Are You Cold Emailing Wrong? Here’s How to Cold Pitch Better
Cold Pitching Strategies to Boost Your Outreach Results
Cold pitching gets a bad rap. Ask a roomful of freelance writers, and most will fall somewhere between “it’s a total waste of time” and “the success rate is too low.”
And, sure. If we’re talking about copy-and-paste emails sent to hundreds of prospects at once, then yes. You’re not likely seeing a significant return on those efforts. But here’s the thing. Cold pitching isn’t bad. The way most people do it is bad.
If you want to land better clients with this tactic, here are some nonnegotiable tips on how to cold pitch.
12 Cold Pitching Tips Every Freelance Writer Should Read
Stop! Before you send that next cold pitch, read these tips first.
The top cold pitch strategies and tips include:
1. Trust That Cold Pitching Works
First things first. Cold pitching does work. You can land your dream clients with this technique. But for that to happen, you have to approach cold outreach the right way.
No, it’s never going to be 100 percent effective. There are too many variables out of your control. It can produce results, though, and it can definitely be worth your time.
2. Don’t Rely on Cold Emailing Alone
These are eggs. This is a basket. Don’t put all of the first into the second.
Freelance writers who are consistently booked out tend to have one thing in common. They use multiple channels to land clients.
That client acquisition strategy could include any or all of the following:
Referrals from current or former clients
Networking
Active gig or project listings
Content platforms and freelance writing job boards
Inbound leads, including anything won through blogging, SEO, social media, and brand building
Cold pitching
Whatever the specific combination of tactics, not many freelance writers who enjoy long-term, sustainable success rely on a single method alone. Diversification within a client acquisition strategy helps safeguard you against the natural ups and downs of any given method.
So, whether we’re talking cold pitching or building your personal brand, don’t make this your one and only way of landing new work. Add it as one tool in your built-out freelancing toolbox.
3. Don’t Make the Cold Pitch All About You
It’s so easy to start a cold pitch with, “Hi, I’m [fill in your name], and I’m a freelance writer.”
Don’t.
In a truly cold email, the prospect does not know you at all. They have zero reason to care about you or what you’re offering. (It sounds harsh, but it’s true!)
Frame everything in the pitch through the lens of that specific prospect. What challenges are they having? What problems are they experiencing?
Then, when you bring yourself into the equation, you’re seen as a genuine, helpful, welcome solution to those problems.
It helps shift the entire pitch from you asking for work to you offering to help.
Again, this isn’t going to work every time. Many other factors need to line up for you to get that ultimate yes, but if you go in talking all about you, your pitch will likely be dead on arrival.
4. Personalize It
Personalization is one key way of making your cold pitch stand out in a noisy inbox.
A lack of personalization in cold pitches is one reason so many freelance writers dismiss this tactic as ineffective.
When people hear that cold pitching is a numbers game, many respond by simply sending out more pitches. They say, “OK. If less than one percent of people are going to respond, I’ll just up how many pitches I send.”
Here’s the problem, though.
To meet those kind of cold pitching quotas, you can’t put in the level of personalization needed to actually make this tactic effective. At best, you’ll be throwing in a first name and maybe a company name. The rest is a copy-and-paste job sent to hundreds (thousands!) at a time.
That faux personalization isn’t fooling anybody, and, more importantly, it’s not convincing anybody to buy.
Real personalization takes research…and usually lots of it.
If you’re truly writing a cold pitch to that one specific prospect, plan for several hours of research on:
The company
The industry
The person receiving the pitch
Does this take more time? Yes. Does it yield better results? Usually.
5. Make It Timely
Sending your cold pitch at just the right time is one of the most underrated ways of getting a positive response.
If your cold outreach comes across the right desk at exactly the right time, it doesn’t need to be bulletproof and perfect in all other regards.
If you’re offering a service or a solution that company genuinely needs at that exact moment, they are going to meet your cold pitch not with skepticism but gratitude.
Finding good writers is hard. If you just show up in their inbox and demonstrate how you can solve their problem, it’s a good bet you’re going to book that discovery call.
6. Put in Effort
A cold pitch does several things for you all at once, and one of those things is serving as a writing sample in and of itself.
Remember, this prospect doesn’t know you at all. They have zero reason at this point to trust you or to think you’re going to be a competent, valuable addition to the team.
This cold pitch is the first indication of what they can expect when working with you.
Put in the effort. It shows if you do, and it shows if you don’t.
The good news? Most pitches fall really short of the mark here. Not many writers are putting in even baseline levels of effort. If you do, you can stand out.
7. Choose Your Writing Samples Carefully
Most cold pitches will include a link to a writing sample or portfolio. This gives the prospect the chance to check out your work and your writing style before investing any time in reaching out to you or having that follow-up call.
A few pointers with your writing samples:
Put your best foot forward. Only include your most standout examples.
Make it relevant to them. If you have examples in their specific niche or industry, send those.
Don’t make the prospect work for it. Ever. If your portfolio is disorganized, large, or filled with random samples, don’t send a link to that. Point them specifically to one or two pieces that are relevant to them.
Prospects are busy…and not likely to spend any extra time or effort on someone they don’t know.
The goal of your sample should be for the prospect to quickly, easily, seamlessly understand why you’re a great fit for working with them.
8. Make Your Cold Pitch Easy to Read
Formatting matters.
People will not be poring over every word or sentence here. At best, they’ll be scanning it with half an eye while hovering over the delete button.
Short, simple sentences are your friend. Fluff and filler are not.
If bullet points or headers make sense, they can help a pitch be scannable.
Avoid unusual fonts or strange font colors. They only serve to make the pitch less readable, and they scream “spam.”
9. Be Selective with Your Target Prospects
Spend (a lot of) time picking the prospects you’re going to target with cold pitches.
If all your techniques are right but the prospect is wrong, that’s still going to result in nothing for your effort.
Spend time creating your ideal client profile. Then spend time researching which company, business, or individual matches that profile.
10. Have a Follow-Up Cadence
Hey. Me again.
People are busy. Emails fall through the cracks. Or they mean to respond and forget. Or they simply ignore the first outreach.
Whatever the reason, it’s worth investing in a short follow-up cadence.
This is where email tracking software can be really useful.
If prospects are consistently opening and clicking on links within your emails but not taking the next step, then you might want to check your website or your samples.
If no one is even opening or clicking, that’s an indication it’s time to go back to the drawing board on your pitch and try new tactics:
Switch it up with your subject lines
Try out new tones
Experiment with sentence length or overall pitch length
Send pitches at different times or days of the week
11. Test. Test. Test.
Testing is your friend. Proper testing and results tracking allow you to experiment and see what works. (Sometimes the answers are surprising!)
When you test and track, you can be more bold. You can try out humor. You can see if video content makes a difference.
Don’t fall into the trap of not experimenting because you don’t want to scare off that one prospect. No matter how specialized or narrow your niche, there are tons of prospects in the sea.
If something works amazingly well, that’s useful information. But if something falls on its face, that’s useful information too.
Test and track until you find what’s effective with your audience.
12. Learn to Deal with Rejection
Rejection sucks. Unfortunately, it’s part of cold pitching. It’s also part of freelance writing, and it’s part of life.
If you can find ways to turn rejection from something daunting and scary and paralyzing into something productive and positive, you’re going to see benefits.
You’ll have more sustainable, enjoyable success with cold pitching, but you’ll also feel those benefits in your freelancing journey in general.
Want Even More In-Depth Cold Pitching Strategies?
Ready to learn more? Then check out Cold Pitch Like a Boss. Over 58 video lessons and almost three hours of instruction, you get the entire rundown on cold pitching.
What cold pitching is (and isn’t)
The goals of cold pitching
Step-by-step breakdown of the anatomy of a cold pitch
How to choose your target prospects
Everything you need to know about research
How to stay out of the spam folder
Follow-up cadences
The mentality of cold pitching and dealing with rejection
Have any questions…about this course or freelance writing in general? Don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m always happy to help when I can!
