Episode 23: 5 Do’s & Don’ts of Cold Email with Jeremy Donovan

With roughly 300 billion cold emails sent every day, how do you make your message stand out from all the outbound noise? Directly from the sales horse's mouth, our guest today is powerhouse Jeremy Donovan, who is the SVP of Revenue Strategy at Salesloft as well as the author of 5 books - including How to Deliver a Ted Talk and Predictable Prospecting. From AI, to the precise metrics that sales leaders should be using to measure effectiveness, we cover it all. We also delve into the false dichotomy of personalization and relevance, and how to strike that balance, plus the importance of keeping your finger on the pulse of changing trends that boost or reduce customer responses. Finally, Donovan shares, in plain language, his 5 top do's and don'ts that you can implement right now to have a greater reply rate and help the customer do the right thing. This includes specific language, punctuation, sentence length, and more. If you're looking for concrete, actionable tidbits of gold from one of the leading figures in the industry today, you're in the right place! Tune in now and hear what he has to say. 

Key Points From This Episode:

• Some background on Jeremy Donovan's varied experience and interests.
• How Donovan collects and tracks cold emails for testing and analysis.
• Talking about the effects of the pandemic on prospecting.
• What's changed for the better and the worst in sales, and the hyper-education of buyers.
• Talking about the concept of reciprocity and proving you're a human behind the email.
• Donovan recommends researching Becc Holland.
• What kind of role will AI play in prospecting?
• How the relationship between personalization and relevance is a false dichotomy, and how to strike that balance.
• What metrics a sales rep. should be looking at. 
• What is a great rule of thumb for knowing when to pivot your style or strategy.
• Examples of specific words and alternatives that can boost or reduce reply rates.
• 5 killer do's and don't, from subject lines to punctuation marks in the first sentence.
• Finding the sweet spot of keeping the email customer-centric while keeping it natural.
• The importance of keeping it short and simple - plain text performs better.
• When to leverage gifs and video, and being on top of the changing nature of trends.