The 3 Cold Emails Templates Every Content Marketer Should Use

A lot of what I do starts with cold emails. Content marketing is all about creating relationships, and you’re not going to be able to do that unless you start putting yourself out there.

The reason that I have been successful with building an audience is because I believe in a help-first, ask questions later approach. I recognize the value in posting a link, mentioning an influencer, and promoting valuable tools—and so I try to do that for others as much as I can. It acts as a pre-emptive olive branch, showing others that my main concern, before I have even so much as an introduction, that I’m here to be helpful.

If you can adopt this philosophy early on, I believe it’s going to help you in every aspect of cold outreach. Be the kind of person that people want to have a relationship with, and it’s going to go far in creating in roads when you do start to reach out. When the time comes, however, you also need to have a strategy for getting your foot in the door, and that’s the art of the cold email.

Here are the three cold emails that I most commonly send. I’ve provided examples of the format that I find to be most successful, and I’ll walk through the most important aspects of each so that you can produce your own.

Cold Emailing 101: Every Word Counts

As this Mailchimp study from a few years back (though just recently updated) shows, every word in an email counts. Don’t take these emails lightly—you need to do your homework, take your time, and send off something that you feel truly confident in. A couple of things I would recommend you add to your checklist before you even start:

Spell Check

If you send an email off with a typo, you’re going to almost instantly lose credibility. You need to prove to someone that you’re a professional, and that you value their time. While inherently a typo doesn’t mean you’re not those things, it’s a pretty good indicator of people who are, and only hurts your chances of showing credibility.

Be Personal

Don’t send emails to Madam or Sir—especially if you’re guessing at the person’s gender because the name is ambiguous. Really show that you know who this person is, you know their work specifically, and you value their time and input. Don’t make someone feel like their a pawn in your game, make them feel like they’ve been set apart.

Use An Email Signature

You’ll save a lot of space talking about who you are and what you’ve done, simply by adding in a smart email signature. A lot of people ask if they think that mine is more effective because I have some major publications listed. But as I’ll show you in the examples below, I was using a signature before those opportunities arose, simply promoting my blog and social profiles instead, and saw the same success rates.

Remember The Value-Add

Remember: Every pitch is an opportunity to be helpful, not just to gain something. No matter what the reason for the email, the focus—and what you need to communicate—should be something that gives value to that person’s work. That can be a relationship, content, or even just the opportunity for growth.

Be Concise

Not one of the emails I will show you below are very long. When sending InMail to someone you aren’t connected to on LinkedIn, they recommend that you keep a message to fewer than 100 words. I think that a good rule of thumb is to not surpass a paragraph of more than four lines.

You can have multiple paragraphs, but if people see a big block of text, they’re going to be scared off, and possibly miss important details. So keep your message as short and controlled as possible.

The Promotional Email

Let’s start with a promotional email. There are generally two different things you could be promoting: content, or a tool. I’ll break down examples for both, so let’s start with content promotion.

Before anything, this email starts with a qualification of who I am: I like this persons work, I consider them to be an influencer, and therefore I’m probably reaching a similar audience as them. And I said all of that, simply by saying that I was a fan, and letting them know that I mentioned them in a blog post.

Next, I used custom hyperlink, rather than just posting the URL. This gives them the opportunity to easily read the title, understand what kind of blog post it is, and potentially pique their interest more quickly.

Finally, I wrapped up the email with a solid CTA. I was direct about what I wanted, and made sure that it was clear what I was asking for.

You’ll probably notice two things about this email: to start, it’s extremely short. I have three different paragraphs, none more than one line long. I was straight to the point, effective in my communication, and didn’t waste space with unnecessary filler. Despite it’s short length, I was able to hit every item on my checklist.

The second thing is that I wasn’t afraid to paint in a little personality, and as you can see, that was one of the main draws for this person. You’re not a robot, so don’t make your emails sound as if you are. There’s plenty of wiggle room on the spectrum of professionalism.

This is an email we use at Content Marketer to promote our product. We’re often using the tool itself to find folks that we can reach out to, which gives us a preliminary understanding that they’re marketers and influencers—potentially the type of people who would like to use our service.

You’ll notice that the email is heavy on value-add. We start right off by acknowledging that we understand their profession by introducing a felt need for other content marketers. Then we qualify the offer by giving tangible examples.

Because we put the CTA at the beginning of the email, we simply ended with a cordial well-wishing. It’s short, sweet, and to the point.

The Guest Post Pitch

Guest posting is an incredibly valuable tool, and one that works for Content Marketers at any level: whether you’re just starting out, or you’re looking to poach the big fish. This email format applies to every level as well.

A pitch doesn’t have to look to different from a promotional email, and can be effective for many of the same reasons. I started about by qualifying myself as a published blogger, with my own site where I’m writing about similar industry information.

I had done my research, so I knew their audience, their preferred subjects, and their style. Because the post I written mentioned them, and had a similar feel, I was able to show my credentials with one simple link.

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention anything about the post itself. Oftentimes what I see in bad guest post pitches is that people take up a lot of the email real estate with unnecessary detail. If you can quality yourself well from the start, that can be enough to start a dialogue, and then a future email can be where you start to lay out some concrete details. Be confident in your abilities, and don’t give it all away—you’ll come across desperate, and potentially lose them in the details.

The Outreach Email

Finally, there’s outreach. I love building relationships, and it’s something that’s part and parcel to what I’m doing every single day. I work my ass off to network with as many people as possible, and a part of that was for the last six months or so, making a point to talk to at least one new person every single day.

Email outreach is just another part of that. Sometimes the point is just to create new relationships, and that doesn’t look too much different than any other cold email.

My goal for this email was genuinely to create a new content marketing relationship. I had mentioned this person as someone I respect in a post I had written, and used that as an opportunity to reach out. Note that I didn’t ask them to share it, but rather simply shared it with them (that in and of itself is often enough to motivate someone to share, but that’s beside the point).

I then mentioned that I would love to meet up with them if we’re in town at the same time. That is a CTA in it’s own way, and is proof that while the formula never has to change, the application will always look different for each individual. Everything on the checklist still applies here.

And it’s as simple as that: a short, clear email that adds value for them, and creates an opening for further follow up. As you can see, it was effective in doing so.

Your Turn

Now it’s time to try these out for yourself. Analyze what works, make corrections, and try it again. The key to outreach is that you’re always doing it. Never stop creating relationships, because they’re the key to success in content marketing.

What have you found works best for you in cold outreach? Share your success stories in the comments below, and start engaging with other content marketers who are eager to create new relationships!