 

Every other one should try to squeeze out the few stragglers who didn't bite the first time. Remember: It's not a numbers game. If you annoy people enough in your first email, you'll frustrate people off and burn your TAM. 

Sales Emails vs. Marketing Emails vs. Good Emails

Here is the first secret to good outbound: do not come off like a salesperson, and especially don't come off as a marketer. They are the last people the person on the other end of your email wants to see. Marketing is about telling vague stories, creating awareness, and building a brand around an idea. It's wordy, fluffy, and full of stuff that takes way too much time to appreciate. Sales is marketing's slightly snappier, slightly hungrier cousin. They take the stories told by marketers and create a game plan to telegram them directly into the brains of people who might buy your thing. 

Good emails should be a third category, which you might call being a "human at scale". Instead of trying to market an idea to the receiver or subtly push them into a sales pipeline, you should try to recreate the email you'd manually write after 10 minutes of research. The goal is not to execute some kind of strategy decided in a boardroom but to recreate a version of yourself that can scale and adapt to different audiences.

This is not only a better way to get the attention of potential buyers but is also a requirement oftentimes for beating spam filters on mail providers. A large part of Google's spam filter, for example, figures out what spam is by using machine learning to find emails similar to others that users have manually marked as spam. Unsolicited marketing and sales are the most likely to have been placed in this pipeline, meaning that the only way to beat the filters is not to look like them. This is also just how you should be thinking about your outbound: you should not be writing spam, so don't act like spam. 

Sequences and the Killer First Email

After the first email, the rest of the emails start to matter much less. We would like to do a follow-up sequence, separated by a couple of days, with each new email reinforcing the things we talked about in the first email. The same rules apply (be brief, avoid spam words, be conversational), but the goal is simply to remind the person of the first email or to suggest that something we promised in the first email has progressed in some way. For example, if a lead magnet was offered in the first email, a second email might suggest that we've spent some time building it already and that it is hot and ready for the buyer to receive. 

The final email in a sequence (probably an email 3 or, in very rare cases, 4) is a good time for a Hail Mary. This is where you can be especially experimental. We like to send the message that we've already set up a meeting for them tomorrow and tell them to respond if they want to join. Sometimes, we send memes or make a joke. The chances of anyone responding are already so low that the best thing you can do is go all out and pull out all of the stops but try to stop them from clicking spam.

In some rare cases, emails 2 or 3 can perform better than first emails in sequences. There are many reasons why this might happen, but it's rare and almost better not to focus on. In general, the point of sequences is to squeeze out stragglers from the first email, to catch them at a better time, or to remind them that they were actually interested in the thing offered in the first email. 

Subject Lines

It might not be obvious when you think about it, but the real first touchpoint between you and a buyer is the subject line. The goal should be to say something with it that demands the attention of the reader. Think about it: what kinds of emails do you typically want to open? Is it the ones where something cute and clever is in the subject? If you see "Limited Time Offer – Just for You!" are you going to open the email? Probably not. A good subject line is focused entirely on impact. It's something that piques their interest or feels urgent. If you were to rip 10 manual emails, what would the subject line be? Probably the laziest thing ever, no?

Opening Lines

Assuming your data is right and your subject worked, the next thing someone will see is the opening line of the email. Create an opening line that hooks them. You've got seconds. Don't waste them on pleasantries. Nobody cares for 'hope you are well.' You can explain how and why you came across their company – "I found {{Normalized_Company_Name}} on LinkedIn and noticed you recently hired around {{Rounded_Number}} people" – you can reference something that you've scraped about the company – "I noticed that  {{Normalized_Company_Name}} is using Webflow to build their site" – or you can jump right into the offer – "I see your company is selling umbrellas and I think I have some people who want to buy them." 

The goal should be to make it immediately clear why they should take the time to read your email. There are some psychological strategies here. The goal of this first line should be to prime them to want to learn more. You should create a small gap between what the recipient already knows (their company, the product they sell) and the things they want to know (how to do their job better). This is why personalization is so important. You need to find some way to get in the mind of the stranger who is getting the email and find some way to convince them to be curious about the rest. 

One easy way to figure out the best subjects and opening lines is to A/B test them. Try a couple of different options and see which one gets you the most replies. Maybe certain industries are just more used to certain formats. Maybe the spam filters are more sensitive to certain terms. The only way to know this for sure is to see what works and what doesn't.

Email Bodies

You might think that the body text of an email is where all of the action happens – but that is not true. If the receiver hasn't already decided that they have some interest in what you're selling by the time they start reading this part, it is unlikely that you could say something now that would change their mind. The key is brevity. Making it short means it's not a marketing email. No marketer knows how to write something brief 🙂… Long emails scream, "I'm trying to sell you something!" Aim for 4-5 sentences max. If you can't make your point in that space, you don't understand your value prop.

The body is the time to provide a value proposition that hits like a truck. Nobody cares about your features. They care about results. Maybe offer social proof about what you offer ("We've done this before") or clarify the offer made in that first line. Make it industry-specific. Generic claims are worse than no claims. In general, you'll want to keep this part of the email brief. Only say what is absolutely necessary to get your message across. 

Avoid the sales or marketing pitches that you'll probably intuitively want to add here. Quantify the impact, but be smart about it. "We helped {{MatchedCompany}} increase {{Metric}} by 37 percent in 90 days." Notice: no "like yours" and spell out "percent" to dodge spam filters.

Lead Magnets

Offer free stuff. This is where you can win or lose. Offer something irresistible. "I've created a custom report analysing your company's {{specific area}}. I'd like to walk you through it on a quick call." or "We've developed a tool that {{solves specific problem}}. I'd like to send you a free sample. Can you confirm your address is XYZ?" Sometimes, we make an intentional mistake in the address. Absolute gold. Be specific about your offer (called a lead magnet). "When do you have 15 to review the custom report I've prepared for {{CompanyName}}?" Create urgency, but keep it real. False scarcity will bite you in the ass when they click spam.

CTA 

Finally, you should end the email with a call to action. I'm sure you've seen this phrase used hundreds of times before in marketing and sales courses – but for cold email, it tends to be very simple. Ask to deliver the lead magnet. Which (if you've built the right magnet) means scheduling a call. The goal of the rest of the email should be to say just enough to get them interested in a call where you'll actually do all of the sales work. Watch for spam words in this – in place of words like "call" or "meeting" we like to use "Gmeet."