July 25, 2023 Copy
Writing cold email copy for conversions (using Paysend as a case study)
Believe it or not, cold email conversions don't come from great email copy. It's not about personalisation, spacing your paragraphs for mobile reading or killer calls to action.
All those are useless... unless you find the real reason people buy your product and the right words to express them.
That can only come from mining conversion data/keywords.
Once you have this nailed down, you can simply plug the conversion data into your existing cold email templates and turn more of your conversations into meetings.
In this article, we are going to show you how to make 'conversion data' the spine of your cold email copy.
Why you need conversion data
If we want to write emails that convert better, we should go to the places where conversion has happened before.
The main reason prospects convert in cold emails is that we've promised (implicitly or explicitly) to solve the right problem—that's important to them—at the right time.
And for this to happen, we need to have promised the right thing.
This information is hidden in bottom-of-funnel channels/content/interactions, such as AE sales call recordings, successful direct response ads, case studies and testimonials.
How to find this data in less than 10 minutes
Let's be practical and use Paysend as our guinea pig. They're a fintech helping businesses and individuals send money across borders.
Paysend was listed by the Financial Times as part of Europe's 1,000 fastest-growing companies of 2023.
Meaning its go-to-market activities at the time of writing this article are probably converting prospects, and any conversion data we 'steal' from them will probably be proven to be effective.
(If your company is new, or is struggling with product market fit, consider using a successful competitor's data. They are successful for a reason.)
What to look for
We are fishing for phrases indicative of the things that are important to PaySend's customers as it relates to buying decisions.
We'll then make them the focus of our emails.
Image 1
This screenshot is from PaySend's ads section within their LinkedIn posts. If you're looking at this with a cold emailer's eyes, here is the insight you will glean:
The process affected by PaySend's product: payroll (infrastructure)
Issues that influence buyer decisions: transaction fees, FX rates, processing times
Bottom of funnel feature that may sway conversations: availability of API integration
Image 2
Insight:
Party affected by PaySend's product: international suppliers and vendors
Thing/process affected by PaySend's product: cash, cash flow management
Department directly affected by PaySend's product: finance, treasury
Department indirectly affected by Paysend's product: procurement
Phrases to keep in mind: flat fee per transaction, card processing charges, currency conversion
Image 3
Insight:
Process affected by PaySend's product: international employee payouts
Pain point associated with existing/competing solutions: the payments process is complex, with multiple steps and intermediaries.
As shown below, you can also use Facebook ads library to find more ads to mine for conversion data.
The beauty of the FB ads library is that it shows you exactly how long an advertisement has been running, and if it has been on for months, then take it as a hint that the copy is probably successful in nudging prospects to make decisions. Full of insights you can use to increase conversions in your cold emails.
Mining testimonials and case studies for conversion data
Case studies and testimonials are gold mines for this kind of data; it also does not hurt that they're words directly from the customer's mouth. Here's what I found when I dug into Paysend's:
Insights:
Paysend's benefits: fast, efficient, cost-effective payments
Type of business that resonates with PaySend's product: companies expanding internationally and need to pay employees/partners across borders.
To test this, I searched for keywords indicative of international expansion, e.g. "grow internationally," and found Salt Edge–as shown in the screenshot below–who are expanding into new markets and probably making payouts across borders to partners and employees.
When you are done with this type of research; you are left with context and exact phrases from instances where customers have bought before.
The info we've gathered above is the spine ( the pain point/ problem being solved, the affected party and process, plus the phrases used to describe these) that will form our cold email foundation.
You can then take your existing templates and reshape it around this data to make them more effective.
Let's do it practically using a random template I found online.
Found this one from Zendesk, written using the AIDA framework (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action).
Using the information gathered in our Paysend example, here's what this template will give us when fleshed out with Paysend's data from image 1 above:
Hi Jane,
What if WeArePaySend'sCompetitor could help you reduce the cost of paying international colleagues like John Doe?
Noticed he's based in your Barcelona office.
In one year’s time, we helped OnTop decrease transaction fees by 30% after integrating the WeArePaySend'sCompetitor payouts API.
In addition to decreasing costs, WeArePaySend'sCompetitor helped company X reduce the time it took to pay international employees from 10,000.222 hours to X minutes.
I’d love to talk to you about how we could help your company pay employees in multiple countries without the need for multiple intermediaries.
Do you have time to connect this week?
The phrases in bold are from the data we gathered in image 3. Though this script is not my cup of tea (too much focus on the seller's company and the preview text doesn't inspire a click), I can say with certainty that it is optimised for conversion because of the data we stole from Paysend.
Try it.
Plug: Should you need help with cold email copy and research; you know who to spam till he replies: [email protected]