The Best Cold Emailing Software and Top-Tier Cold Email Examples

This article is written in collaboration with Visitor Queue as the second of a 2-part series focusing on the best software and strategies for cold outreach. Find part 1 (10 Best Lead Generation Tactics and How to Follow Up) here!

A cold email is oftentimes the first touchpoint your team will have with a prospective customer. The initial email you send can be the deciding factor of a client wanting to work with you or ignoring you completely.

With so much pressure on that initial email, you must craft the perfect message.

Once you have your perfect message created, cold emailing software will help manage your leads, provide analytics, and boost productivity. Keep reading for the best cold emailing software and how to craft the perfect cold email to drive more conversions.

What is Cold Emailing?

Before we dive into the best cold emailing software, let’s go over what a cold email is and why your business should take advantage of it.

I’m sure you are aware of the term “cold calling”. Cold emailing is similar – but it can be a lot more effective if done properly. On the flip side, if done poorly it can seriously hurt your chances of connecting with someone.

A cold email is typically sent to a potential customer that you have not spoken to before, or in a long time. The goal is to get the conversation started, not to immediately convert them into paying customers.

It is the first step in building a long-lasting relationship.

Now that we are familiar with what cold emails are, let’s jump into some of the best cold emailing software out there to help enable your team.

The 7 Best Cold Email Tools

MailShake

With MailShake, you will be able to connect with your prospects, book more meetings, and ultimately generate more sales. In your account, you can create automated email sequences, respond to leads, and personalize your messages in order to optimize your prospect’s experience. MailShake can integrate with your existing CRM software and make your sales team’s lives a little easier. Their subscriptions start at $59 USD per user, per month.

Outreach

Outreach is one of the most well-known cold emailing software out there, with clients at Zoom, Zendesk, and Signal. Their software focuses on email sequences and task management, providing your team with AI-driven reports to help predict sales trends and buyer behavior. Outreach has a variety of plans that are priced based on your team’s specific needs.

SmartReach

With 4.9 out of 5 stars on G2, SmartReach is one of the best-rated cold emailing software on this list. With SmartReach, your team can schedule and personalize emails as well as automatically follow up with your prospects to provide them with the best experience possible. SmartReach is an affordable option for smaller businesses, with plans starting at just $24 USD per user or $99 for 5 users.

Woodpecker

Woodpecker proclaims that they use a unique algorithm for maximum email deliverability, meaning your emails are delivered to verified email addresses, don’t end up in junk/spam, and are more likely to be opened by your prospect. We all know that prospects are less likely to open and trust emails that end up in their spam folders! Woodpecker’s monthly plans start at $59 USD. Unlike a lot of other companies on this list, they do not charge an extra fee for multiple users.

Outplay

Outplay is another highly ranked cold emailing software with 4.8 out of 5 stars on G2. Reviews state their customer service and software are superb. Outplay helps sales teams be more human with their online interactions, which leads to more conversions and a better experience for your customers. They integrate with a variety of CRM software as well as Zapier. Their plans are on the more expensive side, with plans starting at $120 USD per user.

Klenty

With Klenty, all you have to do is upload a list of contacts from any source and add them to a campaign that best fits their needs. If your list of contacts is dwindling, check out a lead generation software, like Visitor Queue, that can identify your website visitors and provide you with business and employee contact information – including email addresses. Once you add your contacts to Klenty, you’ll be ready to send them emails that are best suited to their needs. Klenty caters to a variety of companies including start-ups, with their pricing starting at just $35 USD per month per user.

Snov.io

With over 150,000 clients, Snov.io is one of the biggest email software companies on this list. Snov.io is an all-encompassing platform that will help your team with everything from prospecting and managing clients, to automating emails and providing you with stats on your performance. With Snov, you can easily set up AB testing to find out what works the best for your clients. Plus, they are an affordable platform for businesses of every size, and every plan has unlimited users allowed. Their plans start at $33 for startups and are based on the number of recipients you need.

Contactout

ContactOut is a valuable email finder tool for sales and recruitment professionals seeking to find and connect with prospects and candidates. It features a powerful algorithm that searches for up-to-date contact information on LinkedIn and integrates with popular email platforms like Gmail and Outlook. With a free basic version that includes up to 100 searches per month and paid plans starting at $19 per month, ContactOut provides a range of features, including email verification and ATS integration, to help users maximize their outreach campaigns.

Hunter.io

Hunter Campaigns offers a seamless way to automate personalized email campaigns. You can build automated email sequences with multiple follow-ups, control your sending schedules and limits, connect multiple email accounts, and ensure high deliverability. Adding new features, Inbox and Engagement, makes Campaigns a perfect choice for teams. The Inbox feature unifies all email accounts into a simple dashboard where everyone can see and reply to every email. The Engagement feature helps you filter and segment recipients based on their activity. The best thing is that Campaigns are free if you send emails to up to 500 recipients per campaign.

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What’s Next?

Once you choose a cold emailing software, the easy part is done. The hard part is crafting the emails that you will use in your automation. Luckily for you, we’ve done the hard part and created a list of cold emails that actually work.

7 Top-Tier Cold Email Examples & Advice

Once you choose a cold emailing software, the easy part is done. The hard part is crafting the emails that you will use in your automation.

Luckily for you, we’ve done the hard part and created a list of cold emails* that actually work.

Note: most of these emails were reviewed and rewritten during SDRevolution’s live show, SDRescue. Check out some past episodes for more context!

*All emails are in italics below, copied word for word from an actual cold email with sensitive information redacted.

The Community Connection

Hi [prospect],

Saw your post about [insert recent LinkedIn post of theirs here]. Figured I would reach out!

Awesome to see that you’re a member of RevGenius. I’ve been on there for about 3 months now and I’ve learned quite a bit!

One of the best pieces of advice I got from a RevGenius member was around sales & marketing alignment. Turns out one of the main culprits of misalignment was around collateral – sales was finding it hard to access, and marketing was annoyed at their constant pestering. Classic problem.

Is this something you’re experiencing at [company]? Happy to share what that RevGeius member recommended (and slide in a quick value prop or two about [company]).

Thanks!

This email excels at a few things. Starting off with something personal – in this case, a recent LinkedIn post – catches the reader’s attention and draws them into the rest of the email. Mentioning a mutual community membership is another way of adding a personal touch and humanizing the message.

From there, the SDR illuminates a potential problem – sales and marketing misalignment – that their solution can help solve. It’s framed in a way that prioritizes helping the prospect vs. selling to the prospect – further highlighted in the CTA. There’s no pressure to take a meeting, the SDR is asking a simple question and offering help/advice.

More often than not, an email that can help guide your prospect to a decision instead of pressuring them into taking a meeting will be better received.

Working Referrals

Hey [prospect],

Sorry we’ve missed each other on the phone. 

I spoke with [colleague] and they thought that partnering with [brand] could increase your average deal size and differentiate you in competitive deals.

Would you be open to exploring this further?

A good referral email template is a must-have for your cold email folder. After speaking about the right things with the wrong person, the obvious next step is to reach out to the right person.

Don’t let the conversation you did have be for naught. Use what you learned to inform your outreach, like in the above scenario. The SDR took information about the needs of the prospect’s organization and used it to warm up their cold email. By including the colleague’s name and opinion it gives more credibility to your overall message.

Keeping these emails short is also a best practice. Remember, this prospect is not easy to get a hold of, that’s likely why you talked to their less qualified colleague in the first place. You just have to do enough to show credibility and pique their interest. Don’t worry about discussing details or heavy qualifications until they show interest and/or are further down the funnel.

Leveraging Compelling Events

Hey [prospect],

I saw that you were recently acquired and I find that usually means launching into new industry verticals to meet aggressive net-new revenue targets. 

If your launch goes awry, it can be cost-prohibitive and time-consuming to recover.

I lead our go-to-market team and I’d love to send you the GTM plan that I use to see if it gives you any ideas. 

Would this interest you?

This is a great example of where automation and personalization can work together to make the perfect email. Finding recent compelling events for your target accounts takes a skilled SDR. While there are plenty of tools out there to notify you of various happenings (Google Alerts being the most basic and most popular) they don’t mean anything if you can’t position it the right way.

In this example, the SDR is already aware of the various challenges that come with being acquired and having to develop a new GTM strategy. The prospect reading this email will see that the SDR is both knowledgeable about their organization and the industry in which they work. This type of credibility goes a long way towards building the rapport necessary to develop a relationship further down the funnel.

Make a Deposit

Hey [prospect],

I often see bootstrapped agency founders relying too much on networking & referrals for new clients because they don’t have enough time to devote to sales prospecting.

[brand] automates new business development for founder-driven marketing agencies, acting as a virtual extension of the team to target, engage, & convert buyers into sales conversations (on autopilot).

If I sent you a list of new potential clients based on key buying triggers in your industry, would you be open to reviewing?

There are a number of different calls-to-action (CTAs) you can use at the end of your email to promote follow-up from the prospect. However, today’s buyers are often wary of the hard ask for a meeting. They know how sales pipelines work and unless they’re really interested they usually don’t want to jump into the funnel.

Instead, this SDR ends their email offering to share a useful resource. Think of it as a mini version of a free trial. It gives the prospect a better idea of what you’re selling without forcing them through any potentially contentious conversations with a salesperson.

Having this kind of CTA also shows that this SDR is prioritizing building rapport over passing leads. While that may seem counterintuitive to an SDR with a lead-based goal, it shows the prospect that you care about more than just your commission. This type of goodwill pays real dividends when the prospect does decide to have a conversation (hopefully based on the resource you sent their way).

Solution to a Presumed Problem

[prospect],

Does a digital work environment reduce employee engagement, productivity, and motivation? 

Isolation at home is an ongoing professional obstacle and many digitally-managed teams are starving for better communication and idea flow.

However, a recent study from Doxee found that an average user retained 8.5x more of a message with video versus a text-based format.

{COMPANY} has a sizeable team that likely demands efficient communication, so I’m hoping to share a few video assets I’ve made for similar orgs to help keep their digital teams engaged.

Could I send those over to see if it’d make sense to connect further?

This is a great strategy if you want to come across as well-researched when the account has little to no information available on them.

It can be dangerous to make assumptions, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. When that’s the case, you should be doing as much general research as you can. Not only did the SDR make some (likely) assumptions, they also backed it up with data they found in the form of a study. Showing that their assumptions are based on facts lends them a great deal more credibility.

Use Humor to Break Tension

Subject Line: Humor me, {Insert name}?

I know “[prospect’s actual name]” is the right answer here, but humor can often be a great icebreaker.

This year’s [EVENT] Summit event is combining the best of comedy, networking, and industry expertise to help sales & marketing professionals level up their game.

• Learn how to close the gap between sales and marketing

• Hear [CELEBRITY] make a few sales/marketing jabs & jokes

• Have your tarot cards read (and more!)

Save your spot here [prospect]- invite as many team members or colleagues as you’d like!

It’s a common assumption that humor isn’t professional, and to be fair, certain humor is inappropriate for work. I think you know which kind. But professional humor does exist. And when the name of the game is standing out from all the other emails clogging a prospect’s inbox, finding a humorous way to stick out is a great strategy.

In this example, the SDR more or less pretended to be bad at their job, so much so that they stand out and the prospect opens the email, only to find a well-crafted and clever setup and delivery for their product. It might seem risky, but when the alternative is getting buried in an inbox, it’s well worth the experiment.

Now, this strategy was a little easier to pull off here because he’s promoting a comedy event, but the idea is sound regardless of what you’re selling. The more important takeaway is that you need to be genuine when doing this. If you’re generally not much of a jokester, this strategy probably isn’t for you. But for those with comedy chops, adding humor to your outreach not only makes you stand out and break the ice, it also allows you to put some of your own personality into your messaging which lets the prospect get to know you a little before ever even hearing your voice.

From Personal to Professional

Hi {NAME},

Had to reach out when I saw that you’re a Gryffindor. After this crazy year, I think we could all use some magic in our lives.

As a Harry Potter fan and sales leader, I’m sure you’d love to have a Mirror of Erised so you can see your sales team closing all the biggest deals and hitting your forecast at the end of the quarter.

That’s what your peers love about [brand] – they have instant insight into risk/upside in their pipeline so they can predict, within 5%, where they will finish the quarter during week 1 of the quarter.

I don’t expect this to cast a spell on you right away, but would it be worth a brief conversation to see how [brand] could support {COMPANY}?

[SDR]

[brand] SDR & Hufflepuff

If you’re one of those people that just isn’t that funny (or at least not confident about it) don’t fret! There are plenty of ways to inject your personality into email copy without making jokes. The more important factor to keep in mind is relevance. If a prospect shows no indication of interest in Harry Potter do not send them a Harry Potter-themed email.

There are 2 primary ways to include relevance in your outreach. You can either A) provide something relevant to the business needs of the account or B) provide something relevant to the person you’re reaching out to. This email is a stellar example of the latter. They saw a LinkedIn post (or similar) referencing Harry Potter and jumped on the opportunity to use it in their outreach.

Importantly, they didn’t actually spend most of their email talking about the Wizarding World. While wizarding references are expertly sewn into most of the email, they’re used to highlight their product/value props, not to distract from them. It’s easy to go wrong with this strategy if you focus too much on personalization and not enough on the message you’re sending. You should be comfortable taking your time to craft an email like this. I guarantee that this SDR didn’t just send their first draft. It likely took them a handful of iterations before they found the perfect balance between relevant personalization and important product messaging.

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Cold emailing prospects can be a tricky and tedious process, and worst of all there are hundreds of other SDRs trying to reach the same people at the same exact time. All of this advice is aimed at doing one of two things: Standing out in an inbox or crafting a compelling message. And getting a prospect to read your email is often the more difficult of the two.

By focusing on these two factors as you craft emails and templates you’ll find your open and reply rates both going up, without having to deal with common distractions like misaligned subject lines and irrelevant messaging. Pair that with whichever email automation tool you chose and you’ll be getting cold email leads before you know it.

We would like to thank Visitor Queue for collaborating with us on this series. Visitor Queue is a B2B lead generation company that can identify anonymous companies that visit your website. If you have any questions about how Visitor Queue can help drive business growth, feel free to connect with them here.