Landing jobs with cold emails

FREELANCER TIPS Landing jobs with cold emails More freelancertips on www.freelancermap.com...

Landingjobswithcoldemails • Cold emails can be an extremely good ways to find new gigs. As a freelancer, you might often get the feeling that people are getting jobs out of the blue without you even having had the chance to compete with them. And you’re right – many openings don’t get advertised at all. The best professionals in any line of work know that they have to take the initiative and differentiate themselves from everybody else. Writing emails out of the blue allows you to do just that. • It’s no easy undertaking though. The majority of cold mails will get ignored for various reasons. This article is here to assist you in writing better cold emails and increase your chances of getting noticed in five steps.

1) Identify the right recipient • The very first thing you have to do when considering a cold email is to find the person who will have the time to read it and the power to actually help you. It is hard to make a general statement about who that person is, but you can exclude a few options pretty easily. It is most definitely not the @info address, neither is it the HR department which gets buried by hundreds of emails each day. It may not be the CEO either, as he or she likely has enough on their plate as it is. Finding the middle ground between those will require you to some investigation on Google, but it is more than worth it. If you don’t send your email to the right recipient, you might as well not send it at all.

2) Subject lines done right • After you identify the decision maker, you can start thinking about your email. The first of the pitfalls lies in the subject line. Never, ever forget to fill it out and think carefully about how you do it. Avoid being generic at all costs. Some people like to make very personal subject lines like “John, I’d like to help you with SEO”. This personal approach won’t always work, but it illustrates the most important thing about the subject line of cold emails – saying what you can do for the client.

3) Make a good opening or land in the spam folder in 5 seconds • Once you are certain you can make it through the first stages and your email is actually likely to get open, think about how you start. Again, people don’t really have time to read through a whole email, most just skim it, especially clients who are likely to get similar offers many times a day. That’s why the beginning is crucial. In the best case scenario it answers two questions: a) how you heard of your client and b) what you can do to solve a specific problem.

4) Sweet, short and precise • Your email should be about as long as any paragraph in this article. Five to six sentences, this is all the space you have. Don’t waste it. After the opening, the things left to mention are the experience in the field you’re pitching for and your call to action. Get straight to those points and keep them short.

5) Never forget a call to action • There is only one last thing you need for a good cold email. A good call of action looks something like this: “I would like to discuss the details sometime next week in case you’re interested. Let me know at [contact details]” or “Could I send you a few idea?” Ideally, the answer to those questions will be yes or an appointment to meet up. • If your cold emails go unanswered, don’t despair. Follow up with a new one after a week or two, since it is likely that your pitch just got buried. Try different things out and make your own conclusions about what works and what doesn’t for the field and clients you’re after.

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Landing jobs with cold emails