If you’re sending cold emails and aren’t getting the kind of replies you want…

That’s a harsh reality of choosing to leverage cold outreach, despite how effective it can be.

Even on a good day, the cold hard truth is that most of your emails won’t get a response. Even when you think your templates are perfect, or your messaging is personalized to the point where everyone should want to respond, there’s more you could be doing.
 

How You Can Reduce Friction In Your Emails

There are many reasons (outside of your control) why prospects might not respond to your outreach attempt.  
However, one thing you can control is the level of “friction” you place between yourself and your recipient. Now, let’s talk about friction.


 

Respect Your Prospect’s Time By Closing The Time Gap

So here’s the problem. Your follow ups are giving your prospects too much time to think over an offer that’s not really worth their time at the end of the day. You need to respect their time!  
Like each of us, your prospects also have to think about countless decisions throughout their day.

Then they have to organize their thought process, verbalize it, and to respond to you. This is the “time gap” between when they receive your offer and ultimately make a decision on it.

Now, I’m sure you’ve received cold emails yourself, and in the time you spend reading or thinking about the email, you’ve probably realized that you “just don’t have the time” to actually respond to the sender right now.

Then, you default to what’s easiest—you close the email, and move on to the next task at hand.

Unfortunately, this scenario describes the fate of most cold emails.

If you want to increase your response rate, you need to close the time gap that your prospect takes in order to think about and make a decision on your offer.
 

Try The 1,2,3 Email Template

Employ my 1,2,3 email template that we talked about in the video. By doing so, we can reduce the TIME your prospect needs to devote to your email. This reduces the “friction” that otherwise might prevent your email from being responded to.

So how do we effectively do this?
 
P.S. Remember this email is best used near the end of your email series.

Let’s look at the steps to construct this email.

First, you get in touch with them. You acknowledge that they have not responded to your previous emails.

Then, you give them three options that encompass possible reasons why they have not responded. For example:

  • This is just bad timing. And I should follow up with you at a different time.
  • This is not a good fit for your organization. No matter how many times I follow up – you won’t respond.
  • You are locked in your bathroom and I should call the locksmith! (Haha just joking.)

Easy right? Now here is the important part…

Ask them to hit reply and respond with just the corresponding number that best describes their situation – either option 1, 2, or 3.
 

THERE! That’s It!

By doing this, you’re reducing the time and effort your prospect needs to devote to the follow up email.

You are reducing the “friction” that often leads to less responses with your cold email templates.

Better yet…

You are also creating the basis for a conversation by leading your prospect to that next actionable step. Try this technique out and hopefully you will see a huge increase in your cold email response rates.
 

Action Steps

  1. Identify which part of your email series that you will implement this template. (I recommend near the end of your series.)
  2. Write the email as outlined above, put your own humorous spin on it if you like.
  3. Use the opportunity presented by their reply to create a conversation that is mutually beneficial to both you and your prospective client.

 
Bonus: Try to be funny, while respecting your prospects time. And for even more on my cold email philosophy (including extra templates, books and other resources), grab my Cold Email Hacks 2.0 Guide today.
 

Result You Will Achieve

Increase in response rates for your cold email series by reducing the response friction as much as possible.

Mentor: Steli Efti

Co-Founder of Close.io. Steli will go in depth on how to use these two different emails and how he found success in each of them.

 
This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.