5 unusual cold emailing tips that will make you stand out

Cold emailing is easy to dislike (both as the sender and recipient) and to mess up. But mastering the art of sending a successful cold email can be thrilling. Few things are as satisfying as knowing that your careful research and the power of your words helped you land a new career opportunity.

Some influence experts swear their emailing scripts are the golden ticket to getting anyone interested in continuing a conversation with you. There are templates out there that can for sure help you go from unread to top of the inbox, but nothing beats a fully personalized approach.

The average cold email response rate with no personalization is 5 percent vs. 12 percent with advanced personalization, according to a Woodpecker analysis. Also, refining your own approach to sending cold emails will help you feel authentic instead of icky, which will ultimately benefit your confidence when you do land a follow-up meeting.

But sending a personal message doesn’t simply mean plugging the name of the recipient into an automated process.

“Personalization means that you’ve thought about who this person is, how they see the world, what interests them, and what they want — you’ve developed a ‘theory of mind’ about the recipient. This shows them you have put work into understanding them,” according to Harvard Business Review.

So intentionally customizing your messages is key. Combine that with a few creative best practices and you’ll learn how to stand out in a sea of underwhelming pitches and spam-feeling requests.

Here are five unusual cold emailing tips that will help you delight the recipients of your messages — and convert them into taking the next steps.

1. Help them avoid unrelated pain points

Harvard Business Review author Tucker Max shared a story about a VC friend who complained about misleading street signs and parking tickets on Twitter.

A startup founder used the opportunity to reach out to him by starting his cold email with a link to a robocalling service that took care of parking tickets. The VC was thankful and ended up meeting the entrepreneur as well as helping him get funding.

Moral of the story? Always show prospects that you understand their pain points and can help them solve them — even if the pain point has nothing to do with what you’re pitching. That mindset will go a long way.

2. Show vulnerability

There is nothing worse than an impersonal cold email that looks like it was copy-pasted and sent to hundreds of people. And even if you write a highly personalized message, it doesn’t mean that it will stand out — it’s just more likely to get read and considered.

If you truly want to captivate your audience’s engagement, aim to show who you are and elicit an emotional response of some sort. Inserting a small-talk tidbit? OK but not as effective as expressing a real feeling such as the fact you’re nervous about reaching out or describing how you were personally impacted by the company’s mission.

3. Call out annoying realities with humor

Jon Buchan of The Charm Offensive developed his method after drunkenly sending what he thought was a ridiculous cold email, which turned out to be highly effective and landed him a big client.

The email starts off like this: “You won’t have heard of me. (Hi, I’m Jon!). I got your details from a list gasp. But hey, that means you’re list-worthy; that’s gotta be something, right?”

This is genius because acknowledging an annoying professional reality by cheekily calling it out disarms your recipient and makes you stand out. It’s like, “Finally, someone said it.” It cuts through the noise and makes you more authentic and likable.

4. Tell a story without revealing the middle

When it comes to engaging your audience, storytelling tactics such as sharing anecdotes can be more effective than dry facts. And you can take this a step further by telling a story about solving the pain point of your prospect, without revealing how you achieved the result.

It’s about showcasing how you got someone from point A to B (using an anecdote that highlights a solution your recipient is also looking for), without completely giving out the method. End your email by suggesting a conversation where you’ll take them through the details. This will pique curiosity and nearly guarantee a follow-up.

5. Invest in your subject lines

That being said, even the best cold email has no chance of being read if it’s supported by a mediocre subject line. So you should spend about the same amount of time working on your subject line as the actual body of the email.

The key to crafting a subject line that will encourage people to open your email lies in using the four tips mentioned above — it can just be a bit tricky to do it in a concise way, hence why it deserves some extra thought.

Personalize your subject line by including your recipient’s name in it, which increases the chances your email will be opened, according to Hubspot. Ask a question related to a seemingly random pain point or desire. Or include a stat about the kind of result you can help your recipient achieve.

Those are all examples of integrating the principles mentioned above in a one-liner, but you can get creative with it and find your own flair.