Common Cold Email Mistakes to Avoid

Want Copywriting Clients? Avoid These Embarrassing Cold Email Mistakes

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Summary

The video titled "Want Copywriting Clients? Avoid These Embarrassing Cold Email Mistakes" by Copy That! provides insightful tips on how to effectively approach potential clients through cold emailing. It highlights the common mistakes made in cold emails, such as using generic language, lack of specificity, and poor grammar. The video also emphasizes the importance of personalizing emails, demonstrating genuine interest in the client's business, and providing clear, actionable next steps. Viewers are shown both poor and excellent examples of cold emails to illustrate these points. The ultimate takeaway is to be specific, respectful, and concise in communication to increase the success rate of cold email outreach.

Highlights

Cold emails often fail due to vagueness and overuse of buzzwords. Examples provided demonstrate this. 📧
A sample bad email is critiqued for lack of substance and irrelevant buzzwords. 🔍
The need for specificity and showcasing past results is emphasized. 📊
Personality and genuine engagement are keys to a good cold email. 🙌
Importance of including a clear call-to-action to avoid open-endedness. 📅
Including case studies, examples, and testimonials can boost credibility. 📈

Key Takeaways

Don't just use buzzwords! Be specific and meaningful in your communication. 🔍
Avoid generic emails. Tailor your message to each recipient for better engagement. ✉️
Show genuine interest and knowledge about the company you're contacting. 🏢
Always include clear, actionable next steps in your emails. 📅
Grammar and spelling matter, especially when pitching writing services. 🖊️
If you're selling something they're already doing, offer a way to do it better. 🚀

Overview

Cold emailing can be a tricky art, and the "Copy That!" video dives into the do's and don'ts of this essential business practice. They open with a fun critique of a badly constructed email, highlighting why it misses the mark. The examples show mistakes like using too many buzzwords without real value and failing to include specifics or results. 💌

The team at Copy That! breaks down what makes a cold email successful. They spotlight the importance of tailoring your message to the recipient by doing your homework on their business. By showing genuine interest and offering personalized content, your email is more likely to stand out among the countless others. Customization and clarity are your tools for crafting an effective message! 🧐

Lastly, the video provides viewers with positive examples of cold emails that hit the mark. These are characterized by their specific content, personality, and clear calls to action. By avoiding the common pitfalls and focusing on these positive elements, you can increase your odds of making an impactful connection. It's all about being concise, specific, and engaging with your potential future clients. 📬

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter titled 'Introduction' begins with a musical intro followed by a foreign greeting. It then transitions into a casual and friendly email dialogue. The email, seemingly from a job applicant or a business proposal sender, begins with a polite greeting and acknowledgment of the recipient's company accomplishments. The sender expresses admiration for the recipient's work, humorously commenting on the recipient's brunette hair as seen from their hat. This light-hearted note is followed by a professional inquiry about possible collaboration opportunities or working together.
00:30 - 10:00: Bad Cold Email Example 1 The chapter titled 'Bad Cold Email Example 1' discusses an ineffective email example from a marketing and copy solutions company. The email is intended to initiate a business relationship, but it lacks clear personalization, appears repetitive by mentioning the word 'company' multiple times, and doesn't specify how the services offered can uniquely benefit the recipient. Moreover, it closes with a generic request to schedule a call, without providing any insightful or compelling reason for the recipient to respond.
10:00 - 16:30: Bad Cold Email Example 2 The chapter titled 'Bad Cold Email Example 2' discusses the pitfalls of poorly crafted cold emails. It features an example of a cold email that lacks personalization and context. The example provided is vague and generic, typical of what many cold emails look like. It emphasizes the common mistakes found in cold emails, underscoring the importance of improvement. The chapter sets the stage for introducing better strategies and examples of effective cold emails later in the content, hinting at a transition from bad to good practices.
16:30 - 19:00: Bad Cold Email Example 3 This chapter focuses on improving cold email strategies by first highlighting common mistakes using bad examples. It aims to help the reader understand what not to do when crafting a cold email. Furthermore, general tips are provided to guide the reader in avoiding these pitfalls. Additionally, one of the author's favorite cold emails is showcased as a positive example. The chapter concludes by advising how to incorporate the discussed tips, tactics, and strategies into your own job-searching methods.
20:00 - 23:00: Good Cold Email Example 1 This chapter presents a dramatic reading of a real cold email example. The email starts with a warm greeting, expressing a hope that the recipient had a pleasant weekend. It then introduces the sender's company - a trusted website promotion company. The company specializes in internet marketing services aimed at promoting business with a focus on results and client satisfaction. The approach is characterized by innovation, commitment, and timely execution. The email concludes with a request for further communication.
23:00 - 28:00: Good Cold Email Example 2 The chapter discusses the flaws in a particular email, highlighting how it fails to effectively communicate its message. The email lacks content and substance, with the majority of its words being non-meaningful or filler. The chapter emphasizes the importance of avoiding generic buzzwords like 'website promotion', 'internet marketing services', 'innovation', 'commitment', and 'timely implementation' when communicating with actual business owners, as such terms do not convey real value or intent.
28:00 - 33:00: Key Takeaways for Effective Cold Emails ### Key Takeaways for Effective Cold Emails - Avoid filling emails with buzzwords that lack real meaning. Professionals will see through this and won't feel compelled by the offer. - Stand out in a crowded inbox by offering genuine value and specificity. - Clearly state your specific services and the results you deliver, rather than just claiming to be results-oriented.
33:00 - 37:00: Conclusion and CTA In the conclusion and call-to-action chapter, the emphasis is on gaining credibility and trust from potential clients. The speaker advises against simply claiming results-driven success or guaranteed client satisfaction without providing evidence. It suggests showing examples, such as helping ABC client increase their sales by 80%, and including testimonials from other clients. This approach addresses the issue that potential clients are strangers and need more than just promises to be convinced.

Want Copywriting Clients? Avoid These Embarrassing Cold Email Mistakes Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 [Music] foreign hey can I help you dear Lancy hello I hope this email finds you well I recently came across your company uh company and was really impressed by the work that you do I see from your hat that you are a brunette keep killing it out there I am writing to see if there might be an opportunity for us to work
00:30 - 01:00 together my company marketing and copy Solutions Solutions specializes in copy and marketing and I believe that we would be a great fit for your company company I would love to learn more about your current needs and how we might be able to help your business grow could we schedule a call at your convenience to discuss further thank you
01:00 - 01:30 for considering my request I am looking forward to working with you at and your business best regards a cold emailer [Music] most cold emails suck they suck so bad and if you're watching this you may have sent these already in which case my
01:30 - 02:00 condolences but don't worry because the next one you send is gonna be amazing if you watch this video first of all we're going to show you some bad examples of cold emails so you know what not to do then we're going to give you some general tips on how you can avoid the same mistakes and then we're going to show you what to do I'm gonna show you one of my favorite cool emails I've ever received then we're going to tell you exactly how you can take the tips take the tactics take the strategies and apply them to your own gig searching
02:00 - 02:30 and now a dramatic reading of a real cold email sent by a real person hello I hope you had a lovely weekend we are one of the trusted website promotion companies specializing in promoting business with the power of internet marketing our internet marketing services are driven by result orientation and client satisfaction due to our sheer Innovation commitment and timely implementation please let me know
02:30 - 03:00 if you are interested in our services that was a bad email all right so let's talk about what's wrong with this email number one it's not saying anything there are like three words in this email that actually means something and all of them are the words though and that doesn't mean much okay so here's a pro tip when you use words like website promotion companies and internet marketing internet marketing Services Innovation commitment timely implementation if you're talking to a real business owner who runs a real
03:00 - 03:30 business they will understand that what you're doing is just Jam packing your emails full of buzzwords that don't actually mean anything and as a result they're not going to feel like you actually have anything real to offer them you're going to sound like one of ten thousand other people in their inbox you just want their money don't do that another major error in this email you are lacking specificity in your email you say that you are an internet marketing service and you are driven by results and you're oriented towards results but where are your results
03:30 - 04:00 you're a stranger and you're asking me to take you at your word I don't even know you I don't know your results rather than just saying we're driven by results and we are results oriented why don't you show me some examples we helped ABC client increase their sales by 80 for example include some testimonials from some of your other clients rather than just saying client satisfaction guaranteed just remember your stranger these people don't know
04:00 - 04:30 who you are they're probably getting emails just like yours a dozen times a day if you are going to email make sure you include specifics and as if my friends haven't butched this email enough I'm gonna take a swipe at the ending let's assume for a moment that the content was brilliant the best email ever and the business owner who got this absolutely loved it what kind of ending is please let me know if you're interested have some conviction with what you're saying man like if you go up to someone in the street and you just start a conversation and then say hey
04:30 - 05:00 would you like to continue this conversation that's kind of awkward to say and doesn't really lead anywhere tell them what you want to do next give them a time and a date suggest what you want to do say hey I noticed that you are in X area why don't we meet up for a coffee sometime because I come by a lot or if it's purely online thing just say I have some time between 10 and 12 on Tuesday how about we have a quick 15-minute call at least then the onus is on them to say yes or no they can't just ignore because
05:00 - 05:30 it feels a bit awkward since you've cut out a specific time for them they're far more likely to reply and do what you want if you give them a yes no option rather than just leaving it open so if you want to be a successful code emailer make sure you actually do the suggesting hello Nadine I hope you're doing great let me introduce myself my name is Adam and I am a video editor currently specializing in short form video content and I would like to help you grow your content to see if we're a good fit I can
05:30 - 06:00 create free sample for you here's a link to my recent work take care Adam here's a video of my chest this one's a little bit more subtle and it's not necessarily about the email itself but the big problem that's happening with this particular email is something that I see happening in a lot of cold emails which is that people are going to be trying to sell businesses services that they are already doing like if you go to youtube.com copy that
06:00 - 06:30 and go to our videos you'll see that we are already producing a large amount of shorts of video content of master classes all available for free and so it's pretty obvious that we have an editor who's churning out and producing the content that this person is trying to sell us this person just obviously didn't even look and think that maybe we need something else and so if you're trying to sell somebody
06:30 - 07:00 on short form content what you do if they're already producing short form content is not try to sell them on something they're doing but rather try to sell them on something to do it better or to produce more or to produce it differently or to produce it for some other medium you just have to be conscious of what the business you're pitching is already doing before you write your code pitch read your email back to yourself and ask could this be
07:00 - 07:30 sent to basically any business or in this case could this be sent to basically any YouTube channel if the answer is yes then it's probably not a very good cold email there is nothing in here that points to copy that specifically as the target audience so why would we then give it the time of day to read when they clearly haven't given us the time of day to research and submit a plan that is customized to what we're trying to do similar to what Sean said about how you need to offer
07:30 - 08:00 something more you also need to be pretty obvious that I respect your business enough to spend the time to create something for it not just a random Blaster hey I can do something if you want here's a bunch of random work there you go yeah this is also going to like a kids YouTube channel and one that does like makeup for dolphins but you know maybe one of your buy doesn't make sense so make sure you're being specific not like this person one thing you really don't want to do is get those personal details wrong if you notice in the first line this email they say hello Nadine and as far as I know no one who
08:00 - 08:30 works in the show is named lady and so my first reaction when I saw this email was what the is Nadine what that tells me as a business owner is that the person emailed me actually has no idea about my business potentially no idea how to research businesses it's a huge demerit to get this kind of thing wrong if you're going to personalize your cold emails make sure you're getting the personal details correct the single step to improving your marketing hi copy that
08:30 - 09:00 recently I looked at your page it was impressed by your copy that unisex hoodie it looks hella cool and it's affordable while going over your page I get an idea that I'm confident will help you improve sales of your merch by improving your email marketing I actually went ahead and created an opt-in page so grow your email list giving you more potential clients would you like to send it over as a free gift asking us to do stuff guys if you are going to be writing cold emails grammar spelling punctuation it's pretty important especially if you're
09:00 - 09:30 trying to sell your services as a copywriter like let's leave aside the fact that grammar spelling you know other sorts of Errors they don't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things but when you're trying to like put on a business suit and like look good to somebody that you're prospecting you want to be putting your best foot forward when you look at the past examples in this particular example would you like to send it over as a free gift like so this person's asking us to send something over like of course we
09:30 - 10:00 can Intuit what this person was meaning they want to send us something as a free gift but that's not what it's saying and so why would I trust a copywriter that can't even get the causal connection of actions correct it just doesn't make any sense and I as a business owner don't want to hire a person who's not going to be putting in that minimal amount of effort it's kind of like if you were getting surgery and you heard the surgeon go like can you get me the sharp like Cutty thing and then you blacked
10:00 - 10:30 out like I would not feel comfortable trusting that surgeon we've spoken about how it's important to be specific and to show that you're talking to that business you know particularly but a more important thing is to read the room if you're contacting a business whose whole shtick is teaching people how to do marketing and you approach them and say hey I think I can improve your email marketing you better have something quite big to back that up because like
10:30 - 11:00 we probably think of ourselves as fairly decent marketers so to just come along and say that it's a bit of an insult to to what we do that was actually the point that I wanted to make they're saying the single step to improving your marketing and that is to sell a unisex hoodie but then they're demonstrating that they have absolutely zero understanding about like how marketing works because they're like I'm going to create an opt-in page that's not going to do anything like an opt-in page to sell merch to a business that isn't focused on selling merch yeah and like
11:00 - 11:30 how is the opt-in page going to grow our email list it's if it's about merch like email lists grow when you're driving traffic to opt-in Pages not just because you created an opt-in Page look at how email has made us we've actually been thrown off script and just talking about it it's pretty obvious to me that this person doesn't know what in the hell we do who cares about the copy that unisex hoodie we want to sell patreon subscriptions in fact if you sign up for patreon.com the copy that show you'll
11:30 - 12:00 get so many dozens of hours of streams it's actually insane and also we use the money that we get from patrons to pay for complex silliness like this so that was three examples of bad cold emails and generally what not to do in your emails we will show you a good cold email in fact I'm pretty sure we have two that we want to go through right now
12:00 - 12:30 this is a cold email that I received from a friend of mine named George he became a financial copywriter I was there at the very beginning of his career I saw his rise and he actually used this particular cold email to become basically a marketing director for a company in Europe and now the first thing that I want you to notice about it is that it's long as detailed and it has stuff of interest I'm not going to read the whole thing if you
12:30 - 13:00 pause the video and look through one of the obvious things that's happening here is that George recognized what the company was actually looking for and what the company was actually looking in there's personality here it's no freaking wonder why your cold emails are not getting you gigs it's because you sound like a robot a copy paste robot if you want to get a gig with cold emailing you have to seem different and relevant to the people that you're reaching out to otherwise you're just going to be
13:00 - 13:30 dismissed just like the copy that you write for the businesses you're trying to pitch in the first place unlike Sean I have a cold email that I really like but it is short enough to read out to you in its entirety hi Alex it's Alex no not yourself from the future but a guy who's watched 50 of your free five hour copywriting course and hooked on it how am I not paying thousands for it anyways I'll cut to the point I work for redacted built on the foundation of Dr copywriting I'm very
13:30 - 14:00 impressed with your channel in a market where everyone is yapping you're adding real value the show is hilarious yet informative thank you it's not surprising you have been able to get a big following Alex I'd love to chat about growing your audience and adding value to them through a collab with x let me know if you're open to chatting with x in the coming weeks looking forward to hearing from you Alex yes thanks again for the course you made it set me on my copyright journey and I'm extremely grateful let's talk about why that is a pretty damn good cold email look at the top of the page look at our subject line Alex squared is the hottest
14:00 - 14:30 collab this summer now what is that subject line doing well I'll tell you the first thing it's extremely different to anything else I'm used to seeing in my inbox this is what most subject lines of cold emails sound like hi Alex quick question quick question Alex re-opportunity growth business hi Alex quick question like that's what most cold emails are like so to get this from someone I didn't know but it was framed very differently to what I'm used to seeing was immediately disruptive to me as I was looking I was
14:30 - 15:00 like hey that's weird so I opened it up and it was this email the best thing about this email is it's so hyper personalized no one else could have written this about another business you couldn't just send this to 50 people and have everyone kind of a lukewarm response it's meant for one person and that person was me person who was writing this had done the research about me had shown that they've done the research by making references to things like Dan and was slightly
15:00 - 15:30 flattering and saying they liked my work which is never a bad thing to do if you're talking to someone and want to get their business so that before anything else is just a good way to approach a copy the CTA here isn't the strongest um he didn't give me a specific action that I needed to do he didn't suggest a specific time but he knew exactly why he was going into the email out the opportunity very concisely for me after he showed that we thought we might be a match for each other he also made reference to Dr copyrighting or direct
15:30 - 16:00 response copywriting which is clearly something that I'm interested in and then he laid out exactly what he wanted the one we looked at with Sean we spoke about length and how sometimes it really doesn't matter if something is long or short what I'm going to say to you is your email should only be long if you have enough to say in it if you are just adding fluff and padding to make it longer because you've heard that longer copies better then it's probably far worse with this cold email he decided he said all he needs to say he got my
16:00 - 16:30 attention he presented the offer and then he wanted to ask me a question if I was interested he didn't need to go on and on about stuff I wasn't interested in he didn't need to conflate the business that he was representing his ego he just said it how it was and asked me the question now that is far more respectful of my time than most of the cold emails I get which expect me to Wade through a ton of irrelevant information about a company I've never heard of before I get to the point they're trying to make so that alone makes this a good
16:30 - 17:00 so we just showed you a few examples of bad cold emails and what not to do we also showed you a couple of examples of good cold emails and what to do so we're just going to quickly synthesize a few quick points for you to take away so that when you attempt cold email Outreach it can be better pay attention to the business that you're trying to write to one of the misconceptions that a lot of cold emails have is that well you need to write a thousand and so you don't have time to investigate specifically all these businesses but I
17:00 - 17:30 guarantee you that your likelihood of getting a good gig out of that process is going to go way up if you actually pay attention to the businesses that you're trying to reach out to and craft the best possible message to only that business that you possibly can quality over quantitative remember that you are a stranger on the internet one of many who are approaching these business owners and so if you are going to talk about yourself Who You Are are and the
17:30 - 18:00 results that you feel that you can bring to this business make sure that you include specifics show some examples of some case studies talk about some of the competitors or the other clients that you have worked with include testimonials include some references if you feel it's appropriate but don't just be results oriented and goal driven make sure that you include specifics and as a quick aside if that makes you really anxious because you're brand new and you
18:00 - 18:30 don't really have any results to speak for don't worry we have an entire video that talks about how to put together a beginner portfolio of spec pieces Sean can you please queue up the link check out that link right there so the third thing you definitely want to avoid is accidentally selling businesses on things that they're already doing if you come into my inbox trying to sell me on making videos about copywriting and I'm already doing that because I have a YouTube channel that does exactly that I'm not going to want to buy that
18:30 - 19:00 service from you instead what you should do is one either offer something brand new that the business isn't already doing and that could be as simple as like saying hey I notice you don't have inactive Tick Tock channel can we start making Tick Tock reels or two you can offer to make more content for the business like hey your YouTube channel is really thriving it seems like you could get even more content let me help you just make sure that whatever it is you're offering is something that will actually benefit the business and not just more of the same and finally be clear and be confident with your ctas
19:00 - 19:30 don't leave it open-ended don't imagine that the person on the other end of the screen is a mind reader please say what you want to do next and what you expect of them far less likely to get a response if you say let me know if this is of Interest then you are if you say I have some time coming up on Tuesday at 10 A.M would you be free for a 15 minute yeah because then you've given the illusion that that's already happening in the future so they feel almost
19:30 - 20:00 compelled to tell you either no I don't want to do that right now how about this time or to accept it because they can check their calendar speaking of ctas what kind of copywriting gurus would we be if we didn't end the video with one so if you want to improve your cold pitching prospecting your chances of getting clients then don't worry because we have a product just for you five years ago I started my copywriting journey and I wasn't very good at writing the copy or getting the clients
20:00 - 20:30 so I had to grind through it I went through a lot of trial and error and I finally figured out how to do that better and better five years later I can finally look back on the mistakes I made and understand what actually went wrong so I decided it would be very helpful if I put all of that in one place and shared it with the world which is what the copy career accelerator is there is a link in the description of this video if you want to have a look at that it is a collection of I believe a Trilogy of master classes from me about how to be the best cold picture you can possibly
20:30 - 21:00 be how to network how to get jobs how to create resume CVS cover letters so you can go for absolutely anything that you want to go for freelancing in-house or whatever it also goes into all the notes that I took as a beginner copywriter and then revised and revised again there are nine private q a streams where loads of beginners asked us very in-depth questions about prospecting which are only available now through this product or our patreon but it's all in one place and it's just a one-time purchase so you
21:00 - 21:30 have it all forever and it covers pretty much everything that I could think of for how to get clients so if you are beginning your journey and maybe you've had a couple clients but you really want to kick start but most importantly if you can afford to spend money on something like this then go and check out the page read what it says and see if it's for you because we've already had a ton of beginning Freelancers say that this was an extremely helpful package
21:30 - 22:00 [Music]