It’s a tale as old as time – or at least as old as email and LinkedIn. A new message rolls in, and on the other end is a cold-sales message that has you shivering. 

I recently received one such message in a historical string of hysterical attempts at cold marketing to The Sky Floor. The gentleman who reached out has this profile description, “I help flooring retailers and installers to relieve bottlenecks and significantly grow their business.” 

You can see where this is going. 

He wanted to reach out to see if he can help us improve our flooring business! 

I realize our name can be confusing at first; what does it mean? It certainly doesn’t describe what we do right off the bat. 

And here rests the issue. If you are cold calling, emailing, or adding new connections on LinkedIn, you should take the time to learn more about who you are reaching out to. It doesn’t have to be super in-depth, but you should have more information than the most cursory. 

Your chances of getting a reply go up significantly if you personalize the message. Recipients want to know you are writing specifically to them. Personalized messages can result in up to a 100% increase in replies. (Propeller)

No one will take the time to take your message seriously if you don’t take time to know who you are reaching out to. 

Takeaways: 

• Do more than the bare minimum when researching cold marketing leads. Don’t accidentally display you know nothing about them.
• Personalize the content to make it specific to your lead. 

P.S.: Consider other strategies before cold marketing; it is a tough slog. But if you want to use cold marketing to reach out to potential clients, create a surprising and unusual strategy – your target will throw away an email, phone call, or postcard that adds to the noise.