Email is still one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers and generate new business opportunities. However, with so many emails flooding people's inboxes every day, it can be challenging to craft emails that will capture attention and drive engagement.
Using proven email templates tailored specifically for inbound sales outreach is key to improving open, click through, and response rates to cold emails. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about writing effective cold inbound sales emails, including:
Benefits of Using Email Templates for Inbound Sales
Elements of a Good Inbound Sales Email Template
Best Practices & Tips for Writing Cold Emails
Inbound Sales Email Templates By Industry
Examples of Effective Cold Email Templates
Tools to Help Create Email Templates
Let’s get right into it!
Using pre-built email templates provides many advantages for sales development representatives (SDRs) conducting outbound prospecting campaigns. Some of the key benefits include:
Writing personalized emails tailored to each prospect is extremely time consuming. Leveraging templates allows SDRs to quickly personalize and send out more emails in less time.
Email templates enable teams to align on messaging and value propositions. This improves consistency across outreach campaigns.
The time savings from using templates results in more productive SDRs. More emails sent equals more opportunities!
Templates are pre-optimized for things like length, calls-to-action, readability, etc. resulting in higher open and response rates.
As you can see, having a library of proven inbound sales email templates pays dividends across efficiency, scale, and effectiveness of outbound campaigns. Now let’s review exactly what comprises an effective template.
The foundation of any successful cold email is the template structure and content. Templates should be concise, personalized, and compelling to capture attention and spark engagement. Here are the key elements to include:
The subject line is the first and possibly only thing your prospect will see in their inbox. You only have a few words to pique curiosity and get them to open. Effective subject line frameworks include:
Always address your prospect directly by name and company to show familiarity. This helps improve open rates.
The opening sentences are prime real estate to capture interest quickly. Ask an intriguing question, state impressive facts, or reference something unique about them or their company.
Clearly explain what you offer and what sets you apart from alternatives. Focus on the key benefits and outcomes, not features.
Provide evidence that you have successfully delivered results for other clients. Build credibility through customer logos, testimonials, or specific ROI metrics.
Tell your prospect exactly what you want them to do next, whether it’s book a meeting, visit your site, read an article, etc. The CTA should stand out visually in the email.
Close the email with another personalized sign-off including your full contact details.
Getting these core elements right in a template will drive much higher engagement rates. Next let’s review some best practices for writing compelling cold emails.
Beyond having optimized templates, executing campaigns effectively requires following proven best practices. Here are key tips for writing emails that convert:
Inbound sales emails should be concise and scannable. Get to the point quickly and highlight value. According to sales research, response rates drop significantly beyond 3-4 concise paragraphs.
Avoid generic outreach and add personal details like name, company, location to show you did research on them specifically. This helps response rates.
Back up your claims and credibility with evidence like customer wins, ROI metrics, testimonials, awards etc. Social validation is very compelling.
Break up text with section headers, bullets, and highlighting. Ensure your CTA stands out visually. This improves skimmability.
Explain what you offer clearly in the context of desired outcomes, not just features. Connect the dots for them.
Tell prospects exactly what simple action to take next. Book a meeting, visit your site, read an eBook etc. Make it obvious.
Have clickable links to your site, demos, content offers etc. directly in the email to enable one click access.
Only 2-5% of cold emails get a response. That’s normal, so follow up at least 2-3 times via email or phone to connect. Persistence pays.
Now that we’ve covered the essentials for writing cold emails, let’s review some proven templates tailored to specific industries.
The messaging and offers within cold emails can be tailored based on the industry you are targeting. Here we provide sample templates for:
For other verticals, the framework remains very similar. Let's review examples for each:
SaaS companies tend to have longer sales cycles, so the priority is on compelling demos and free trials to motivate engagement.
Subject Line Examples
Email Template
Hi [First Name],
[Personalized opening and company/role reference]
I noticed you are using [tool] and facing [pain point] based on my research.
[Our software] eliminates this issue by providing [key benefit]. Top brands like [logos] leverage our platform to [business metric] compared to old tools like [tool].
Would you be open to a quick 15 minute demo to experience the platform and see if we're a fit?
Get Started With a Free Trial
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Best,
[Your Name]
[Your Company]
Retail brands thrive on promotions, so offers and discounts work very well. Prioritize special offers to trigger responses.
Subject Line Examples
Email Template
Hi [First Name],
I came across your Instagram and love your style!
As someone with such great fashion sense, I wanted to share that we have new arrivals that would look fabulous on you.
Visit our collection with styles picked just for you and use code NEW25 for 25% off your entire order. Enjoy!
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Xo,
[Your Name]
[Your Company]
Trust and credibility is everything for financial companies. Focus messaging on security, stability and long track records.
Subject Line Examples
Email Template
Hi [First Name],
Given [Bank’s] recent fee changes, I wanted to reach out.
As leaders in wealth management for 30+ years, [Wealthfront’s] technology & portfolio strategies generate 71% higher returns compared to traditional advisors - making more money work smarter for our clients.
I’m happy to provide a custom analysis showing how our premium services can potentially save your firm significant fees this quarter while optimizing growth.
Let me know if you would be interested or have any other questions!
Best,
[Your Name]
[Your Company]
Healthcare buyers prioritize quality, outcomes and compliance. Emphasize capabilities, credentials and measurable impact.
Subject Line Examples
Email Template
Hi [First Name],
I understand the focus at [St. John’s Hospital] to boost performance on CMS quality measures for cardiac care - great initiative.
Our telehealth platform is leveraged by leading hospitals nationally to enhance patient monitoring pre and post discharge. This enables early intervention for 30%+ reductions in ER readmissions and complications.
We would be glad to provide a demo and custom impact assessment - I think this could help move the needle further on your quality objectives.
Let me know if any questions!
Best,[Your Name]
[Your Company]
For universities and bootcamps, highlight career outcomes, networking, and admissions help to show return on investment..
Subject Line Examples
Email Template
Hi [First Name],
I understand you’re interested in [University’s] engineering program – great choice!
Beyond academics, [College] prides itself on career development with 95% job placement rates for engineering grads. Our alumni network also provides mentors and connections at Apple, Tesla, Airbnb etc.
I would be glad to provide tips for getting admitted as an out of state applicant. I can also connect you with student ambassadors on campus who could answer any other questions about their experience.
Hope this is helpful - please let me know if any other questions!
Best,
[Your Name]
[Your College]
For non-profit and fundraisers, highlight the mission and community impact to inspire engagement. Provide options to easily donate or get involved.
Subject Line Examples
Email Template
Hi [First Name],
Did you know there are 60,000 homeless people across our state? Heartbreaking.
At [Charity], we provide housing, counseling and career services to transition 5,000 individuals per year off the streets permanently. But we can’t continue this mission without support.
Please consider donating or joining us this Saturday 9am-12pm to help prepare care packages for those displaced. Any amount or act of volunteer service helps provide hope.
Let me know if you have any other questions and thanks for supporting our community!
[Your name]
[Your Nonprofit]
Hopefully these industry-specific examples demonstrate creative ways to tailor inbound sales emails by niche. The possibilities are endless. Now let’s look at 5 fully fleshed out templates as well!
Reviewing complete email templates is also very helpful for applying structure best practices into your own outreach messaging.
Here are 5 excellent real-world templates with analysis on why they work well:
This template promotes a blockchain analytics tool for crypto investors. Let's break down why it's so effective.
This hits all the elements of an effective cold email – personalization, social proof, benefit positioning, visual formatting and clear call to action. Now let's analyze another great template example:
Here's an outreach email targeted to software engineers and developers. Notice how technical specifics are emphasized since that is what this audience cares about most.
The technical positioning here aligned with developer-centric messaging makes this very compelling. Let's check out one more sharp B2B template.
Account-based sales requires even more research and personalization when targeting senior decision makers. This ABM template has that down perfectly:
The strategic directness and value framing to known pain points gives this template huge potential. Now let’s look at examples beyond SaaS.
Here is an excellent template targeted to passive job seekers from a recruiter. Notice the more conversational tone.
The casual tone coupled with strategic role matching makes this email very compelling. Let's check out one final cold email template example from a completely different industry.
This template excels at driving conversions for ecommerce shoppers through discounts and scarcity.
With the right emotional triggers, this template converts scrollers into buyers with ease.
Just Think AI makes creating effective inbound sales emails easy. Here are tips:
With this information, Just Think AI can generate customized inbound sales email templates tailored to your offering and buyers.
When requesting inbound sales email templates from Just Think AI, provide:
These details allow Just Think AI to optimize inbound sales email templates aligned to your business, buyers, and messaging.
Let Just Think AI handle crafting effective inbound sales emails so you can focus on selling!
