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5 Ways to Bolster Cold Emails with Social Proof (+ Examples) - Prowly
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I started my marketing career as a link builder at a digital agency. I remember the toil of spending hours finding prospects and pitching content, often achieving little in return. Thankfully, I’ve honed my networking and cold outreach strategy since then. But the truth is, cold outreach is tough no matter what you’re pitching. It’s more than likely that you’re going to get frozen out than get a response. In fact, non-personalized cold emails get a 5% response rate on average. So, the question is, how can you make sure your response rate is better than that measly figure? The power of social proof has been proven. When you include it in your PR outreach emails, you increase your chances of not only getting a response but getting a positive response. 1. Mention Mutual Connections Busy journalists and influencers receive pitches from complete randos all day long. So, you have to find a way to make your email stand out. A journalist or influencer is more likely to give you their time if you have shared colleagues or acquaintances. This is because you borrow the authority of your mutual connection. Due to the phenomenon of social proof, people are more likely to adopt the opinions of people they trust. In other words, if the trusted mutual connection is willing to give you the time of day, so will your prospect. Mention your common connection when you introduce yourself to immediately build authority. Here’s how content marketer, Gregory Ciotti does it: Like Gregory, you can use your connections as a more authentic way-in. Remember that the greater the authority of your connection, the more authority it will pass onto you through social proof. And this media pitch was indeed successful for Gregory: So, be sure to leverage your common connections to make your pitches more compelling and therefore, increase your chances of success. 2. “Showing off your credentials can be as simple as having a nicely fleshed-out email signature.” Use Convincing Data Social proof in the form of data can go a long way to convince prospects that you’re the real deal if they aren’t familiar with who you are. It’s particularly effective when it relates to the number of endorsers you have. Here’s an example of an outreach email featured on Backlinko: When asking Brian to feature on their podcast, the sender casually drops in that they get 250,000+ downloads a month. If you look in terms of social proof, it’s mighty convincing. The person who reads such an email is going to think it must be an excellent podcast because 250,000 people can’t be wrong, right? You can do something similar by sharing the number of followers you have or the number of customers served, for example. It’s easy to convince somebody that you’re legit when you show them how many supporters you have or how many people have wanted to work with you. 4. Name-Drop Publications FOMO is real. It makes you go out despite the fact that you’re exhausted after a long day at work. It makes you buy that expensive new smartwatch because everybody else has one. It even makes publications much more likely to accept your pitch… When you name-drop influential publications that have talked about your product, brand or study it makes prospects feel like they’re missing out on a scoop. Your prospects are keen to keep up with trends. But, really, they want to do what other influential sites are doing because of social proof. To put it simply, they think, if Ms. Influential is talking about this, I should too. Here’s a template that PR coach and outreach expert Dmitry Dragilev uses: He drops in the social proof at point 3 by saying “We were recently talked about in…” Don’t be afraid to humblebrag in this way. It also works for pitching guest posts to editors that don’t know you yet.