There’s only one way cold email works for B2B, and it’s not what you think.
In this waning-pandemic era, my morning routine has been optimized to the hilt. I wake, scrunch my hair into a bun, throw on leggings and a t-shirt, and grab some coffee. It takes about five minutes — and that includes 2.5 minutes for the pour-over. (My daughter doesn’t even move from her prone position in bed; she just grabs her laptop from her night table and starts her day. My husband is a huge fan of the “hide-the-bottoms” strategy and lives in jogging pants paired with nice-ish shirts. We’re all Olympians here).
It’s a good thing too, because all that time I’ve saved preening gets frittered away once I open my email. I gingerly take my post-surgery carpal tunnel hand and click-click-click-click-click my way down the inbox to delete all the cold emails that have come in overnight. By the time I’m done, I have about four emails that actually need my attention. And that’s how my morning starts.
It goes without saying that this is my primary inbox, and I’m only dealing with the cold emails that have slipped through Google’s fingers and avoided the graveyard of the Promotions folder.
What’s become of B2B email? Like the boy who cried wolf, repeated requests for meetings and responses have become meaningless and the end result is simply a form of cognitive load that’s useful to no one.