What is Cold Email Call to Action (CTA)?

A cold email call to action (also known as cold email CTA) is a sentence or a group of words to invite the prospect to perform a specific action: booking a call, clicking on your website or watching a video.

Why CTAs are important in cold emailing?

Cold email CTAs are key to increase paying customers

CTAs in cold emailing play a huge part of getting replies from your prospects / recipients. If you don't use clear CTAs, people won't reply to you.

As the goal of a cold email is generally to book a meeting, you need to invite prospects to perform an action that goes in that direction.

The 5 keys to write the perfect Cold Email CTA

From my personal experience with cold email, I'd say there are 5 keys to write a perfect cold email CTA.

1. The perfect cold email CTA has 2 call to actions instead of 1

People who send cold emails generally use 1 CTA at the end of their cold email body. The problem with this is that some people won't even read until the end of your email.

That's why you need to put in place a double cold email CTA strategy.

Multiples CTAs build a rhythm in your cold email

Cold Email CTA 1 purpose: getting the attention of your lead

This CTA needs to be after you cold email opening line. It basically looks like this:

"Hey {{firstName}},

{{Cold Email Opening Line}}.

{{CTA 1}}?"

Example of CTA 1 using Breakcold social selling feed

In plain english, here's an example for the cold email CTA 1 will be:

"Hey David,

Saw your LinkedIn post about the rise of social selling, loved it!

Are you using a social selling software?"

In this CTA example, I'm trying to get the attention of my prospect with a quick question related to my hyper-personalize cold email first line.

If you don't personalize your emails a lot, you can use something more generic but the goal is to get their attention on a specific topic so they ask themselves a question.

Cold Email CTA 2 purpose: inviting the prospect to take action

This CTA usually goes after your sales pitch or is part of your cold email closing line.

CTA 2 example (Version 1 after a sales pitch)Breakcold can accelerate your sales pipeline with social selling by saving your sales reps more than 10 hours a week.

Worth a chat?

Example of CTA 2 using Breakcold cold email campaigns

CTA 2 example (Version 2, part of the sales pitch)Breakcold can help you craft amazing cold email CTAs with its email copywriting assistant, want to learn more?

Some people are more aggressive with this kind of cold email CTA, they directly ask for a call or 15 mins of their prospect time. Most recipients don't like this, let them choose and use softer CTAs.

But as always, adapt the CTAs to your target audience.

2. Use question marks

Using questions marks for your CTAs is a must, it's non negotiable. It's a good cold email practice because it gives your cold email different rhythms.

Example of variables use in a cold email software

Using other punctuation marks like an exclamation point as a CTA are too aggressive for most prospects.

Your goal is to intrigue them, to pick their curiosity so they want to learn more about your business during a call.

3. Use a very short CTA

Not using short and straight to the point CTAs will make your cold email look like a template, avoid that.

CTAs with less than 6 words perform better to break the ice with prospects

4. Link your CTA to what you just said before or what you're about to say

If your CTA comes from nowhere and is not integrated in your cold email flow, you won't get replies. Stay coherent with your sales pitch.

5. Never sell in a CTA

If you're sales pushy, you loose the game. It worked in 2004 but no longer now. People will tend to consider you as a spammer.

Only use salesy cold email CTAs if you're not doing mass cold emailing or if you know for sure that your offer is a banger.

Never sell directly, start conversations

6. Give value in your CTA

Most cold email call to actions ask for a call but you can be more creative. Top cold emailers and social sellers out there simply propose to their leads to give them a lead magnet: it can be a valuable PDF, a video, etc.

Using an online PDF editor can help you quickly customize these lead magnets to better appeal to your prospects.

7. Make it about your prospect, not yourself

Don't use CTAs that use the words 'I', 'My' 'Me', turn them into 'you' & 'your'.

CTAs shouldn't be about yourself

Sounds basic but people make their cold emails too much about themselves and their business and not about prospects.

A few words about Follow up emails CTA

When you send follow up emails, only use 1 CTA to get their interest on a new point about your offer.

Example of a follow up email CTA

It can looks like this:

"Hey David - Company Y accelerated their sales pipeline by 50% with Breakcold last month, still no time for a quick chat?"

List of 28 Cold Email CTAs

This is a list of cold email call to actions that you can use in your campaigns:

• Worth a chat?

• Want to learn more?

• Should we explore?

• Should we talk about it during a call?

• Interested?

• Interested in learning more?

• Does it worth 15 mins of your time?

• Is it something that can interest you?

• Do you think it could be valuable to you?

• Is it something you'd like to implement?

• Is it something that can take your business to the next level?

• Have you thought about it?

• Would you be open to explore this together?

• Are you interested in learning more?

• Do you relate to this?

• Is it a problem you're currently facing?

• Have you thought about it?

• Do you see an opportunity for us to work together?

• Ready to take your business to the next level?

• Can I send your more information about it?

• Do you want more information?

• Do you need more information to explore this?

• Do you think it answers a problem you have?

• Do you want us to send your more information?

• Does it sound interesting?

• Does it sound worth exploring?

• Happy to book a call on your calendar link

• Am I off track with this cold email