How Red Flag Alert Helps You Win More Business with Cold Email

Sending effective cold emails to decision-makers is challenging. You can easily spend hours crafting a message, only to never hear back from them. However, in enterprise sales – where one client can be worth a large fee – cold email is an incredibly powerful tool. 

It’s important to ensure the cold emails you send have the highest possible chance of getting a reply. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend even longer writing them. Rather, it means using proven techniques to ensure your emails succeed.

Before we start, let’s clear up what we mean when we talk about cold emailing. We are referring to personalised emails sent to specific individuals – not generalised mass emails sent to a list.

Actionable Cold Emailing Techniques

In 2016, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published some research about what works when it comes to cold email techniques. The author listed the five elements of an effective cold email. Here is a quick rundown: 

1. You should tailor the email to the recipient. This personalisation should go beyond making a generic mention of their work. Instead, it should show that you’ve “put work into understanding them” and that you have an obvious reason for emailing “them as opposed to anyone else”.
2. You should validate yourself to the recipient to show your credibility. HBR says that where possible, you should mention someone you both know. If you can’t do this, indicate your authority or social status or, failing that, find something you both have in common. The overall goal here is to make yourself less of a stranger.
3. You should provide the recipient with value. HBR advises trying to solve one of the recipient’s problems by offering to connect them with someone you know, or finding another way to give them something you think they want.
4. You should make your email short and actionable. The point here is that it should be as easy as possible for the recipient to do what you’re asking. This means keeping the email short and including a specific request. HBR recommends a request like “I can meet on Monday between 8am and 11am” rather than a vague “Let me know if you’d like to meet up”.
5. You should be appreciative in the email. HBR suggests thanking the recipient and even giving them a way out of responding (e.g. “I understand if you’re busy”). These actions can increase response rates and make the recipient more likely to help you.

The techniques mentioned above are useful for pretty much any business or sales team that cold emails high-ticket sales. It could be of particular benefit to those who work in manufacturing, construction, IT, consultancy, or other industries where the cost of sales makes crafting individual emails worthwhile.

Red Flag Alert Can Help You Craft Effective Cold Emails 

Red Flag Alert helps with cold emailing in two ways. First, our data set contains millions of contact details for decision-makers across the UK. Simply having access to these key people is the first step to creating a successful email campaign, our data will power your email marketing efforts

The second way it helps is by covering points one and three in the list above: personalising the email and providing the recipient with value concerning the challenges they face. Red Flag Alert’s data gives key insights into the current challenges a business is facing, allowing sales teams to tailor their emails to the recipient’s needs. 

Here are three examples of how this could work in practice. 

• If a company’s revenue is increasing, a manufacturer could highlight how its solution can help the business meet growing demand.
• If a business has just moved to a new area, an IT networking solution could highlight how its product can help the business get up to speed quickly.
• If a company is experiencing cash flow problems, a loan provider could mention how its product can alleviate these issues.

By mentioning early on in the cold email how its product can help a business, the sender is both tailoring the email effectively and showing the recipient how they can help.

Red Flag Alert is an Essential Business Intelligence Tool 

Red Flag Alert is a business intelligence tool that helps businesses avoid risk and capitalise on opportunities. Sales teams can use it throughout the sales process, from creating prospect lists and sending cold emails to creating effective sales presentations. Here’s what makes Red Flag Alert data so effective: 

• It contains data on over 6 million active UK businesses.
• The data is updated in real time based on information from multiple leading sources.
• The data is in-depth and covers everything from contact details to financial records.
• Businesses can set up alerts that notify them when a company experiences a change in circumstances.
• Sales teams can use the data within their existing workflow through CRM integration.

To learn how Red Flag Alert’s B2B prospector tool can help your business grow, get started with a free trial.