A Cold Letter

How to increase the chances that you will get a response to the first letter in business correspondence? In this article, some useful tips from Masha Gurova, Head of PR at BEsmart, on how to make a cold email useful, balanced and friendly.

What should we send it for?

A cold letter is a convenient tool to establish first contact. In business communication, it is often used to establish partner’s relations.

There must be a balance of information and care, offers and emotions. It's important for the conversation slizer to calculate his profit and steps to realize it.
It is inadmissible for the communication to be chaotic,
non-transparent and incomplete. It would lower the value of any offer very much.

How can one write a cold letter?

1

Who are you and where do you know the contact from?
2

Who do you need to talk to and what for?
3

What next step do you suggest?
4

What must one learn to make a decision?

The most often met mistake is to write much about oneself and little about the offered idea. Frankly speaking, ten passages about the company only complicates everything: a conversationalizer will not read an enormous text just to read it. In the end, he will close the letter earlier or will get a portion of irritation at the start.

What to do?

Keep it short, and if you need to disclose details, put them in the final part of the letter. If the partner is interested, he or she will open a reference with links and a list of brands with which the company has worked.

After the introduction you should tell transparently where you got the contact from. For example, your common acquaintance gave it to you — tell his name; in that way you will enlarge chances for his reading the letter up to the end and answer. Or, perhaps, you might find it in an available access: in the site of the company or in a partner's community basis.

What else is worth doing?

Explain why you write exactly to that person (from the whole company). He will see at once that the question is in his zone of responsibility (if not, he will readdress it), and he will quickly adjust to the context of the talk.

An example of a cold email:

To: Anna Smith
Subject: Partnership with BEsmart

Anna, good afternoon!
My name is Maria Gurova, I manage the promotion in the communications studio BEsmart. I found your contact on the site (the name of the site). It is said there you are responsible for the events. I'll give you information about us further, I want to get to business at once :)

Formulate it exactly, what for you are writing this letter.

What do you want to get from that man?

And then highlight the next step in the communication and help the opponent with the answer.

What outcome do you expect with a positive and with a negative outcome?

An example of a cold email:

To: Anna Smith
Subject: Partnership with BEsmart

I'm following your Instagram and see that a number of measurements have increased. We like your development of this brand very much. Our team wants to make friends with you and perform discussions and debates with you. I think it may be useful as we work as we work for the same target audience.

I placed the ideas in the application to send them to colleagues conveniently. I'm ready to discuss everything in Zoom or pass to the convenient messenger.

At the end, you can present any references and materials. Make your choice, taking into account the opponent's benefit: what information may interest him to make a decision; will he decide it himself or will he coordinate the process with the company's management?

What may you tell at the end?

1

Give a detailed report about your company
2

Collect relevant examples and cases
3

Highlight the list of adjacent brands from the same niche

An example of a cold email:

To: Anna Smith
Subject: Partnership with BEsmart

Materials about us:

A short report about the directions of our work and similar cases.
Video from the measurements where discussions were moderated and debates were performed.
The document with the ideas and a draft estimation of the necessary resources.

Communication problems? Don't know how to start a conversation or what to write in your first email?

Write to us!

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