Sending a personalized B2B cold email is an excellent way to approach a lead — whether it’s to try to get them to schedule a demo, hire you for a service, or anything else. (We’ve covered the major scenarios and cold email template framework you should follow if you want or need a refresher.)

However, you must only cold email those B2B contacts who can genuinely benefit from your offerings — otherwise, your email could be considered illegal or spammy.

But how do you write an effective B2B cold email?

In this article, I’ll share 12 practical B2B cold email templates you can start using today. I’ll also cover three best practices for B2B cold email success and answer two related FAQs.

B2B Cold Email Templates: Table of Contents

(Click on links to jump to specific sections)

• Top 12 B2B Cold Email Templates to Use in 2022
  • Pain Point Email Template
  • Right Person Email Template
  • Competitor Email Template
  • Useful Resource Email Template
  • Press Mention Email Template
  • Website Visit Email Template
  • Voicemail Follow-Up Email Template
  • AIDA Template
  • Compliment Email Template
  • Virtual Event Email Template
  • Testimonial Email Template
  • Product Launch Email Template
• 3 Best Practices for B2B Cold Email Success
• 2 B2B Cold Email FAQs

Let’s get started.

Top 12 B2B Cold Email Templates to Use in 2024

Here are 12 high-converting B2B cold email templates for your sales team:

1. Pain Point Email Template

A cold outreach email centered around a specific pain point your ideal prospect struggles with is a surefire way to capture their interest.

It shows that you empathize with their situation and genuinely wish to help them, increasing your chances of receiving a response.

2. Right Person Email Template

You can use this B2B cold email template when you’re unsure if you’re approaching the right person.

The recipient will most probably let you know if they’re the one to contact or someone else is.
Otherwise, you’d be wasting time on someone who’s not a decision-maker.

3. Competitor Email Template

Highlighting the potential limitations of a competitor’s product or service in your sales prospecting or lead generation emails is a great strategy.

Why?
It not only piques the recipient’s interest but also showcases what’s unique and appealing about your offerings.

4. Useful Resource Email Template

Receiving an email with relevant free resources is bound to impress your cold prospect.

Since you’re adding value to their lives, the prospect will be more open to engaging with your sales prospecting emails down the line.

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5. Press Mention Email Template

A potential customer who just got mentioned in the media probably expects responses from the general public. That’s why an effective cold email about the press mention is likely to get opened.

You can leverage this opportunity to highlight how you can contribute to their success.

6. Website Visit Email Template

Emailing a cold prospect who downloaded a resource from your website is a natural way to start a conversation. Your sales rep can offer further help to the recipient and even gauge their interest level through this B2B email template.

7. Voicemail Follow-Up Email Template

There are differences in a cold email versus a cold call, but one key similarity: In both cases, you aim to establish contact with a prospect.

If a prospect doesn’t pick up your cold call, sending a quick follow up email that explains why you called is a smart idea. The email lets you stay on top of the prospect’s mind, increasing the chances that they’ll engage with your next cold call or email.

8. AIDA Template

AIDA, which stands for Attention-Interest-Desire-Action, is an effective cold email approach.

At first, you grab the prospect’s attention with your subject line. Then, you generate interest through the intro of your email copy and ask if the prospect desires the benefits you offer.

Finally, you add a CTA (call to action) at the end, prompting them to respond or click on a link in your email.

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9. Compliment Email Template

A genuine compliment goes a long way in building rapport.

You can use that rapport to gradually help a potential customer develop an interest in your offerings.

10. Virtual Event Email Template

Use this B2B cold email template to invite a potential client to a virtual event like a webinar.

But before inviting someone, ensure that your event is relevant to them and remember to establish that relevance in your cold email campaign. You can do this by going over who will speak at your event, the agenda, etc.

11. Testimonial Email Template

Sharing social proof like a customer testimonial in your cold email helps build credibility.

When the prospect sees how other customers have benefited from your product or service, they’ll be curious and inclined to give you a response.

12. Product Launch Email Template

Cold emailing a lead to ask for feedback about a new product or service works for several reasons:

• It demonstrates that you value the lead’s opinion.
• The cold email lets you showcase your product’s or service’s unique selling points.
• You get to show the potential client what they’re missing out on when not using your offerings.

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Now that we’ve gone over several effective templates, I’ll cover some B2B cold email best practices you should follow.

3 Best Practices for B2B Cold Email Success

Follow these three best practices to boost your B2B cold email response rate:

1. Write Personalized Emails that Get to the Point Quickly

When sending cold emails, the ground rule is: always personalize your emails.

Why?
The prospect probably doesn’t know who you are — so if your B2B sales email is generic like the other emails in their inbox, you’re sure to be ignored.

In contrast, personalizing just the email subject line can increase your open rate by 22%.

For writing a personalized email, you can include prospect details, like their:

• Name.
• Company name.
• Specific interests.
• Relevant social proof, and more.

However, while there’s no ideal length for a B2B cold email, you’ll want to keep your personalized email sweet and short. Essentially, your email should get to the point quickly without beating around the bush.

2. Remember to Follow Up on Your B2B Cold Emails

Research shows that sending just one follow-up email can boost your reply rate by 65.8%.

A follow up email essentially provides your sales team another chance to make your case with the prospect.

But how many follow-up emails should you send?
Although sending more follow-ups can help improve B2B cold email engagement, I recommend limiting the number of follow-ups to five.

Any more, and you may end up annoying your ideal prospect and ruining any chances of closing a sale.

If you want an even deeper dive into what goes into a cold email follow up, check out our deep dive.

3. Scale Up Your B2B Outreach Efforts with Cold Email Software

It’s time-consuming and inefficient to manually personalize your B2B cold emails and follow up on them. It’s also not scalable when you have tons of cold leads to approach.

Fortunately, with a solid email tool like GMass, you can automate most of this work and easily scale up your outreach efforts.

What’s GMass?

GMass is a robust cold emailing and email marketing automation tool that works entirely inside Gmail.

Its powerful features and ease of use make it a favorite cold email marketing tool among B2C and B2B marketers, salespeople, startup founders, small business owners, and even employees at large companies like Google, Uber, and LinkedIn.

With GMass, you can:

• Save every B2B sales email you send as a B2B email template to reuse later.
• Automatically personalize your cold emails, including paragraphs, images, links, etc.
• Create workflows to send auto follow-ups to your B2B sales email leads.
• Check the effectiveness of your cold outreach emails with detailed email reports.
• Perform A/B tests to see which cold email variations work best for your target audience.
• Connect your Google Sheet with personalization data to GMass to send mail merge campaigns.
• Build a B2B cold email list of your target audience quickly by automatically extracting email addresses from your Gmail search results.

To use GMass, just download the Chrome extension and sign up for a free trial with your Gmail account.

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Next, I’ll answer a few commonly asked questions about B2B cold emails:

2 B2B Cold Email FAQs

Here are my answers to two commonly asked questions about B2B cold emails:

1. Is It Illegal to Send a B2B Cold Email?

It depends.

Is cold emailing illegal? No… as long as what you’re sending is relevant, defensible, and follows some important guidelines.

Sending a cold email to someone who works at a company related to your product/service is generally allowed under U.S.- and European-specific regulations (CAN-SPAM and GDPR, respectively).

However, you may be required to:

• Provide an opt-out or unsubscribe link.
• Specify how you’ll store the recipient’s data and for what purpose.

On the other hand, buying an email list of B2B companies may violate such regulations. It’s better to avoid this practice entirely and stay on the safe side of the law.

Read my detailed post on GDPR email marketing for more info.

2. How to Avoid the Spam Filter When Sending a B2B Cold Email?

There’s a big difference between cold email vs spam. Keep these pointers in mind to prevent your B2B cold email campaigns from going to the spam folder:

• Ensure that your outbound email list is up-to-date and has only valid email addresses.
• Don’t mention words/ phrases like “cheap”, “bargain”, “cash bonus”, “risk-free”, etc. in your email subject line — essentially, avoid anything that sounds spammy.
• Request your recipient to add your email address to the safe sender list.
• Avoid adding attachments to your emails; instead, provide a link to the document’s location on the cloud.
• Limit the number of hyperlinks you include in your cold email — ideally, keep the number of hyperlinks under five.

Need more help?
Check out my article on why emails go to spam and how to solve it.

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B2B Cold Email: Final Thoughts

Sending B2B cold emails can help expand your customer base and boost business development.

You can use the templates I’ve provided to get your B2B cold email campaign up and running in no time.

Remember, when sending a cold email outreach campaign, you must personalize your email copy and follow up with the prospects. To automate that, you can use cold email marketing tools like GMass.

GMass’ automatic email personalization, email follow-up, A/B testing, and native Google Sheet mail merge features make it the perfect cold email software for B2B marketers and sales professionals.

Why not try GMass today and take your B2B cold email efforts to the next level?