The Best Cold Outreach Email Subject Lines

I am working on this right now for my company Speak Ai. 

I compare it to how I’ve heard a standup comedian talk about writing jokes. You may think it’s absolutely hilarious but you will only know once you get on stage and tell the joke to an audience.

Similarly, you can write an email you believe is personalized, valuable, friendly and accomplishes everything you want. But, when you send it, you get crickets. 

In this post, I explore my journey of cold outreach emails. I found success with cold outreach emails early in my career at my marketing agency SixFive Interactive. There were some good lessons there.

First of all, I had a very personalized audience. It was nonprofits (mostly in Canada) with a website that were not leveraging Google Ads. I also had an extremely valuable offer: I was sharing the details of a Google Ad Grants program that gave the nonprofits $120,000 a year in free advertising. That was hard to say no to. In fact, a lot of times I think it was such a good offer people thought I was a Nigerian Prince. 

These emails converted at a very high percentage because the connection was there, nonprofits shared a beautiful mission I supported, the offer was clear and enticing, and there was credibility because we had worked with other nonprofits already and found success.

With Speak Ai, there is more abstractness to what we are doing. The return-on-investment isn’t as clear. As an example, a lot view transcription as a cost and not something that generates revenue. The integrated analysis we do is a big forward-thinking and creates a cognitive weight. 

So, the challenge is now to reach out to those in our ideal customer profile at Speak Ai and see if we can build a repeatable outbound sales channel that resonates and creates value. We like to think we’ve produced something great here but the market determines that. 

As I go through this process, I will come back to this post with updates, insights, and some wins and losses. I look forward to sharing with you. As always, please feel encouraged to reach out, make recommendations and share your own experience so we can grow together.

Resources

20 Cold Email Subject Line Examples that Actually Get Responses
64 Sales Email Subject Lines That Get Opened, Read, and Responded To
Cold Email Subject Lines: 12 Best Practices + 38 examples – Mailshake
89 Effective Cold Email Subject Lines & How to Craft Them
43 Cold Email Subject Lines That Get Your Emails Opened Instantly
160+ Cold Email Subject Lines That Will Stand Out In Your Prospect’s Inbox