I tried out 6 different email subject lines and collected some great data.

Cold email, like SEO is one of the most successful ways high growth bootstrapped SaaS companies have won in the long term

Here is the deal: cold emailing is time-consuming and can be demoralising if not done right. Everything is personalised from movie choices, to food. Your email outreach should be too

Only issue is, personalising cold emails is a laborious AF task.

Email writing is a pain, and it’s hard to stay focused on the sales process. You’re too busy worrying about your prospect’s possible reactions to care whether the email looks good or not. And it makes you feel like you’re a spammer trying to coerce them to do something they don’t want to.

So I kicked off an experiment with smartwriter to generate 6 different personalised cold email subject line formulas paired with personalised first liners

Here are the approaches I took and the results that came out of them.

Note, each one of these emails had a high personalised first liner I generated at scale using smartwriter. These previews are very important and help with the open rate

Approach 1

"{{Outcome}}, {{how easy to achieve}}"

or "Seriously smart AI copy, takes seconds, just copy and paste"

This got the highest open rate at 85% because the focus was purely on whats in it for them and the outcome they will get for the business.

Approach 2

"{{firstName}}, {{numeric success and outcome}}"

or "{{firstName}}, 10x your content and close more deals"

This had a 75% open rate because of referencing the person name directly and offering them a numeric outcome and success

Approach 3

"{{question about a problem you're solving}}"

or "Are you outsourcing your sales copy?"

This had a 79% open rate because it was targetted and these targetted customers were already actively solving this problem. So the email addresses an active intrigue.

Approach 4

{{recent news article mention}}

This had a 62% open rate as it shows the information is well researched and most likely not unwanted spam. However, this had the lowest Open To Link Click-through rate

Approach 5

"{{companyName}} <w> {{ProductName}}"

or "CompanyName <w> Smartwriter"

This had a 72% open rate. It's simple, to the point and showed direct collaboration between the person I was reaching out to and the product service I was offering

Approach 6

"You'll love this article {{firstName}}"

This had a 77% open rate, a lot lower than I expected. But had the highest reply rate and this was purely due to the fact it was value-based and I did not ask for anything in response

I'll be testing multiple more angles with SmartWriter. Hopefully, this helps and you get something to pick up and use for your own growth strategy