Cold Email Personalization: The Complete Guide

The conversion rate of cold emails is underwhelming, with only 1% to 5% of cold emails getting responded to by the intended audience. This defeats the very purpose of email marketing. On the other hand, personalized emails have been shown to perform 202% better than basic cold emails. 

In this guide, we'll show you how to write personalized cold emails that allow you to stand out from the crowd and will help you get more replies.

Most importantly, you'll be able to build good relationships with prospects and use your prospecting and sales emails to grow your business.

Let's dive straight in.

What is Cold Email Personalization?

Personalization is adding a piece of text that is different per prospect.

It's not just about using the basic customer data attributes like {{prospect.first_name}} and {{company.name}}.

In personalized email marketing, you personalize entire email content to show your prospects that you've researched them and care about getting their attention.

Yes, you read that right. You need to personalize every email you send in a unique way.

Effective personalized email can differentiate between an email campaign that flops and an exceptionally successful one. Today, personalization is table stakes. It earns you the right to reach out.

The Problem with Most Cold Emails

Many people give up on cold emailing because they don't get the results they expect from it.

But, if it didn't work, fast-growing startups, Fortune 500s, and successful agencies wouldn't use cold outreach to grow their pipeline and revenue.

The problem with most email content is simple. They're not compelling or personalized.

If you're receiving bad cold emails, you'll know what I'm talking about.

As soon as you open it (or even from the snippet preview), you know it will end up in the spam folder. Let's examine some of the main reasons most cold email campaigns fail.

1. Fake or Surface-Level Personalization

Personalized email marketing is vital to seeing results. Without personalization, you're showing leads that you're happy to do the bare minimum to get their business.

If you run a lead generation agency or similar company with high LTV, you should go further than just using basic customer data {{prospect.first_name}} and {{company.name}}.

Five years ago, that might have counted as personalized email, but today, every cold emailer you're competing with inside the inbox uses those same custom fields, so you need to step it up.

You must show decision-makers that you value their time, and personalizing your cold emails beyond what everyone else does will help you stand out.

Avoid sending generic emails with fake personalization; you'll get more replies, more calls booked, and more sales.

2. Too Focused on Scaling Quickly

Another reason your cold email campaigns are failing is that you're too focused on volume.

It's true; you do have to scale at some point. After all, QuickMail is designed to let you automate and send a personalized cold email at scale. But you need a formula that works.

But, your focus should not be on scaling but on getting replies.

If you have to send emails individually, that's how you should start. It's slow but better than sending 100 at once but without a reply.

When you've found a repeatable process for personalizing emails that work, you can start to scale your campaigns.

Next, I'll show you easy ways to personalize your cold emails to help you get more replies.

Why You Need to Personalize Your Emails

1. It's Important for Email Deliverability

Spam filters hate mass email. If you send out 100 identical prospecting emails at once, ESPs like Gmail and Outlook will think you're spamming. They'll quickly block your emails from landing in your prospects' inboxes.

If you personalize each message, your emails have a MUCH better chance of staying out of the spam folder and being delivered to the primary inbox.

Personalization leads to more email engagement and shows ESPs that you're a trustworthy sender. In the future, your emails will be more likely to land in the inbox, leading to compounding benefits.

Plus, you'll get far fewer spam reports, as people won't mark your emails as spam if it's clear you've put in the effort to learn about them before reaching out.

2. Personalized Emails Attract More Replies

Which email would you rather reply to? A generic, one-size-fits-all email template like this?:

Hi,

I make weekly videos for blogs.

Here <link> is one that I published earlier this week.

Just wanted to email you and see if {{company}} would be interested in a similar series

Is this something you would be interested in?

Best,

{{inbox.name}}

Not too compelling, right?

But what if you received a personalized cold email like the example below?:

The sender, Bryan, paid the recipient an immediate compliment (proving he's done his background research), added social proof relevant to the company he's reaching out to, and even made a personalized demo for his prospect. It would be hard not to reply positively to that level of effort.

If you put yourself in your recipient's shoes, you'll quickly understand why personalizing your cold emails beyond the basic {{prospect.first_name}} is vital.

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8 Ways to Personalize Your Cold Emails

1. Mention Where You Found Each Prospect

Want an easy way to write an effective introductory sentence? Mention where you found your prospect. It's simple but shows you haven't just scraped their email from a huge email database and added them to your outreach campaigns.

Example:

1. "I read your article on B2B lead generation on QuickMail's blog."

2. "Saw that you're speaking at Dreamforce in September."

2. Highlight Technologies They Use

As well as being an excellent way to find qualified prospects, knowing the technologies your recipient uses to run their business is a powerful way to break the ice — it shows you've done in-depth research about them. Tools like BuiltWith will show you any technology a company uses on its website.

For example:

1. "Since you're using HubSpot to capture leads on your website, I wanted to get your take on this."

2. "I saw you're using Hotjar on your website. Have you found any useful insights from it?"

3. Prove That You've Researched their Company

Is there something interesting about their company that you can mention in your email? Maybe they were featured in the news, or their startup just received a new round of funding.

It's a simple but effective way to show you've researched their company and are confident they're a good fit for your outreach.

For example:

1. "Nice work on getting a five-star rating for {{company.name}} on Glassdoor!"

2. "Awesome to see that you just closed a new round of funding— big plans for the next quarter?"

4. Let Them Know You Saw Them in the News

If your prospect or target company has received any news features, it's an excellent opportunity to congratulate them.

Most people are happy to hear praise from others about their successes, so it's a good way to make a stellar first impression.

For example:

1. "Saw {{company.name}} was just named Austin's fastest-growing HR company by TechCrunch. Congrats!"

2. "Read your interview in [local news website] discussing {{company.name}}'s plans for the next couple of years. 

3. Love the vision."

5. Look Into Their Hiring Plans

If you're looking to start conversations with fast-growing companies, mentioning the roles they're currently hiring for can help— especially if you can help them solve their problem.

For example:

1. "How's the search for your {{prospect.custom.Job_Opening}} going? I have a few tips from building our team that I can share if you're interested."

2. "Saw you're hiring for three new {{prospect.custom.Job_Opening}}. Are you hiring locally for those?"

6. Bring Up Your Most Relevant Case Studies

If you're using case studies in your cold emails (which is always a good idea), you can use attributes to share the most relevant case study with each prospect.

You could mention a similar company if your prospect runs a SaaS business with a marketing product. If they work in the recruitment industry, mention another where they'll recognize the client name.

1. "I work with companies like {{prospect.custom.Marketing_Case_Study}} and make weekly videos for their blog."

2. "I work with companies like {{prospect.custom.Recruitment_Case_Study}} and help them acquire customers through Facebook Ads."

7. Mention Relevant Social Media Activity

Did your prospect like or share an article about the conversation you want to start? If so, bring it up as a way to introduce the reason you're emailing.

For example:

1. “Since you liked the {{HubSpot}} post about cold email metrics, I wanted to reach out to ask you about [related topic].”

2. "Saw you shared an article on LinkedIn about the difficulties of hiring developers. I can relate to that!"

8. Touch on Their Goals and Responsibilities

Please mention a specific goal or responsibility that your prospect has mentioned on their LinkedIn profile. You can use this to explain how you can help make their work easier, less stressful, or more impactful.

For example:

1. "I learned that you are in charge of increasing advertising ROI at {{company.name}}. Have you tested [tactic]? Happy to share what I learn if not."

2. "Saw that you run marketing at {{company.name}}. Are you the right person to reach out to about your video marketing strategy?"

5 Top Tools For Personalization

1. QuickMail - Designed to get replies

QuickMail is an omnichannel outreach tool that helps you design and deliver high-engagement campaigns, manage sales conversations, and view advanced campaign analytics. It can automate every outreach and shines as a cold emailing tool, CRM, and LinkedIn outreach tool.

QuickMail will let your team easily upload prospects, create outreach campaigns, follow up at custom intervals, use personalization attributes, and schedule emails. The best part is you can automate the entire process.

QuickMail for team members is free. Every plan comes with a generous amount of senders, volume limits, and inbox rotation is included with every plan.

Paid plans start as low as $49/month for 30,000 monthly emails.

Key Features 

• Omnichannel outreach automation (Email, LinkedIn, SMS, Call, etc.)

• Free auto-warmer integration

• Centralized inbox to manage all conversations effortlessly

• Import prospects automatically

• Schedule emails and follow up on autopilot with AI features

• Scale campaigns with a couple of clicks

• Integrate with the rest of your tools.

• View detailed statistics and A/B test your campaigns easily.

2. Salesmate

The Salesmate platform allows automated email prospecting, sales outreach, cold calling, and sales productivity.

You can use their Sequences feature to build personalized email campaigns sent on a predefined schedule. You can even integrate automated SMS messages into those sequences, which is useful for ABM campaigns.

Various personalized settings can be put in place to handle things like what to do if you get an out-of-office reply, campaign exit criteria, and assigning tags to prospects.

It's a powerful personalized email service tool and great for teams who want to collaborate on both sending emails and seeing their CRM activity in one place.

Pricing: Starts from $29 per user per month for email opening, link tracking, sync, and email templates. From $49 per user per month for goal management, email reminders, and a shared team inbox. $79 per user per month for increased inbox limits, a built-in power dialer, and increased email sequence limits.

Key Features 

• CRM features tracking prospect interactions after the initial cold outreach.

• Powerful integrations with 700+ apps to sync your outreach data with other tools

3. Snov.io

Snov.io is an email prospecting tool to help you identify promising leads, engage with them using email outreach, and manage deals in a sales CRM.

If you want a platform that helps you with everything from prospecting to managing deals in your CRM, it's a great option. The platform also includes an email finder. It collects data on companies and accounts and stores them in a database to help you identify good-fit prospective clients.

You can then import your target audience into your campaigns with verified email addresses and automate the process of reaching out and following up.

There's a Gmail extension to track engagement inside your inbox, and you can also see stats on performance inside Snov.io itself.

Pricing: From $39 per month for 5,000 email-sending credits. $99 per month for email AB testing and team permission control. Hands-on campaign strategy development from $999 per month is offered as a custom service.

Key Features 

• Includes a prospecting database to find potential clients

• User-friendly interface that makes it easy to schedule your bulk email campaigns

• UI that makes it easy to schedule your bulk email campaigns

• Email analytics to track your cold outreach campaign performance. 

4. Klenty

Klenty helps outbound and inbound sales teams send personalized cold emails and follow-ups. While it does have multi-channel outreach, it is popular for its cold email features and native integrations with Zoho, Pipedrive, Hubspot, and Salesforce. 

It will automatically remind sales representatives of their outreach tasks for the particular day–whether sending a follow-up or connecting with a prospect on LinkedIn. Reps can also preview cold emails before sending them and deliver them when prospects are most likely to check them.

Klenty also has built-in tools for improving your email deliverability and ensuring that your emails are sent at random intervals.

Custom domain tracking is also available if you want to track email engagement directly from your links.

Pricing ranges from Startup at $50, Growth at $70, Pro at $100, and Enterprise plans at custom pricing.

Key Features 

• Ability to create multiple sequences based on whether the prospect is cold, warm, or hot.

• There is no limit to the number of steps you can add to your sales sequence. 

• A/B testing is available for cold email sequences, and then the most effective ones are cloned.

5. SalesLoft

SalesLoft is a platform for sales engagement designed to help you engage with prospects and track your activities to see what's working.

You'll have a clear overview of your sales activities and essential tasks in one place, so you never leave a prospect waiting for a reply for long.

SalesLoft integrates with Sales Navigator and Salesforce, so you can quickly review your CRM records and ensure every personalized email is timely.

You can also create and save templates to reuse and see detailed metrics like open rates, reply rates, and click-through rates.

Pricing is available on request. Made for enterprise-level companies who need custom onboarding and guidance.

Key Features 

• Build automated outbound campaigns, including cold emails, follow-ups, SMS, and more.

• AI-based deal analytics to highlight prospects that need to be re-engaged

How to Find Your Email Personalization Opportunities

Knowing the topics you can mention when personalizing your cold emails is one thing. But how do you find the actual information you're going to mention?

Here are three simple strategies to deliver a personalized message:

1. Look at their LinkedIn Profile

People's LinkedIn profiles can reveal a lot.

Look for:

• Fascinating information in their About section

• Recent updates they've shared

• Past companies they worked for

• Your mutual connections

You can mention these things in an opening sentence to break the ice with a prospect.

For example, your email copy could start with:

Hi {{prospect.first_name}},

I saw the post you shared on LinkedIn about {{company.name}} 's recent award. Congrats!

It's a unique snippet you couldn't send to anyone else, and it's something your competition could forget.

Another tactic is to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator's advanced search to find prospects who are members of the same LinkedIn groups that you are or even identify leads based on whether they've recently shared content that mentions specific keywords.

2. Check Out Their Twitter Feed for Recent News and Content

Twitter is another social platform that can come in useful for cold email personalization. Not everyone is active on Twitter, but because it's more conversational than LinkedIn, it's an excellent way to find unique and highly personalized insights for your outreach.

This won't always work, as people may have a private Twitter account or inactive.

But, many will share company updates, industry insights, and updates that are perfect for use in an opening line or a P.S. note at the end of your cold email.

Avoid bringing up Tweets that are too old. If your prospect uses the platform for personal rather than professional reasons, you want to avoid bringing up anything too personal.

3. Find Company Updates on their Website

Look for a News or Press section on your prospects' websites. Not all will have it, but many will. If they don't have either, they might post updates to their blog.

Most people want to share their wins and successes with others, and they'll be happy to see you noticed it.

If you see a company recently closed a round of funding, was nominated for an award, hired new team members, or released new features, they're all things you can mention in your cold email.

Personalizing your cold emails like this won't win you any awards, but it will break the ice with a prospect, which is the goal.

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7 Best Cold Email Personalization Techniques to Follow

Your email templates won't write themselves. Even if you find a unique angle, you can still write a bad email that doesn't get replies.

This section will look at best practices to improve how you personalize your cold email.

None of these is a silver bullet, but they'll help you improve how you write your emails and should help you boost your reply rate.

Let's take a look.

1. Use a Completely Custom Opening Line for Every Prospect

The key to any good cold email is specificity. A good email should be unique and wouldn't work if you sent it to anyone else.

So, how can you do that at scale?

Firstly, you need a system that enables you to customize every single cold email.

Luckily, attributes (also called merge tags) enable you to insert dynamic personalization into every email.

In QuickMail, you can create your own custom attribute, such as: 

{{prospect.custom.Opening_Line}} or {{prospect.custom.Icebreaker}}. Then, you can import those from a CSV file containing your prospects.

You can then build a simple workflow in a spreadsheet where you add a custom opening line for every prospect.

Here's how to do it.

Start with a spreadsheet containing your prospects.

Add a column with a title like Opening_Line. For every potential buyer you're emailing, write a custom opening line.

Then, import your prospects into QuickMail.

Select your Opening_Line attribute during your import to ensure it's available in the email editor.

Then, in your campaign, select Opening_Line from your available attributes.

You'll see it show up in the email editor.

Before sending, you can preview your emails to ensure they are correctly populating with your custom opening line.

When you hit Send, your emails will auto-populate with your custom opening lines, and every email will be uniquely customized.

Now, this might sound like it's going to be time-consuming. And it will be, especially at first.

But it's the only real way to ensure your cold outreach is personalized and unique. Once you have a process that works, you could outsource it, but considering it can significantly impact campaign success, it's always worth reviewing internally before sending.

2. Double Up with a Custom P.S. Note

A personalized subject line and opening line are important places to break the ice, but the P.S. note is another great way to provide a personalized experience.

If you include one, chances are, your prospects' eyes will jump straight to it, sometimes before they even read your email body.

The P.S. is a spot to add personalization informally, and it adds extra proof that you've researched your prospect.

Here are some examples you could use:

• "Congrats on getting [well-known guest] on your podcast - how did you manage that?"

• “Checked out the case study with {{company}}, awesome work”

• "I saw your tweet mentioning you went to [conference]. It's a shame I missed you there!"

Your P.S. isn't the place for an extra sales pitch. It's a place to add a personal touch or find common ground. If you craft it well, it'll help boost your reply rate.

3. Avoid Stating the Obvious

If a startup CEO you're emailing just closed a round of funding, chances are, 9 out of 10 sales emails they receive will lead with a line like:

"Congrats on the recent funding".

Yes, it's relevant. But consider this: everyone else is emailing with the same opening line.

If a company is in the news, look for a unique angle to pitch.

For example, you could bring up:

• A recent podcast appearance where they discussed their growth plans

• A case study they published about helping one of their customers get results.

• Mention a post they shared on LinkedIn/Twitter about the funding.

Avoid writing the same things everybody else does; you'll look more genuine.

For example, a line like this would be a huge improvement:

"Listened to you on [podcast] discussing your recent funding— excited to see you execute on your growth plans with the extra resources behind {{company.name}}".

The core of the message is similar, but it goes the extra mile and clearly shows you've done research.

4. Use Relevant Case Studies and Social Proof

If you're doing cold outreach to someone, it's because you can help them with a specific task.

• Lead generation

• Paid advertising

• Recruitment

Whatever you're selling, the pitch must be personalized to your recipient.

For example, if you saw a great result doing lead generation for a recruitment agency, you won't be able to use that same pitch with a dental clinic.

Here's how to do that.

First, figure out what your prospect cares about most.

Sales? Leads? Revenue? Making a key hire?

Pick one of your case studies or recent results that aligns with your prospect’s own goals.

For example, if you're selling LinkedIn lead generation services to accountancy firms, don't mention a case study on how you helped a recruitment agency with SEO or Facebook Ads.

Say something like: "We recently helped {{accountancy firm}} in {{city}} increase their new client consultations by x%."

It's highly relevant to their business and links directly to a business goal they have in mind.

You'll increase your reply rates, and in turn, conversion rates should go up as you're personalizing your conversation to match their current goals.

If you're emailing people in multiple niches, you can split up your prospects over multiple campaigns in QuickMail or use attributes to personalize each.

You can manage them from a single dashboard and see results for all your campaigns in one place.

5. Consider Personalized Videos and Images in Your Cold Emails

Images or short videos make interactive emails.

They can work well if you execute them effectively.

For example, putting a photo of a cute animal or funny meme to try and encourage someone to reply or adding a screenshot of a prospect's website could slightly improve your reply rate.

You can use a tool like Hyperise to do this automatically (read their instructions on integrating Hyperrise with QuickMail here).

You could also record a short personalized video using a tool like Pitchlane with an overview of how to help someone.

Ryane Tully, founder of Pitchlane, says that leveraging video in your cold emails will improve the results of your campaigns:

“Cold email is already so powerful. Cold email with the personal touch of a video is unbeatable. You get the opportunity to elevator pitch your ideal prospects as if you had met them in person. With proper lead list segmentation, you can scale this red carpet experience to thousands of your ideal prospects, all from just one recording.”

Ryane-Tully

Images and videos in cold emails are an exciting way to make your email stand out, but there are a few things to consider.

Firstly, it may hurt your cold email deliverability. ESPs prefer plain-text emails, and you'll slightly increase your chances of having deliverability problems (however, if your image or video boosts engagement, this won't matter).

Second, if a prospect has images turned off in their inbox, they won't see it unless they choose to display images.

If they don't know you, they may not want to turn images on and, therefore, won't see your content, hurting your overall message and meaning your effort was for nothing.

It's another tactic you can test to personalize your outreach but remember that the image or video you include should add value to your email. There's no need to include it if it's just there as a gimmick.

You can also A/B test it against text-only email campaigns to see which performs best for you.

6. Don't Forget to Include Relevant Follow-Ups

So, you've spent time crafting a personalized opening email. No reply.

You need to follow up with your prospects to see significant results with cold emails. Over 55% of replies to cold emails are to a follow-up.

Your follow-ups need to be personalized as well.

If not, it'll look like you've thrown your prospect onto a generic nurturing campaign and don't care about engaging with them on a personal level.

Ideally, treat every email as if it's the first one your prospect will see.

Now, you don't have to create a personalized opening line in every follow-up, but make sure the case studies, resources, or extra value propositions you mention are highly relevant and interesting to each prospect in your email list.

If you do not see results, you can even experiment with adding a personalized note to the subject line or including {{prospect.first_name}} or {{company.name}}.

You can automatically send your follow-up emails using QuickMail. If someone doesn't reply to your first cold email, your next email will be sent after your chosen delay.

You can even choose between including your follow-up in the same email thread as the previous emails you've sent or not.

If you uncheck the "Include previous email" box, your follow-ups will start a new email thread.

Following up is one of the most powerful ways to boost your response rates, so always add them to your sequence.

7. Consider Your Recipients' Time Zone

If your sales emails are well personalized with compelling copy and a clear CTA, this step may only matter a little, but it can make a difference.

If your prospects are busy and your email lands in their inbox at 2 AM, they'll have a backlog of emails to read when they check their emails between 5-9 AM.

On the other hand, if you schedule your inbox to land in their inbox right as you expect them to check it, you'll be at the top of your mind and impossible to ignore.

Data from GetResponse says the best time to send an email to get high CTRs is 6 AM. Even though your cold emails are designed to get replies and not clicks, the time of day may still work because your prospects are waking up and checking their emails with a coffee.

But you want to avoid being at your computer, scheduling emails first thing in the morning.

To send your emails at specific times, you can use timetables in QuickMail.

Define the times you want emails sent, and create your timetable.

No matter when you write your emails, they'll only be sent at those specific times. You'll have complete control over the sending times and ensure your emails always land in your potential customer's inbox at the perfect time.

If you're sending campaigns to prospects in different time zones, you can create timetables for each time zone to ensure no prospect receives your emails at an awkward time.

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Send Personalized Emails at Scale with QuickMail

If you're ready to start scaling up your outbound campaigns, you'll need a cold email platform to help you. Doing everything manually is impossible if you send more than a few outreach emails weekly.

QuickMail can help.

Our platform is designed to help cold emailers like you quickly scale your campaigns with customized, personal emails.

Messages come directly from your email address to help increase replies, and it works with all the major email providers, including Gmail, Outlook, and custom inboxes.

You won't need to worry about following up, either.

Once you've created your campaign and added your prospects, your emails will be sent on a set schedule. If a prospect replies, they'll be paused on your campaigns, so you'll never make mistakes that hurt your reputation.

You can add multiple-step tasks, link your account with Zapier (to connect with other tools), Slack (to notify your team when you receive replies), or cold calling software like Aircall (to simplify your sales process).

QuickMail also lets you add multiple team members (at no additional cost). Hence, it's perfect for lead-generation agencies or fast-growing companies with various sales team members who need features like inbox rotation, unified analytics, and integrations with your key sales tools.

Just click here to start your free trial of QuickMail today.