Guest author Kimberly Collins SVP, Strategy + Enablement, #samsales Consulting
In most professionals' inboxes, you're likely to find a hundred emails that go a little something like this:
Subject: Meeting Request?
As a {Role} at {Company}, you must be concerned about pipeline.
or this:
Subject: {Company} + {Company}
Is increasing revenue important to you this year? We can help you.
Emails like these are so common that it's not unusual for buyers to delete them before they even open them. Why? Because in just the subject line and the preview text it's already obvious it’s a sales email. And the reality is that most people don't want to be sold to. They're busy and they definitely are not window shopping their inbox for a solution to a challenge that isn't top of mind.
So when it comes to writing a cold email that earns a reply, #samsales starts exactly where the buyer starts, with the two things they see before they decide to open:
- The Subject Line
- The Preview Text
And if the seller can nail those two and get the open, the introduction paragraph and how the email "connects the dots" is the third piece that earns the right for your buyer to read the pitch.
Enter the #samsales trademarked Show Me You Know Me (SMYKM) methodology. It’s the process of building trust and credibility between you and your buyer by showing them that you know them as a human, know their company, and understand the pain points tied to their buyer persona.
That trust runs through your entire email, your entire cadence, and everything else you do in sales. Getting it right in these first three places sets you off on the right foot. And because trust is a key buying factor, establishing it early only helps drive your deals faster.
1. The Subject Line: Earn the Open
The subject line has a hefty job to do. It's the first impression you make on your buyer and the most important signal they have for deciding whether your email is worth their time.
Personalization is how you achieve it. A truly personalized subject line stands out (in a good way!) from the obvious sales and AI-generated emails, and proves you've done your research. The effort alone can often be the one thing that piques your buyer’s curiosity and earns the open.
The goal is for the subject line to be so specific that it could only have been written for one person - your buyer. For example, if you were emailing Samantha McKenna, founder and CEO of #samsales, you might do something that looks like this:
Fellow Barefoot Contessa Fan, New Memoirs, and {Your Company Name}
To anyone else, that's nonsense. To Sam, it says you did your homework.
2. The Preview Text: Don't Waste the Window
Here's what most sellers miss: your subject line and your first sentence show up together in the inbox preview, on desktop and mobile alike. That means once you hook them with the subject line, they're going to move over to that preview text to confirm if it's worth the open. So your first sentence isn't a throwaway. It's actually part of that hook.
This is precisely where you cannot afford to write “I hope this email finds you well” or “I'm reaching out because we work with companies like yours.” Both scream sales email, and both get you deleted before opening.
The #samsales go-to opener does the opposite:
“We have yet to be properly introduced, but I'm Kim, and I'm part of the team at {Company}.”
Notice it uses the term “team,” not a sales title. It's warm, it's human, and paired with a SMYKM subject line, it makes the buyer think there might be a real reason you two should have met by now.
3. Connecting the Dots: Earn the Read
If your subject line and preview text have earned the open, what follows must connect the dots on why your SMYKM is relevant to them.
Should you skip this and jump straight to your pitch, you’ll have told your buyer one thing loud and clear: you tricked them into opening. Off to the spam folder your emails go, and your reputation with them.
A strong "connect the dots" gives context, is specific, is authentic, sounds human, and could never be done at scale. Something like:
“Finding Ina Garten in your LinkedIn 'About' section might just be my favorite discovery of the year! My current go-to of her recipes is the Lemon Chicken, but beyond the food, I recently added one more of her books to my collection: her memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. If you haven't read it yet, highly recommend grabbing it for your next SKO plane ride.”
The goal is for the buyer to feel connected to you, not sold to, and that's how you earn the right to follow that introduction with a pitch with one simple transition line: “The real reason for my message, however, is…”
One note: you won't always be able to find an authentic connection to the person, especially if they don't share much online. But you can almost always find a connection to something the company is doing, which makes for a lovely Show Me You Know Me of its own when it's done authentically.
Want to Learn More?
The worksheet attached to this post walks you through finding your SMYKM and writing the opening of your first email, step by step.
And when you're ready to finish Email 1, connecting your value prop, handling the forthcoming objection, nurturing, and building out the full cadence, Samantha McKenna's Cadence Masterclass on Salesloft picks up right where this leaves off.
As Sam says, the bar in cold emails isn't low. It's on the floor. It's your job to put in the little bit of extra effort to leap over it.