Cold email sequence: creation guide & examples

Do you send cold emails to potential customers, but it doesn't help you achieve any goal?

Even if you do your best to create such an email, trust me, you shouldn't expect any significant results. It's worth launching a sales cold email sequence with follow-ups so that if prospects miss your campaign in the stream of other emails, something from the follow-ups will catch the recipients’ eye.

You should also research your target audience, run several A/B testing campaigns (and periodically test different email subject lines and parts - subject line, body, signature, etc.), understand what email subject lines and content are of the most immediate interest, and research the best time for action.

The response and conversion rates will increase several times if you send a series of emails instead of a single cold email. In my new article, you will find detailed info about cold email campaigns creation and find the cold email templates & examples.

What makes a great Cold email sequence?

A tremendous cold email sequence is made by compiling the right list of prospects that maximally match your company's ICP. Also, remember about the importance of personalization. Show in your campaign that you and your product can bring tangible benefits to these people, write about the target audience's pain point, and show how your product/service deals with it.

After the cold email sequence with follow-ups, you should:

Make final segmentation after the cold campaign – in one folder, leads that are most likely ready to buy; in another - those that require lead nurturing.

Don't eliminate the second list of potential customers because they may later purchase your subscription and become your long-term customers.

They may need your solution, but there's just no instant need for it and no urgency to buy a paid half-subscription.

Cold email follow-up sequence: why do you always need to add follow-ups? 

It will never be enough to send just one cold email because many leads may simply miss your message in the email stream, or one email will not be enough to motivate a person to click on the CTA button to sign up on your platform or purchase a product/service.

This requires a series of emails, namely complete cold email campaigns.

Note. According to statistics from HubSpot, 80% of sales happen after about five or more follow-ups.

Some proofs from Email Marketing Specialist Dylan Bridger:

On Tuesday, someone replied to my cold email.

Today, we're negotiating a deal.

But here's the thing...

•He didn't see my first email
•He didn't see my second email
•He only saw and replied to my THIRD email

THIS is why you MUST follow up with your prospects.

Go get it!! pic.twitter.com/z5J5tihoA5

— Dylan Bridger (@dylan_bridger) February 2, 2023

Remember, you're creating a cold email follow-up sequence for leads who may not have heard of your brand yet. It's essential to get feedback from them, test how to reach them and when, and then, as we said, you can do the final segmentation to send one part of the leads to the lead nurturing list, the other to the list of people who are more likely to buy and weed out those who will never be interested in your product at all.

It's also essential to get feedback from prospects to preserve your domain's reputation and avoid ending up in the spam folder in the future.

With the right approach, even a folder with people not yet ready to buy your product can turn into a folder with prospects who will eventually contact you to buy some of your paid subscriptions. 

Note. The main thing to remember is that the main task of a cold email sequence is to provide your prospects value, provide a solution that will be valuable for their business. 

Also, before launching a series of emails, send a test campaign, for example, to your employees, to check whether you've chosen a proper tool and whether your emails end up in the spam folder.

Best COLD email sequence: main characteristics 

1. Must be personalized
2. Catchy subject lines
3. The email chain should be structured
4. All info should be relevant to the recipient
5. A clear call to action
6. Well-thought-out schedule for sending each email

How to create a cold email sequence?

When creating a cold email sequence, you need to remember about these rules.

Cold email campaigns should be personalized

Perfect cold emails and follow-ups should always be personalized. For this purpose, preliminary segmentation is done, as mentioned in the previous section.

You need to segment your audience into different categories based on characteristics such as industry, location, etc. 

Catchy subject lines

Of course, there should be subject lines (but no lies, no need to embellish reality). 

The subject line of a cold email sequence should be attractive to the recipient so that they, even if they are not familiar with your brand, will want to click on the email and read it.

The sales cold email sequence should be structured

Cold emails should be structured by information so that everything is step-by-step and logical. Content should be clear and concise, easy to read, without jargon and long paragraphs.

All info should be relevant to the recipient

The offer or proposition in an email chain should clearly articulate the value or benefit to the recipient. When you read your email subject lines before sending them, ask yourself if the recipient will be able to answer the question, «What will this offer give to me?».

A clear call to action

The call to action should always be clear. Invite the lead to take the next step, perhaps schedule a call with you.

Well-thought-out schedule for sending each email

Effective cold email campaigns should have a well-thought-out schedule for sending each email. 

It's important to set up a schedule that doesn't look spammy, doesn't overwhelm the recipient, and doesn't have the opposite effect from the desired one. Set up each follow-up with an interval of several days to avoid being intrusive and maximize the number of responses.

Additional steps to launch a cold email sequence

To create a series of emails that will bring incredible conversions, you need to answer these questions in advance: 

• Who is your target audience? What problems and needs does your product or service solve for your target audience? Give yourself clear answers. Because if you don't understand who these people are, who can be your customers, and what value you can provide, then what kind of conversions can we talk about?
• Determine whether your lead list uses competitors' products. If so, what benefits will be transferred to your solution?
• Understand at what stage your potential customer is considering the product: whether they already know about their need or problem or are already aware of possible solutions.

By identifying these stages in a prospect, you can customize your emails more precisely.

When creating a cold email sequence, beware of these 4 «No's»

1. No bot style templates, more value
2. Check your emails for any errors
3. Forget about too-long cold emails
4. Avoid exaggeration in your emails
5. Your Email & CTA should not be pushy
6. Add a professional signature

No bot style templates, more value

Having email templates is good, but you cannot use everything as a copycat. Take a few templates as a basis and add to them: Add your own style to them as much as possible, and personalize the email campaign for each segmented list of prospects.

Otherwise, if you just take a template from the Internet and add a few words - your name and company - you'll just get a generic bot email that the lead will only want to ignore :(

Check your emails in a cold email sequence for errors

It's best to double-check that there are no mistakes, that you've entered the person's company name correctly, and that you haven't left out such personalization items as [Company name], [Lead name] to avoid the following result in the final one.

Aw so close. This would have been a 10/10 follow up cold email, if they had got my product and company name right 🤣 pic.twitter.com/jCPm4XqFk6

— Marie Ng 🦙 (@threehourcoffee) January 22, 2023

Forget about too-long cold emails

Cold email campaigns are not an opportunity to finally release your book. You're writing to people who may have heard of you for the first time. And even if they read the first email, they are unlikely to get close enough to you to read a 10-page email.

If you do not want to get into the Spam folder, then as we have already said, be brief (but not too much like in the previous example😀).

Avoid exaggeration in your emails

First of all, you should give your target leads what they need. Reveal their needs and problems. Not to praise yourself. By taking care of potential customers without showing off too much, show what you can give to businesses.

This way, you can show your market successes and case studies, but again with an emphasis on why this information is helpful to a person.

Here's an instance of an email that clearly overdid it with hyperbole and didn't provide value to the recipient. This email came to me personally, and I found it when I looked in my Spam folder.

Your Email & CTA should not be pushy

Your emails in the chain, as well as the CTA (Call to Action), should not pressure the person or be too intrusive.

Remember, your emails shouldn't contain aggressive marketing. Gently get people to want to take action and make the button or call-to-action phrase not pushy.

CTA is like an arrow on a Google map that shows us where to go next. So, always remember to add it to every email in your cold email sequence, but keep in mind the rule from this block.

Here's an example of what not to do.

Why is this the wrong way to start a cold email sequence? 

This email was sent to someone who had never heard of these people or this company and had never communicated with them.

When you send emails of this format to prospects who haven’t heard of you, it is a sign of disrespect. No one has agreed to meet with you yet. You haven't brought them to this point, so why write about it? Such an email will end up in the spam folder 100% of the time.

Add a professional signature

The email signature is also the face of your brand and affects the success of your cold email campaigns.

When I receive cold emails or just marketing emails, I pay attention to the signature of the person who sent me the email and follow the links to the social networks/or websites that are there. 

Firstly, to learn more about the business where the person works, and secondly, to find out about the person - whether they really work in a company that is mentioned in the signature and email and it's not spam.

A well-crafted signature makes you look more trustworthy, and potential customers are more likely to engage with your email.

Create amazing cold email sequences with our templates

It's a good idea to start the email sequence with an email that shows the connection between you and the prospect. For instance, you've been their contact on LinkedIn for some time. And you can send such a chain to many of your contacts that match the ICP.

Below are just a few examples that you can use as a basis and other templates that may inspire you to create your outreach, marketing, or sales cold email sequence.

Sequence of cold email templates #1

Cold Email:

Cold email follow-up #1:

Cold email follow-up #2:

Cold email follow-up #3

Cold email outreach sequence #2

Cold email:

Cold email follow-up

Cold email sequence template #3

Cold email:

Cold email follow-up #1

Cold email follow-up #2

Cold email sequence examples

Example from Quoleady

A case study of a cold email campaign for setting up interviews with founders and SaaS content marketing managers.

Olga Mykhoparkina, founder at Quoleady:

«We had 3 variations for every step of the sequence. To increase the deliverability, we used 5 different emails to send it from (2 different domains that’s not our main domain).»

Cold email outreach sequence - step 1 (A):

Cold email outreach sequence - step 1 (B):

Cold email outreach sequence - step 1 (C):

Cold email follow-up - step 2 (A):

Cold email follow-up - step 2 (B):

Cold email follow-up - step 2 (C):

Cold email follow-up - step 3 (A):

Cold email follow-up - step 3 (B):

Cold email follow-up - step 3 (C):

The cold email campaign pipeline results:

«It resulted in scheduling 10 interviews including one with the content manager from Acquire.com!».

Example from Alezz Berman

Alex Berman recommended using the cold email script that he made to quote the caption from his video «This Cold Email Script Made Us $1 Million».

In this script, they use 5 components of cold email that you may add to your sales cold email sequence.

So, for your email to bring in more sales, you need to pay attention to the following:

Example of sending cold email campaigns from Similarweb

Email 1 (first email):

Email 2 (follow-up with onboarding):

Email 3 (follow-up):

Example of sending cold email campaigns from HubSpot

Email 1 (initial email):

Email 2 (follow-up with successful cases):

Email 3 (short follow-up with offer):

Create the most successful cold email sequences with GetProspect

Before creating a cold email sequence, you can find prospect lists that best fit your ICP.

GetProspect cold emailing tool: prospect list search and segmentation

1. Log in to GetProspect and navigate to the Search block.
2. Take advantage of the 17+ filters and under filters.
3. Get lists of qualified, relevant leads.
4. Segment the lists by organizing them into different lists and folders.

How to set up a cold email sequence?

So, we have a list of leads for creating a cold email sequence, and now we may start a set-up campaign.

• You may start sending to a separate segmented list by going to the Lists block and then clicking Actions -> Sequence.

• Choose a name for your email campaign and create the sequence to add leads.

Or simply go to the Sequence block and add lists with email recipients/prospects later.

• Now, it's time to build the cold email campaign itself. You can also set up A/B testing at the same time. Just add another version of the message to each email.

• You can add a Signature, Unsubscribe link, properties (for personalization), choose from already saved templates, or add attachments to each email in your cold email sequence. 

• Next, click «Add new step» and add a Follow-up email that will be sent to the prospect list in as many days as you specify.

Next, add as many follow-up emails as needed in your cold email sequence and move on to the next step.

• Then, you need to add a list of email recipients. In the GetProspect cold emailing tool, you can search for leads through a B2B database, import data, or add leads already saved in the GetProspect web app.

• Next, you go through the settings - Connect and set up an email account, Limits, Tracking, etc. Here, you can also change your signature and add a Custom subdomain.

• Next is one of the final stages of scheduling. Customize your emails according to the prospects' time zone and choose the days your prospects will likely open your email.

• Before sending, you may fix something else in your email chain by reviewing it or removing some contacts from the campaign.

Press Launch with confidence.

Or send out a test cold email sequence.

And then, you can analyze the email sequence in real-time.

Summary of cold email campaigns

• A tremendous cold email sequence is made by finding the most relevant leads, personalizing your emails, adding value to each email, and providing solutions to prospects' pain points.
• You always need to add follow-ups because many leads may simply miss your email in the email stream, or one email will not be enough to motivate a person to click on the CTA button. 
• 80% of sales happen after about five or more follow-ups (HubSpot).
• In order to succeed, a cold email sequence with follow-up emails should be personalized, have catchy headlines, be structured, contain a clear call to action, and have a reasonable sending schedule.
• Tasks before launching sequence - you need to determine who your target audience is, their problems, how you can help them, see if your lead lists use your competitors' products, etc.
• You can use ready-made templates of cold emails, but you need to work them out well, not just change 2 to 3 words and send them to the leads. Also, do not forget about other prohibitions when creating cold email sequences - this is not to make such emails too long. Remember about tact, and do not put pressure on people.