Email Teardown #3: Keep your email recipient-focused

One of the best ways to learn something is to see it in action. Here's the first teardown (and build-up) in this content series, where we rewrite real cold emails. 

Before email - Scores 88 in Lavender 

Subject line: Lavender website SEO optimization

Hi Chelsea,

I am the Head of Customer Success at Whales Ventures. We help tech companies like Lavender to boost rankings on Google search, get new leads, and grow awareness.

I have noticed that Lavender shows up by industry keywords. The website is so fresh and nicely built! Kudos to your marketing dev team :-)

Still, are you happy with the Google search performance of your website? As far as I’ve checked, there is an opportunity for Lavender to get 30%-50% more organic visits and leads.

Here at Whales Ventures, we’ve been helping hundreds of startups and tech companies get top-3 rankings on Google search by:

• Diving deep into search terms and competitor stats
• Building expertise with the right content
• Generating natural links pointing to your website

Let me know if organic Google search improvements are on your agenda. I will be happy to arrange a quick intro call to share our knowledge and tell you how we can help Lavender.

Thank you,
David

After email - Scores 96 in Lavender 

Subject line: Website Wizards

Hey Chelsea,

The game on your website is genius! Also noticed Lavender is appearing in industry keyword searches.

Guessing you had a hand in this sorcery...

Curious if 30-50% growth in organic visitors would get your team to goal faster!

We've helped Acme and Hooli "move on up" using:

- search terms and competitor stats

- blogs and content

- links driving traffic

Worth a look to see how?

What we changed and why 

The original subject line made it feel like I’m a recipient of a mass “{Company Name}” sequence. Which… this probably was. Mental spam filter? TRIGGERED.

Changing the subject line to “Website Wizards” is a nod to my recipient because of their company branding. 

I removed the first bit, “I am Chad with XYZ corp. We help tech companies...” Use that valuable preview text to tell me why I should even read this thing! Key to your recipient’s heart? Talk about them! 

I liked the compliment included in the original email, but you want it to be specific. I changed it to something I genuinely loved about the site and something I couldn’t possibly send to anyone else. 

Then, consider what “30-50%” growth means to their team. More inbound leads? More product downloads? 

Next, name-drop who you can! Ideally, someone in their vertical and segment. 🙂

I liked the list they provided on how they service their customers, but that section could be shortened and simplified. Last but not least, give your recipient a clear question to answer!