10 Reasons Why People Ignore Your Cold Sales Emails

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Cold sales emails… let’s be honest, most of us hate them. Yet, they are still one of the most frequently used tactics to acquire new customers. Probably because email is the most popular tool for business communication, according to Forbes. 269 billion email messages are sent every day. The good news is, it looks like Forbes was right, the bad news is, competing with such overwhelming volume of emails is tough!

Cold emailing if done right can be a super effective source of freshly smelling leads! So if you’re not getting any responses to your cold emails, you’re probably making these mistakes. Here are 10 reasons why people ignore your cold sales emails.

10 reasons why people ignore your cold sales emails

1. They are not in your target

One of the reasons why people ignore your cold sales emails is simply because they are not in your target. Getting your target market right is the most important element of nailing your cold email campaign. The more specific it is, the higher the chance of conversion. Why? Because you can tailor your messaging to their needs specifically (more about that here).

If you keep sending emails to the wrong people they might ignore them (which wouldn’t be the worse, to be honest), or they could openly express their discontent by sharing it on social media, and you don’t want that.

why people ignore your cold sales emails

Sainsbury’s handled it pretty well, I’ll give them that.

2. They are not the decision maker 

You might be cold-emailing a person who is not the decision maker and therefore doesn’t feel the need to respond to your message. You might want to include a sentence in your email which says:

If it’s not you, could you please refer me to the person responsible for XYZ.

If you are lucky, they will forward your email to the right person, if you are not, they will simply ignore it.

In general, you should always try to target the decision-making process rather than the decision maker. There hardly ever is just one person who is the decision maker (unless it’s a very small company), usually, there is a whole bunch of people involved in the decision-making process, so try to identify all the stakeholders.

3. Your email got lost in their mailbox

Another reason why people ignored your cold email might be that they didn’t even see it, as they got flooded with other emails (which probably were slightly more important than yours, no offense). Considering that on average we receive 121 emails per day this scenario is highly probable.

Here is a little tip for you: try sending your cold emails between 5 and 6 am. According to Hubspot this gives you a higher chance of your email being read (not just open, but read) by your prospects.

However, if you are into testing then definitely try our best time to send email tool  (it’s free) to find out what the best time to send your email is.

Remember one thing: you won’t know unless you try so test, test, test (to be the best) !

4. It ended up in spam (oops)

Oh no… you have to pay attention to how many emails a day you send. It’s good practice to set up daily limits. Each email service provider has their own limits, for example, Gmail has a limit of 200-300 emails a day. You should not exceed that number.

You might want to create a couple of email aliases like firstname@domain.com or firstname.lastname@domain.com and send between 100-130 emails per day from each.

5. Your subject line really sucks… 

Subject lines matter, irrespective of your email’s nature, whether it’s a marketing or sales email. Make your subject line stand out! Again, think about the number of emails that we receive every day… If people ignore your cold sales emails or don’t even open them it’s probably because your subject line really sucked.

Here are some subject lines that you should avoid:

  • “RE”  – seriously this no longer works, and can only annoy your prospect
  • Your company name – what if they have never heard of you?
  • Hi, your prospect’s name – do not pretend you are somebody’s friend when you are not
  • A quick call – boring, pushy and used way too often

If you want to learn how to get an 80% open rate then check out this article.

6. You didn’t personalize it or… 

You got their name wrong. If you do it once, and you realize it fast enough you can always send another email to apologize. But what if you get it wrong 3 times? This has actually happened to me… I received an email from a guy who wanted to publish a guest post on our blog, and he was pitching his article to me.

He started his email by saying hi Karen (close to Kasia but not close enough), but hey he’s only human so I forgave him. However, after the 3rd email where he called me wait for it… Peter, I lost it! No, he did not get the chance to publish his article on our blog, and also I couldn’t help but call him Jessica in my last email. Get the name of your prospect right… at least!

why people ignore your cold sales emails

Not bothering with personalization might be another reason why your cold sales emails get ignored. We live in the age of personalization, and there are a lot of great email automation tools that let you fully personalize your messages. Growbots is one of them, so if you don’t use any email automation tools, then check it out. Try to make your prospects feel a little bit special.

7. You got the timing wrong

Often it’s about timing, cause as you know timing is everything.  Maybe the prospect you are contacting doesn’t need your product right now, maybe they don’t have the budget for it or they already have the right solution in place.

8. They forgot to respond

Sometimes people forget to respond to emails, which doesn’t mean they are not interested. They are just busy doing their jobs and responding to your email is not their priority right now.

This is why you should always remember to send follow-ups.  We usually send between 5-7 follow-ups to each prospect, although on average we get a 50% response rate right after the 1st message.

9. TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read) 

On average we delete 48% of emails that we receive which only takes us 5 minutes! Keep your cold emails short and to the point!

According to a study done by Boomerang the most effective cold emails have between 50 and 125 words. They result in a response rate of over 50% (impressive).

Nobody wants to read long emails, unless they are your friend (and a really good one too), people’s attention spans are getting shorter so keep that in mind while writing your next cold email.

why people ignore your cold sales emails

Source: Boomerangapp

10. A call-to-action is missing 

How many times have you actually forgotten to include a CTA in your email? You need to let your prospect know what you want them to do, otherwise, they will just get confused and most probably ignore your cold sales email (and quite rightly so). Don’t make your prospect guess what you want them to do.

Do you have any ideas why people ignore your cold sales emails? If you do, share them in the comments, thanks.

Check out our infographic!

10 Reasons Why People Ignore your Cold Sales Emails

no prior experience & time required

Find your winning outbound formula with Concierge

no prior experience & time required

Find your winning outbound formula with Concierge

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