All right if you want to build a successful freelance business or a successful blog or anything online, there’s one thing you’re going to need to master. And that is the cold pitch email! You got to get really good at emailing. Someone who has no clue who you are and getting them to respond and starting a conversation and building a relationship where most people absolutely suck at that.

That’s why most people fail. It’s probably one of the most valuable skills I have ever learned is learning how to send a quality cold pitch.

Today we’re gonna discuss five things every cold pitch email needs to have. If you want it to be successful I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reviewed people’s pitches and they get all of these things wrong. so if you want help getting that cold pitch down, if you want help getting freelance clients through your cold pitch, then let’s not waste any time, and let’s jump right into it.

Let’s get in mind one thing really quickly! Mail merge shouldn’t be in your vocabulary. Mail merge that is not your thing! don’t ever mail merge! don’t ever send a stock template to anybody for any reason!

1 Use Personalized Name

The most important thing that every cold pitch should have and that’s pretty simple a personalized name. Figure out who the person you’re emailing to? Find their email addresses and address them like Dear John! Or whoever.

It might be occasionally you’re not gonna be able to find the contact information for an organization you want to reach out to. You might have an info@ email address or an editor@. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t send that email but your chances of success are going to dramatically increase if you can find an actual person and create an email for that actual person. Just in my case how many times people have emailed me saying dear blogging regime! & I personally don’t bother to respond to them because it’s not hard to find my name.

if you’ve done even  10 seconds of research and gone to my about page you can find my name and if you can’t be bothered to do that then I’m not going to be bothered to give you a reply and all of the people you’re pitching, that’s probably going to be their mindset as well.

So do the research, find the person’s name, and personalize the email for them.

2 Rapport Building Sentence

The second thing you have to make sure you include is a rapport-building sentence. This is the thing hardly anybody is going to do and this is the thing that’s going to set you apart from anyone else and prove you’re a real person who has done their research.

So with every single person, I call pitch I try and find some sort of commonality either through looking at their  LinkedIn page or some sort of commonality I have with their business or with their organization.  Doing this really sets you apart.

So for a slightly pretentious niche site, I’ve been reaching out to hotels that I want to review. I’ve been finding the director of marketing and the director of communications I’ve been sending a cold pitch to them to see if I can get free or reduced prices on these fancy hotel rooms. I can do reviews for the site.

in every single case I try and tell a story and only a couple of sentences about my experience with that hotel brand or something that I’ve got in common with them to kind of break the ice and say hey I’m a real person, I’m just trying to have a conversation here.

Every time I do that I almost always get a response even if the response is, “hey sorry we can’t work with you”.  I’m at least going to get a response and I’m at least going to open up the door as opposed to something super generic where it just looks like I’m asking for a freebie or a handout.

So when you are doing your freelance writing work by going a step beyond and finding that rapport-building sentence and figuring out what that commonality is that’s going to give you a   huge leg up over other freelancers who aren’t going to do that research.

3 Zero Assumptions

Okay, the third thing your cold pitch email should have is zero assumptions!  Now, this is going to go contrary to probably a lot of the sales advice you have where they might say always be closing or assume the close,   but if somebody sends me an email and say, “does 5:30 your time work for a call tomorrow?   it’s like before I’ve even said yes I’m interested in a call before I’ve even replied to say, “hey can I get more information on you or your service or your business” they just assume that I’m   Going to say yes and they propose that time. Don’t do that! That pisses people off and basically says   I know you’re going to say yes so let’s set this up right now and it’s more of a relationship thing.

You need to show some common courtesy.  When I send cold pitches I don’t assume they want to talk to me. I try and write a compelling email that makes them want to talk to me that   I think they’re going to respond positively to.  But I never assume they’re going to and I never try and like close the sale in that introductory email. So I think that’s the way you should do it as well it’s gonna show that you respect them.  You respect their time and you’re not trying to force them into something that’s not going to be a good fit for them.

So don’t assume they want anything to do with you. Just send a polite email that shows you’ve researched them. That’s going to give them the best chance for hoping that they’re going to want to do something with you.

4 Give Them an Easy Out

The fourth thing you should include in every cold pitch email is kind of a hallmark and secret to a key to success, and that’s giving them an easy out. I talk specifically about my four favorite words in a cold pitch email and that is, “it’s totally cool if”.

“It’s totally cool if this isn’t a good fit for you” I just wanted to reach out and say hi.

“it’s totally cool if “  you’re not looking for additional writers at the moment I just wanted to introduce myself because I love the work that you’re doing by making it easier to say no.

It shows that you respect them, you respect their time and it’s going to make them more likely to say yes. So this is the exact opposite of what people are assuming they’re going to do. We’re going to assume that maybe they don’t want anything to do with us and we’re going to make it really easy for them to say NO.

By doing that course of action they’re probably going to say, hey I like that person like they were polite, they were courteous, and they respected my time. Most people don’t do that. So I want to learn more, I want to work with them.

In every email, I always try and give an easy out so that they don’t feel bad about saying NO, but also they potentially leave the door open. In case something’s just not a good fit right this second.

5 Include Sincerity

The Last thing you should include in every cold pitch is kind of a catch-all for the previous four things but it’s also really important to keep in mind that your cold pitch should include sincerity.

You should be a nice person. You should have empathy for the fact that they’re probably really busy and probably really stressed and your email might be an inconvenience for them even if they want to hire you and you can help them get that and have to deal with that right at the point you send.

The email could be frustrating when you follow up. You should be nice you should do it in a non-pestering way. You should give them an easy out to say No, and be sincere with everything you do.

Summary

if you include a rapport-building sentence, if you personalize the email, if you don’t assume, and if you give them an easy out all of those things are sincere and if you can do that, your chances of success are going to skyrocket and you are going to get so many more freelance clients and get so many more YES to the cold pitches you send regardless of what they’re for.

So those are the five things I would include in every single cold pitch that I’m just not seeing many people do. I get dozens of cold pitches a day from people who want backlinks. Who wants guest posts, for people who want interviews? Very few of them are sincere and I like to think of myself as a pretty sincere person. so if I’m not getting that back from the people that email me, then there’s no chance with my busy schedule I’m going to reply.

And you can assume that’s probably going to be the case for every single person you email as well. I hope this was helpful. I honestly think this might be one of the most valuable posts I’ve done recently because so much of freelancing does come down to cold pitching and the things I just mentioned are truly some of the hallmarks of a successful cold pitch so I hope you go apply them. If you do please let me know. Write me an email at ali@bloggingregime.com  and let me know you are progressing.

You can also check my relevant post here to know further about freelance writing

Cheers!