Maximizing Cold Email Conversions: 2023 Statistics and Tips

Are you worried about your cold email conversion rate? Is your pitch enough during cold emailing? Will the recipient respond to your cold emails? 

If all the above are your thoughts, you landed at the correct spot. However, as we all know, cold emailing has become one of the best digital marketing channels. But conversions are the final step where such emails get stuck in cold emailing. We all receive almost 140-150 emails per day.  And from these, 24% of emails are cold sales emails, sometimes opened and sometimes not. 

Therefore, cold emailing done right can only help increase the business's revenue. In this comprehensive guide below, we will share the rules of cold emailing that give you higher conversion rates and some detailed information about cold email campaigns. The success of cold email is directly related to the conversions you get from the cold emailing campaign, as it true that almost 75% of the cold emails are opened in the first hour of sending. . There are no easy ways to get higher conversions, but still, plenty of hacks can improve your cold email conversion rates. 

What is the Cold Email Conversion Rate?

Cold email conversion rate is the percentage of emails that result in a regular customer or the customer that responds or buys. It is essential to track the conversion rate because it shows the effectiveness of the cold email campaign and whether it is even attractive for business-ready clients to convert into paying customers for your business. 

The goal of cold emailing is to get more and more people interested in your business. Later convert those interested people into paying customers by giving them offers or deals that add value to them, and they can't refuse.  

For example, if you send 100 cold emails daily and receive one response, your cold email conversion rate would be 1%. 

What are the Conversion Metrics in a Cold Email Marketing Campaign?

When the campaign's performance is measured, that indeed leads to improvement in the campaign. Therefore, below mentioned are the metrics that you can follow and identify the areas where you can improve:

Cold Email Open Rate

The cold email open rate is the percentage of successful recipients who have opened your email. The open rate alone is not enough for the success of the cold email campaign; it mainly involves two essential factors:

Clear Subject Lines: If your open rate is low, the recipient did not find the subject line attractive and catchy. 

• The Timing: if you are facing a lower open rate, try sending emails at different times to let your emails be at the top of the recipient's inbox. 

Cold Email Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage that tells you how many of your cold emails got "bounced" or were not successfully delivered to the recipient. There could be several reasons behind email bouncing, but cold mail bounces are brown into two categories:

• Soft Bounce: when you have the correct email address of the recipients, but as the recipient's inbox is complete, you receive a bounce message. 

• Hard Bounce: when the email address to which you are sending the email needs to be corrected, there is no way the server can reach the recipient. 

It is rightly said that the bounce rate is the best indicator to check whether your emailing list data is appropriate. 

Cold Email Response Rate

The response rate is the percentage of the emails the recipient opened up and responded to. This gives a more robust sign of intent from the recipient's side over the open rate. However, there are still two main ways to improve it:

• Content of the Mail: Ensure your email's body is clear and represents the basic details of your business. 

• Target the Correct Audience: if you are targeting or sending cold emails to the wrong people, you are surely not getting any responses.

Cold Email Conversion Rate

The conversion is the percentage of the recipients who opened your email, clicked through it, and either signed up for your business or made the purchase. This is the most substantial measure that makes your campaign successful. To make this conversion rate better, ensure to add the below two things in your cold emails:

• Add CTA: adding a call-to-action in your cold emails helps the prospects know what they are supposed to do. 

• Adding Landing Page: ensure to add details about your landing page or links for the same.

Cold Emailing Best Practices to 2x Your Conversion Rate

We all know that if done right, then cold emailing will only give fantastic conversion rates. So let us go through some best practices to follow and 2x Your Conversion Rate:

The Subject Line Matters

This is true that 47% of people open up emails based on the subject line only.

Even if your email content is flawless and you have made it concise and appropriate, the subject line is not enticing to the reader, they will not open it, and the content does not matter at that stage. So follow some tips to push up your open rate:

• Mention the recipient's first name in the subject line, increasing the open rate by 2.6%. 
• Keep the subject line short and crisp to be read at a glance.
• Induce curiosity in the subject line, like asking any question from the recipient.
• Personalize your subject line, as personalization helps increase the open rate by 29%. 
• Make it look exciting and easy to answer by adding words like (2 minutes of your time or a quick email.")

Address the Critical Concerns of Your Audience

In your cold emailing, ensure that you show your prospects that what your company is providing them is adding value to them. Never explain the features of your business, though clarify to them what you have in your business for them if they choose to work with you. 

Show Them That you Have Done the Research

While doing cold emailing, ensure that your emails match the needs of your prospects. So you have to be relevant to the requirements and interests of your recipients in the email body.

Include a Reasonable CTA in Your Cold Emails

Once you have got your prospects to open your mail and read it, the last task is to get their response. This can be done by giving them clear instructions in the form of CTAs, that tell them how you expect them to respond to your cold emails. Because with CTAs, the prospects can understand how to proceed further in your business. 

Stay Persistent

Research says 80% of sales campaigns require at least five follow-up cold emails. From the recipient's perspective, they might be busy; you might have skipped reading your email, so stay persistent and send them follow-up emails. Follow-up emails help the prospects feel you care for them and their responses. Therefore, it benefits you in building a strong relationship with them and winning their trust.

Why is an Average Cold Email Response Rate too low?

Before we get into the practical cold email marketing tips to improve the response rate, let us find out why our emails are not responding. So as per the research performed on cold emails, below are the proven top reasons why the cold email response rate tends to be so low:

• Your emails are not landing in the primary mailbox of the recipients.
• The subject lines of your email could be more attractive and engaging, making the open rate low. 
• Your emails are not personalized. To improve this, refer to SmartLead AI to get some effective cold email templates to benefit your marketing. 
• The clients need help finding your offers interesting. 
• The email body is too long and lacks value-added information about your business.

Tips to Improve the Cold Email Campaign's Conversion Rates

The strategy you follow in your cold emailing brings a higher conversion rate. So let us move ahead and learn a few techniques or tips to embrace in your cold emailing campaigns:

Send Personalized Emails to Your Prospects

Let it be us or anybody; nobody likes to receive generic emails from random people, addressing with sir, madam, or receiver. Seeing such things in your cold emails, the recipient can quickly tell about your lack of sincerity and interest in helping them. Therefore, it is said to personalize your emails before clicking on "send" is crucial. Now you must think about what you should include in a personalized email. So below are some exciting ideas that can also improve your conversion rate:

• The greeting part - include the recipient's name to grab their attention.
• The company name - if you email any company or organization, greet them with their company name and talk about them in your email.
• How and what you know about them - discuss how you learned about the recipients and why you chose to reach out. 
• Share references - ensure that you share links or click-on on some intent blogs or articles which they posted. 

Personalized emails take more time than just standard templates using emails. However, studies show that 4%-5% more people willingly open personalized emails over generic ones. 

End up With a CTA

Are you including CTAs or call-to-actions in your emails? If not, then it is the right time to start it. Because it encourages the clients to take action and get attracted to your business. CTAs are known to be kind when you try to increase your conversion rate. Simply put, a call-ti-action is like an action button in emails directing prospects to do something. So below are some of the techniques that can be used in your CTAs:

• Proposing or scheduling calls
• Asking relevant questions
• Giving them options to “read more.”
• Asking them if they are available for a call
• Giving them discounts or offers to claim
• Options for starting the free trials
• Links to follow us
• Links to the social media handles of the business

Write Impressive Subject Lines

A subject line is just like the headline of any article. So it is essential to make that impressive because that is the first thing any recipient reads. Subject lines should be engaging and detailed enough to encourage the recipient to click and open them. Such clickable and catchy subject lines help almost 35% of recipients open your cold emails. So below are some Do's and Dont's you can consider while drafting your subject lines:

• Do keep it short and simple
• Don’t make it vague
• Don’t use multiple punctuation marks
• Do use personalization
• Don’t use caps lock in the subject lines
• Do use enticing language to get the recipient to open the email
• Do ask questions
• Don’t use spammy words
• Do show that you can solve their problem

Draft Mobile-Friendly Emails

As we all know, almost half of people check their emails on their phones. Therefore you should create mobile-friendly email ads that can improve the conversion rates too. Follow the below ideas to do so:

• Design subject lines with fewer characters
• Create a tight email body
• Include CTAs near the top of your mail
• Test the emails before sending them to customers on all kinds of devices.

Include Email Signatures

Remember, for your recipient; you are a stranger. So it is essential to include your signature at the end of the email. Also, a signature does not only mean your name; including crucial details like your name, company name, contact information, social media details, and your position in the company helps a lot. This shows your transparency with the clients.

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Check for errors

‍We know that making errors is a human tendency, but still, proofreading your emails for spell check and grammar check is crucial. Such errors do not leave a good impression in the eyes of the customers and can also decrease conversions. 

Express gratitude in your cold emails.

Just saying “Hey or Thanks” looks quite unprofessional in emails. So while cold emailing, showing gratitude and appreciation leaves a good impression on the clients. Sharing gratitude in your cold emails doubles the response rates, making the client feel happy and appreciated. This way, they trust you more. 

What are the Statistics of Cold Emails?

#1 Open rate statistics: The average cold email open rate is 44%.

#2 Response rate statistics: Approximately 50% of the cold emailing campaigns have a response rate of under 15%.

#3 Click-through statistics: The average cold email click-through rate is 3.67%.

#4 Follow-up statistics: A minimum of 3 follow-ups should be done in the campaign, and 55% of the follow-ups get responses.

#5 Unsubscribe rate statistics: The average unsubscribe rate is 2.17%.

#6 Bounce rate statistics: The average bounce rate of cold emails is 7.5%.

What is the Best day and Time to Send a Cold Email

Regarding days, the research shows the below statistics for specific days. The highest responses to cold emails are received on Fridays, and the lowest are received on Saturdays.

• Sunday 3.8%
• Monday 17.11%
• Tuesday 18.34%
• Wednesday 16.06%
• Thursday 20.21%
• Friday 20.98%
• Saturday 3.5%
  

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Final Thoughts

The most crucial part of the marketing campaign plan is understanding the strategies and importance of sending cold emails to your potential clients. As we all know, cold emailing is a hard nut to crack, but if done right and its effective tips and strategies like those mentioned above can indeed lead to higher conversions and a revenue increase. The conversion rate is essential because that indicates what part of cold emailing has been working and what is not working in favor of getting regular customers for the business. So when you track the results, you can also work on the improvement areas.