The 10 most engaging cold email formulas

guide

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The 10 Most Engaging Cold Email Formulas

Introduction

Anyone that has written copy for cold emails will always tell you the

same thing, it certainly isn’t as easy as it seems. In order to engage

leads, every line needs careful thinking and should encourage your

target audience to a relevant call to action or response. Fortunately,

there are ready made formulas out there that will improve your copy

and hopefully lift your response rates!

This guide has been curated by Spotler’s team of marketing experts,

combining our years of collective experience to bring you the best

techniques and strategies to fully engage a cold email audience.

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Table of Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1

1. AIDA (a.k.a The Personal Touch) ................................................................................ 3

2. BBB (a.k.a – Let’s get down to business) ................................................................... 4

3. QVC (a.k.a – Choose your right Call to Action) .......................................................... 5

4. PPP (a.k.a – The Nice Guy Approach) ........................................................................ 6

5. BAB (a.k.a - Describe a problem and propose a solution) ......................................... 7

6. PAS (a.k.a – Determining a pain point and solution) ................................................. 8

7. SSS (a.k.a Sell through stories) ................................................................................... 9

8. SCH (a.k.a – Steal the limelight) ............................................................................... 10

9. BYAF (a.k.a – Recognise a leads freedom) ............................................................... 11

10. RDM (a.k.a - A little bit of everything) ..................................................................... 12

Summary ......................................................................................................................... 13

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1. AIDA (a.k.a The Personal Touch)

We begin with the most common copywriting model, AIDA. This formula focuses on a

specific reader, using a personal, propositional approach to extend a friendly offer from one

person to another.

AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. This approach focuses on the

different stages of a sales cycle a lead will go through before making a purchasing decision.

However, it isn’t just a formula that mirrors a typical sales cycle, it’s also a blueprint that can

be applied to your B2B sales emails! You’ll want your email to:

Draw Attention: Get a catchy subject line in there and draw your leads attention.

Generate Interest: They learn something about the product that piques their interest. Use

your personas to make sure it’s appealing.

Stimulate Desire: How are you going to help? Answer that and you’ll have your leads

hooked.

Prompt Action: They take action based on their desire. Usually this entails making a

purchase/following a CTA.

Let’s see how this looks in practice:

Take note of how brief the email is. It illustrates the most important point that you should

remember when writing cold emails, make it as short as possible in order to increase the

chances of your leads reading through to the end. (Psst, for more ideas, check out our guide

on email marketing)!

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2. BBB (a.k.a – Let’s get down to business)

Much like our first formula, this one also emphasises the point of ‘shorter, is better’. Cold

emails are most likely to be read when they’re brief and easy to read, you can leave out

unnecessary adjectives or statements. Ideally, your BBB email should be structured to the

following principles:

Brief: Keep it as short as possible. Shorter emails result in faster response time.

Blunt: Cut to the chase. Showcase your product offering and why it’s useful or where you

could specifically add value to a lead or prospect.

Basic: Keep it simple. Don't use overly elaborate words or sentence constructions. Bear in

mind the person you're writing this email to.

This is how this email should be structured:

As you can see, there’s no beating around the bush, it’s straight down to business. This

particular formula works on brevity so every word has to bring value, in a few sentences

we’ve managed to highlight our prospect’s main pain point, introduced our services and

prompted the lead to take action. Anything else will simply distract from that core purpose.

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3. QVC (a.k.a – Choose your right Call to Action)

Starting your emails off with a question is guaranteed to give you a higher chance of

capturing the recipient’s attention, it also helps set your sales offer on the right footing. If

you’re not sure how to best engage a lead in this way, the QVC formula below will definitely

help!

Question: No need for introduction. Instead, go straight to the point and lead in with a

question closely related to your offer and the recipient's problem.

Value Proposition: Communicate your core message and try to highlight what makes you

stand out from everyone else.

Call-To-Action: The final point of your email should be strong. Use a closing call to action

that elicits a response.

Your email should go something like this:

This is another very effective formula, when implemented correctly, as it hooks your leads

attention from the beginning of the conversation. Try sounding more relaxed, you’ll want

these emails read as a friendly recommendation rather than a desperate plea for a

response.

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4. PPP (a.k.a – The Nice Guy Approach)

More psychology at work on this one! The PPP or ‘Nice Guy’ approach works because being

praised, even by a stranger, releases dopamine and should improve your leads mood and

willingness to engage.

Praise: Open up by genuinely praising your prospect in some way. According to studies,

receiving a compliment activates the same pleasure centres as receiving money! It’s the

perfect conversation starter for your email.

Picture: Build a cause-and-effect sequence to clearly show how your product or service can

help your prospect. When you explain cause and effect, prospects trust you and your

arguments more.

Push: Fuel their curiosity. Give a taste of your offer, but don’t go into detail on all the

benefits. Provide just enough information to excite the prospect's interest and push them to

action.

The email in action should look like this:

A pitfall we’ve seen from marketers on this one is not putting enough research into the

‘Praise’ element of the equation. If you’re going to start off with a compliment, it will work

best if it comes across as genuine and centred on a real accomplishment reached by your

lead or prospect. Perceived empty flattery will actually work against you on this one.

A fine line needs to also be acknowledged with regards to overly praising. The ‘Praise’

element is the most important part as it’s the dopamine driver that will encourage your lead

to respond and as such deserves the greatest attention to detail.

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5. BAB (a.k.a - Describe a problem and propose a solution)

This email formula is designed to appeal to your leads needs or desires. Let’s take a look.

Before: Describe a challenge your prospect faces. Make sure to only list the problems and

consequences that your product or service can reduce or solve.

After: Show them how awesome the future without this problem could be. If you have

specific stats or numbers - use them. People want to see real results.

Bridge: Explain how your product or service can help them reach that future.

Let’s see how this model should be composed:

To get the most from this model, make sure you write a short paragraph for each stage or

element of the formula. It’s particularly important to send a strong call to action with this

one.

When done well, it’s a huge hit with cold emails, it works along the Freudian pleasure

principle, which states that people instinctively gravitate towards a personally positive

outcome in order to avoid pain, these two elements being the main factors that prompt

people to act.

By using this formula, you will no longer be extending an email about your services, instead

you’ll have positioned yourself as someone that can bring a potential benefit or solution to

that client.

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6. PAS (a.k.a – Determining a pain point and solution)

Very similar to the BAB formula above, this model focuses on dissecting a particular pain

point for your target audience. However, instead of going straight to your solution, we pour

a bit of salt on the wound first. It goes something like this:

Problem: Identify the pain point.

Agitate: Hammer home the severity of this problem by going into the specifics of it.

Reinforce your statement with examples, personal experience or links to sources that prove

it.

Solve: At this stage, you should be the hero who has a solution to the problem.

The model should translate into an email in the following way:

For this example, you should work on the ‘Problem’ and ‘Agitate’ angles as those two will be

the main points used to stir your lead into action. The ‘Solve’ part of your formula should

always cover all the bases of the previous two elements as you don’t want to flag a problem

to your prospect that your services cannot completely fix!

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7. SSS (a.k.a Sell through stories)

This one’s a character-focused approach with the following components:

Star: Introduce the star of your story. It can be you or your prospect, as well as your idea,

product, service or new feature.

Story: In this paragraph talk about the problem the star faces. Keep your story coherent and

captivating.

Solution: Describe what turned out to be a winning situation for the star.

The SSS model in action:

The copy doesn’t have to be too dramatic, as with any other approach, try to be genuine

and stir your lead into action by identifying their problems and prompting the right call to

action.

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8. SCH (a.k.a – Steal the limelight)

Originally designed for advertising messaging, it has similar, if not more specific features to

our first model AIDA.

Star: Introduce the star of the show, your idea, service or product! Make your opening

positive and catchy.

Chain: Provide a series of strong facts, advantages and reasons why your star will improve

your recipient’s life. This part is intended to turn the recipient’s attention into interest and

then into desire.

Hook: Catch them with a powerful call to action.

Let’s take a look at SCH at work:

This approach offers a more flexible approach and you can certainly be more creative or try

more unconventional ideas. If you want better conversions on this approach, you might

want to add information on service offerings that will make your target audience act faster.

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9. BYAF (a.k.a – Recognise a leads freedom)

This formula is pretty radical in its intent, as straight off the bat you are recognising a lead or

prospect’s freedom to simply say the word that no B2B marketer ever wants to hear. ‘No’.

On a happier note, it has actually been shown to be a very effective compliance gaining

technique. It seems that recognising someone’s ability to refuse your services is actually a

great motivator into receiving an opt-in for your communications and boosts the chances of

an affirmative response! Weird huh?

To bring it into action you just need to state that a prospect is free to refuse your offer or

request. Multiple psychological studies have already highlighted its persuasive efficiency to

garner a positive and more since reaction from your leads.

The BYAF model in motion:

This is a formula that we’ve used heavily in the past as we’ve found that this approach takes

away the objection that most leads formulate in their head when they receive an unsolicited

email.

By taking this more genuine approach, we’ve found that our target audience is usually more

receptive to hearing about our sales pitch than if we were to go in all guns blazing from the

initial outset.

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10. RDM (a.k.a - A little bit of everything)

Unfortunately, no catchy acronym for this one. It’s actually quite straight forward, this

model centres on the structure of Reader’s Digest articles, according to this method, all the

best articles have a few common themes:

• They’re straight to the point.

• They’re specific.

• And most importantly perhaps, they arouse curiosity and further enquiry.

Get these points down and you’ll make sure your email checks all the right boxes. This

formula is what you could call an oldie but a goodie.

Here’s how you can use it for your cold emails:

This email approach highlights all the characteristics that any good email marketer would

want to promote in their own copy. Make sure to finish it off with a compelling call to action

and you’ll be on to a winner!

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Summary

Above we’ve covered some of the most engaging cold email models that will help get

your click-through and response rates soaring through the roof! If you’ve read this

far, perhaps you’d enjoy some of our further resources on email marketing, follow

this link to our Resource Library.

If you’ve really liked what you’ve seen and would like to know more about our B2B

service offering, click here and request a demo to see what Spotler can bring to your

marketing table!

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