Here’s the one thing that I think all marketers should keep in mind when they’re reaching out to cold traffic—you shouldn’t overtly sell anything at this stage. At this point, you’re trying to talk to an audience that you’re not sure has even heard about your product or service. Going for a direct pitch will likely just get ignored.

What I would recommend is to deliver relevant and high-quality content. This has actually worked best for me. Along with this, keep the following pointers in mind:

1. Don’t make it all about you

You’re proud of your business and everything that you have accomplished. However, going on and on about what you do, how many awards you’ve won, how many customers you have, or how many products you’ve sold isn’t the best way to engage cold audiences.

A brief backgrounder on your company is essential. After all, you want to be considered credible and establish yourself worthy of their time. However, keep it concise and brief.

2. Focus on your customers

You should be giving your product or service context. Your objective is to highlight why your product or service is relevant to their daily lives. How will it empower them? Make their lives easier?

This isn’t necessarily a direct sales pitch for your business. Try highlighting a problem they may have that your business can help solve. What challenges can you address? This will help you build a connection with a cold audience.

3. Give them something upfront

Make sure you establish your value up front. Before you even ask them for anything, they should know that they’re getting something out of it. Give them something helpful—a white paper, a free infographic, access to exclusive content or material.

4. Make sure you test and improve your emails

Not all companies are the same. What may work for one might not work for another. To that end, you want to test and make sure that what you’re doing is actually effective. Gather data and insight from your initial efforts. From there, you can edit and make the appropriate changes to ensure a better experience for your recipients.

5. Explore multiple touches

On average, prospects typically receive around ten marketing touches from the time they enter a funnel until they become actual customers. Since you’re not directly selling, and because you need to build brand trust and credibility, focus on creating and delivering useful and helpful content instead. This means you can send more emails without appearing to spam your audience.

Give these tips a try and let me know how well they work for you. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me personally and I will do my best to provide an answer.