Cold Email Personalization Strategy for Outbound Sales

Email Personalization: Before You Start

There is no fixed answer to personalization for email. The best approach is unique to your situation and will change as new competitors, strategies, and buyer behaviors emerge.

Not all of the variables in your situation are controllable, so it’s important to build your cold email personalization strategy in conjunction with market research.

For example, a hyper-personalized approach would likely be unprofitable for a $3,000 sale and prevent you from touching most of the market. On the other end of the spectrum, mass outreach would likely be ineffective for larger, more competitive deals.

Factors Impacting Your Personalization Strategy

Market Size

It’s important to size up your target markets so you know the total number of accounts and leads that are available for your cold email outreach.

Deal Size

You need to evaluate the average deal size or annual contract value (ACV) for your solution in the markets you’re targeting.

Deal Complexity

One misstep can tarnish a potential outbound sale, so the deal-making process you go through to win deals has a huge impact on the amount of time you should spend personalizing.

How Differentiated Are You?

Your position in the market and your differentiation from other competitors has a significant impact on how to approach your cold email outreach.

Time Limitations for Personalizing Emails

Regardless of your situation, one of the biggest variables behind your personalization strategy is the amount of time your team has available to research and personalize cold emails.

Set Goals for Cold Email Personalization

After reviewing research on your market, your positioning, and the time you have available, you need to decide on some goals that are realistic for your conversion rates.

Just Getting Started with a Personalization Strategy for Cold Email? Here’s Darren’s Advice:

Follow the Data, Not Your Ego

It’s easy to take too much pride in your messaging. However, it’s a mistake to assume that your approach is going to be the best move for every situation. The ultimate goal is to generate better results with your emails and ego can disrupt this mission. Instead, continuously test new approaches and don’t be afraid to test the ideas of others.

Consume as Many Sales Emails as You Can

Wherever you are in your journey, it’s invaluable to find access to sales emails so you can absorb and learn how cold email personalization is done successfully.

Get Good at Writing

While it’s necessary, creative writing is often not taught enough in sales-type courses. However, creative writing skills are essential for sales or marketing professionals today as conversations move from the phone to more writer-centric channels.