How to Get an 8x Response Rate to Your Cold Emails to Passive Candidates

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The average cold email response rate is about 5%-8%! To put that in perspective, you need to reach out to 20 people to get one response. The key part of this statistic here is “average” and being “average” is not what you want. It’s possible to be an exceptional cold emailer and get a 40-50% email response rate.

To do this, we need to understand how people interact with emails. There are hundreds of data points out there on the internet but we have to concern ourselves with just three.

Key Takeaways:

• Make sure that you write a subject line that grabs the recipients attention and is intriguing.

• When crafting an email make sure you use AIDA (attention, interest, desire, and action).

• Sending a follow up email can be just as affective as sending the initial email.

How do people read emails?

1. Fact 1:

   An average person checks their email 15 times a day – University of British Columbia (Source: Mashable).

   What we can learn from it:

   • People are super distracted when they check the email and have a short attention span.

   • The notion of best time to send emails isn’t as important as it used to be. Anytime is a good time to send a cold email. Just don’t go sending out emails at 2am!

2. Fact 2:

   Half the emails get responded to within an hour – USC Viterbi School of Engineering (Source: USC Viterbi).

   What can we learn from it?

   People decide whether they want to respond to email or not very quickly. The window of opportunity to get your candidate’s attention is small.

3. Fact 3:

   50% of all emails are opened on mobile devices (Source: Litmus).

   What can we learn from it?

   • Your email needs to be optimized for reading on mobile devices.

   • Your email needs to be short and skim-friendly.

How to Write Subject Lines That Grab Attention

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is thinking of the subject line as an afterthought. If you are not spending equal time on choosing your subject line as writing the email, you are doing it wrong.

Subject lines are the first thing readers see when they receive your email. The subject line determines whether your email is opened or not. You need to make your subject line intriguing and interesting. Nobody wants to read a subject line that sounds like it came from a used car salesman/

Generic subject lines like “I’ve got an opportunity for you” or “Openings at Acme Inc” just don’t work. Get creative and show that you researched the candidate before you reached out to them. As most emails get opened on mobile devices, keep it short. The Gmail app for iOS shows only 36 characters in the subject line. If you limit your subject line to 36 characters, it increases your chances of having your emails opened.

Here’s a quick checklist for writing a cold email subject line that delivers open rates.

• Write to intrigue

• Show that you researched your prospective candidate

• Preferably keep your email subject line shorter than 40 characters

• Using a candidate’s first name in the subject line can get you 16% better open rates

Crafting Your Cold Email Message

Put on your sales and marketing hats when you are crafting cold emails to candidates. For me, I’ve seen the AIDA framework work the best.

• Attention. Attract your candidate’s attention

• Interest. Personalize your outreach to make it interesting for them

• Desire. Create a desire for what you are offering

• Action. Nudge them to take an action that is super easy to execute.

Why does AIDA work?

• Attention. The subject line has already created intrigue and got your email opened. For example mentioning that you saw their GitHub profile and it impressed you and your team would immediately grab the reader’s attention.

  Note – Generic lines don’t always work. For difficult and niche roles, you will have to personalize each email. Commenting on something (the latest project or the blog s/he wrote) is the easiest way to go about it.

• Interest. Pique your candidate’s interest. You have their attention. One thing I’ve seen a lot of recruiters do wrong is they don’t jump right to the point. At the end of every sentence, your candidate is asking the question – “Okay, so what’s in it for me?” If you don’t deliver a value proposition soon enough, you are going to lose their interest. Give your candidate a reason to engage and read the rest of your email.

• Desire. Create a strong desire in your candidate’s mind. The best way to do it is by creating FOMO – Fear of missing out. Our brains are hardwired to hurt when they miss out on something. Appeal to this primal brain and increase your chances of getting a response.

• Action. Okay, so the candidate has read everything and is interested in engaging. What next? Give them a super easy way to take the next step. Generally asking your candidates to hit reply or jump on a call works best. What definitely doesn’t work is asking them to solve a take-home test or apply on your careers page.

Creating Masterclass Campaigns That Deliver Results

It’s all about following up. Especially when it comes to recruiting passive candidates. It’s easy to focus on the first email and spend all your energy there, but that gives just half the results. Generic short follow-up emails get the same response as the first one. According to research we’ve done at Recruiterflow, here’s what response rates look like.

59% of the recipients have responded by the end of the third follow-up. If you aren’t well versed with statistics or are feeling lazy to do the math, here’s a quick rundown.

• Sending two emails rather than one increases your response rates by 150%

• Sending three emails rather than two, increases your response rates by 40%

• Sending four emails rather than three, increases your response rates by 40%.

Cold Emails FAQ

1. How do you reach out to a passive candidate?

   When reaching out to a passive candidate, it’s important to make the emails personalized and mention details that they want to know. Personalized emails is an effective way to reach out to passive candidates because it can help make them interested in the company. Including any details about the company culture, the values, and any benefits can also spark interest for these passive candidates. You want to let them know why your company is unique and why they should work for you.

2. What is a common mistake in sending a cold email?

   A common mistake that people make is sending generic messages from templates and forgetting to replace the template details. Using a template to send hundreds of cold emails can help save time, but it also eliminates the personalization that makes candidates interested. Candidates want to feel like they are special, so sending a generic email will make them feel like they are anything but special. IF you decide to use a template, make sure you customize it to each individual you send it to, and don’t forget to delete the generic details.

3. What is the proper rules for email etiquette?

   The rules for proper email etiquette include:

   • Use a professional subject line

   • Proofread every email you send

   • Write the email before adding the recipient email address

   • Double check that you have the correct recipient’s email

   • You don’t have to ‘reply all’

   • Reply to emails in a timely manner

   • Use the appropriate level of formality

   • Keep emails short and to the point

4. How do you increase candidate response rate?

   To increase candidate response rate, make sure you are strategic with your timing. The timing that you send your email, or make a phone call is crucial. Most people get a flood of emails daily, so it’s important to the most strategic timing to ensure that the candidate receives your email. Make sure you consider time zones when you are sending emails, especially when you are recruiting globally.

Final Thoughts

At the beginning of this article, I had said that the “average” response rate for a cold email is 5% and there is a way you can get to 40-50% response rate. Here’s an easy enough to follow checklist to help you create your next cold email campaign or just use these cold email templates.

Print the below rules for writing killer cold emails and post them on your work desk – lest you forget!

• Keep your subject lines short

• Always, always personalize your emails.

• Remember the AIDA framework when you create your first touch cold email

• Your email is going to be read on mobile devices. Optimize your email for that.

• Always follow up if you don’t get a response.

• Keep your call to actions easy and immediately actionable.

A few more resources you might want to refer to include:

6 Tips For Sending Cold Recruiting Emails That Don’t Get Laughed At

Great cold recruiting email templates

Author

Lilly Chesser