Cold Emailing 101

This is part 2 of my posts on cold emailing. If you have not read part 1, check out “How I used cold emailing to land an internship in Mongolia”.

By the end of this post you should understand three things:

1. How to find professionals to contact
2. How to write a strong cold email
3. How to keep track of all your emails and get the most out of each one

Typically, a successful cold email is one that gets you on a call or a coffee chat with the professional you are targeting.

If you are trying to get an internship in an industry without prior connections, use cold emails to set up calls and coffee chats with multiple industry professionals and focus on learning about their jobs. Eventually, this can lead to a referral for an interview.

1. How to find strong “leads”

The three most reliable sources for strong leads are:

1. the firm’s website,
2. the firm’s publication, and
3. LinkedIn.

First, look at the careers section on the website, which usually lists members of the recruiting team comprised of the alumni of a specific university. They tend to have a very good response rate because it is in their best interests to attract talent from their own school.

Secondly, a lot of consulting firms publish research papers and reports that provide industry insights and examine market trends. At the end of the article you should find the contact info of the writers. In my personal experience, using the topic of the publication to show your interest in the firm leads to great conversations.

Lastly, broaden your search by using LinkedIn. It provides many advanced search filters so that you can basically find everyone in the professional world who fits your criteria. All you have to do is run a search on LinkedIn, filter down the results, and guess their email.

In the early days, it took me hours to find the right contacts because my search was too broad. For example, typing in “consulting [school name] [region]” or “[company name] [school name]” in the search tab would give me thousands of results. However, I later found out there is an advanced function on LinkedIn, which allows you to filter people down by location, industry, school, title, current company, and past companies. This process has allowed me to learn about a variety of industries and job responsibilities.

Once you have tailored your search results, try to choose people who are likely to talk with you. I specifically look out for alumni and people with similar backgrounds (that is, people who have worked in the same company, or who are interested in a specific job function or passionate about a common cause).

The next step involves guessing the lead’s email. The great part about professionals working at large companies or startups is that their email follows a predictable pattern 90% of the time. That pattern is usually one of the following (using my name as an example and “company” as a placeholder for the real company name):

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

You can use an email verification tool or opt for a brute force approach. Just send 6 identical emails to each of the formats above. In theory, 5 emails should bounce back as invalid and 1 will go through to the right person. The point is there are many methods to find emails  —  look online for one that you like the most.

2. What to write in a cold email?

A strong cold email should:

• be customized to the person you are targeting,
• be brief,
• have a clear ask/call to action, and
• include a catchy subject line.

Here is an example of a cold email I sent few years ago.

Subject line: University of Waterloo Student – [Company name] Consulting Internship

Hi [name],

My name is Jason Oh, and I’m a 4th year Math & Business Double Degree student at the University of Waterloo. I found your name in the alumni database, and noticed you work in [company name]. I would love to learn more about your experience there!

While at Waterloo, I developed an interest in the consulting industry through my involvement in the consulting club and internship experience.

I was hoping you might be willing to speak with me for a few minutes.

Thanks, and I look forward to connecting with you soon.

Best regards,
Jason

Now, keep in mind that this email is from 2 years ago. Here are three things that you could improve to increase your response rate:

1. Mention something specific about this person’s career path (from LinkedIn) that you found interesting.
2. Have a stronger “why you should talk to me” sentence and show that you did your research. You could give a more compelling, yet still brief, explanation for why you are a good fit for the particular team or firm.
3. Also, rather than asking to schedule a call and forcing the person to check his/her calendar for availability, you could try the following: “Do you have time this week to schedule a call? I’m available Monday 2-4pm, Tuesday before noon, and Friday 11am-5pm.” This way the person doesn’t need to reply with an extra email to ask for your available times.

Once you have a general template cold emailing starts to get easier.

3. Keeping track of your emails and following up

Once you have your leads and are ready to start sending cold emails, it’s important to stay organized.

If you are serious about getting an internship or building your network, you should run a structured outreach process. This entails building an Excel spreadsheet with all the people you want to reach out to and track your progress in sending them emails.

I personally use a spreadsheet for tracking emails, a cleaned-up version of which you can download here.

Click to expand image.

It is important to track everything you send because you will be dealing with many unfamiliar contacts.

It is important to realize that most people will not reply to your first email. Do not take this personally! Many professionals will open your email with the intention of responding later and will forget because they got caught up in their work. I recommend following up 2–3 times with each lead before moving on to the next one on your list.

This is how I followed-up if the professional did not respond:

Hi [name],

I understand you are very busy but would love to have the opportunity to talk with you about [company name] or [team name].

Do you have some time for a quick call?

Best regards,
Jason

If another week passes by and the professional still has not responded, try sending a 3rd follow-up email. With each potential lead that bore fruit, there were many others that never replied back or didn’t end up being helpful. Don’t worry about what these people might think of you because you cold emailed them. If they don’t reply after a few polite follow ups, just move on.

It only takes 1 lucky email to get through to someone willing to help you — and this can change your career.

Other great cold email tips

• Alumni of the same university are great but alumni of the same student organization or nonprofit that you are part of are even better.
• The stronger the connection you have with the person you are emailing, the higher the likelihood of a reply.
• Cold emailing is about timing. Sending a cold email on Sunday is usually a bad idea, as professionals will ignore work emails over the weekend.
• Best time to send cold emails is between Wednesday afternoon and Friday 2pm. This ensures that your lead has ample time to check your email before heading out for the weekend, while minimizing the chance that other work emails bury your email.
• At the end of the day, cold emails are a numbers game. The more you send, the higher your odds of success.

Jason Oh is a management consulting enthusiast with past experience in helping F500 financial services clients with product management, go-to-market and distribution channel strategy

Image: Pexels

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