Writing cold emails is one of the most tricky sales outreach strategies that can make or mar your sales performance. Unlike other outreach techniques, cold emails are sent to people who you have no prior contact or relationship with.
As difficult as general sales can be – selling or reselling to close contact, a connection, an acquaintance, or someone that knows you – Cold email outreach is reportedly 5x harder because you (a stranger) are trying to build a relationship or rapport (and ultimately drive sales) with someone who doesn’t know you and probably doesn’t care about what you have to say.
Cold email outreach presents a harsh reality for sales reps and marketers who spend hours crafting a convincing email copy only to get no response from their recipients or worst case, fail to get them to open the email.
While this is what many sales reps go through, existing statistics say the average response rate and conversion rate for a cold email are 30% and 15% respectively. This clearly suggests that with the right strategy in place, you can ace your cold email campaign and get an impressive response rate – which brings us to the Basho email strategy.
Basho emails are personalized outreach messages that can help a sales rep increase their cold email response and success rate.
In this article, we will discuss all you should know about Basho emails – writing tips, when to use it, templates, and how to leverage them for your cold email success.
Table of Content
- What is a Basho email?
- Benefits of using a Basho email
- When should you use a Basho email?
- Tips for writing a Basho email?
- A Basho email sequence to win your email campaigns
- 5 Basho email templates to work with
What is a Basho email?
A Basho email is a highly targeted, researched, and personalized email that is sent to high-level personnel within an organization, usually a top account decision-maker, with the goal of starting a conversation that can lead to sales.
These emails are customized to fit the needs and preferences of their recipients to gain their attention and show the decision-maker that you understand their needs and pain points and have the solution available to solve the problem.
The basho email outreach strategy was developed by Jeff Hoffmann, a renowned sales trainer and the founder of the corporate sales training firm, Basho strategies INC., hence the name Basho email.
Although Basho emails are similar to cold emails, such that they are both used to build a relationship, rapport, or conversation with the prospects and possibly get them to agree to a phone call or meeting (physical or virtual), the two emails differ based on the email structure and formatting.
Cold emails can be generic, non-personalized emails sent to a large group of people, while basho emails are personalized, specific emails that are targeted to drive business results.
Benefits of using a Basho email
A recent study disclosed that;
Emails with personalized subject lines have a 50% chance of being opened compared to generic subject lines and Personalizing and targeting cold emails can increase the open rate by 45.5%.
It is a known fact that people are only naturally drawn to customized content that mentions their names, addresses their pain points, or compliments them. The idea behind Basho’s email strategy is to personalize an email to capture the email recipients’ attention and get them to respond.
With more people likely to open and respond to an email that specifically targets and speaks to their needs, using the basho email strategy can help you achieve the following benefits.
They are easy to implement
Basho emails are essentially a lot faster and easier to write, they don’t require any intensive training, tool, or techniques. With a good understanding of research and email writing skills, anyone can learn how to write a basho email that brings the desired results. Members of a sales team can teach others the right basho email writing strategy.
They enable direct communication with top decision-makers
The ultimate goal of writing basho email is to gain direct access and communication with key decision makers in a target organization.
By writing the decision-maker with the authority to make sales decisions, you are able to focus your research on the most important person and help you craft your email in a way that convinces and attract their attention to initiate sales conversation.
Basho emails also eliminate the mediators and streamline the sales process to increase the success rate of your email campaign. Find the email marketing metrics to calculate.
It increases the conversion rate
Basho email helps sales teams to share their business value proposition and explain how their company has helped other companies to solve their pain points and achieve their business goals with social proof.
When you are able to directly address the decisionmaker’s pain points and offer them real solutions to their problems, you can ultimately increase your email response rate and have a higher chance of converting a lead into sales.
It opens doors to endless business opportunities
A basho email is a personalized and highly targeted email that can help you grab your prospect’s attention and get them to achieve your desired goals.
While sales are one of the biggest benefits of using the basho email strategy, it can also help you achieve other business development goals such as collaborations, invitations to a corporate event, interviews, improved brand awareness and so much more – the opportunities with using emails are endless.
It doesn’t cost a fortune to work with
Basho email strategy as earlier explained is an easy process that sales reps can easily learn to create winning cold emails.
Basho emails require a good amount of research to understand the prospect’s interest, goals, and pain points and good email writing skills to effectively personalize important elements of the emails like the subject line, body, call to action, etc. Basho email strategy is affordable and can be used by almost everyone.
When should you use a Basho email?
Basho emails are essentially effective in creating a connection with the prospects and possibly help you get a response from them to support sales.
Although writing emails you to follow some strict guidelines to get the desired results, there are certain situations when you should actually use a basho email strategy. The best situation to use a basho email strategy are:
When you are reaching a decision-maker
If the goal of your email outreach campaign is to reach and get a response from top decision-makers, then it’s best that you use a basho email strategy.
This will enable you to do thorough research on the high personnel, identify their problems or goals and determine how your product or business can help them solve their problems or achieve their goals. Using a basho email strategy can help you impress the decision makers and get them to take your desired action.
When you can’t get your prospect on the phone
Ok, now you have an amazing business offer to share with your prospect but can’t seem to get them on a call with you. As normal as this can be, failing to reach your prospect when you need to can frustrate your sales effort and practically ruin everything.
In this situation, that is when you should use a basho email strategy to reach the prospects and possibly schedule a phone appointment with them.
When your prospects don’t respond to social media messages
Social media has become a powerful digital media platform that lots of businesses and professionals use to connect with each other, sell their products or service, and ultimately grow their business.
If you have tried severally to reach your prospects via social media platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, or Twitter – you can use the basho email strategy to connect with them and increase your chances of succeeding.
If your sales outreach strategy includes accounts
An account-based marketing or selling strategy is a sale or marketing model that targets companies, mostly referred to as “accounts” researched to have significant expansion or growth opportunities.
So if your sales or marketing strategy is account-based rather than individual-based, it’s best that you send personalized cold emails to all your prospects to get your desired results.
Tips for writing a Basho email?
Irrespective of how effective basho emails are to get a high response rate, they require time and practice to get your desired results. Sending someone you have never met or had earlier conversations with a personalized email highlighting their recent achievements or projects to get them to schedule a meeting with you or drive sales requires a lot of time to master the art of sending winning cold emails.
Following reports that 347.3 billion emails are sent per day in 2023, there is a high likelihood that your prospect receives numerous emails in their inbox on a daily basis, so to send emails that stand out and get their attention needs to follow the right steps and processes.
For this reason, here are five tips to consider when writing a Basho email:
Conduct extensive research
Every sales and marketing professional cannot underestimate the significance of research in understanding customers and developing working strategies. Similarly, one of the most important steps when writing a basho email is to conduct thorough research on the prospects to get all important information about the key decision maker and their company -to identify their pain points and determine how best your company can help them.
The first step to this is finding out their social media platforms and websites to find information about them, their interests, recent projects, and achievements and ultimately spot some of their lapses. You can also check their website to gain a better understanding of their business – their history, brand story, products, customers, and employees – as well as monitor their social mentions to see what people are saying about them.
Once you have gathered all this information, you can now filter and compile the ones that are more important to you to include in your email subject line, greeting, and body to gain their attention and get them to respond to you.
Check out this example below,
Craft a catchy, attention-grabbing subject line
Short and vague email subject lines show a response rate of 66.7% and personalized subject lines have a 50% open rate.
An email subject line is the first point of contact with your recipients in your email campaign. It is the first thing people see in your email and makes the first impression on your cold outreach campaign.
A well-crafted subject line with the right keywords and attention-grabbing information can influence your prospect’s decision to either open the email or ignore it. The reality of a cold email subject line is that it is just as important as your email copy and so you have to take certain precautions when crafting your subject line.
Even when your email has the best solution and is effectively personalized, the only way the recipient can read the email is by opening the email. If your subject is not short, catchy, and personalized as it should be, you risk losing your qualified prospect.
Try tailoring your email subject line by including their name, congratulating them, calling their attention to an issue you noticed, etc., to get them interested in your high-value solutions.
Check out this example below,
Personalize your email opening line
Your email opening line is the first line of your email that your prospects will read or scan through to get an idea of what your email is all about. Using the Basho email strategy requires that you start your cold email opening line with an interesting fact, compliment, notice to a business problem, etc., to gain your email recipients’ attention from the start and get them to read your email to the end – and possibly get a response.
It is the part where you need to show your hard work and research – show them you are not there to waste their time, and can offer them value. On your part, it showcases your professionalism and hard work and to them, it reassures them to listen to you. Consider the following ideas for your personalized email:
- Mention something personal to them such as their interest, goals, or general topic of interest to interest them and make them want to read your email content.
- Talk about something they said or write about maybe in the past or present, like a blog they wrote, a general or industry-related topic that you connect with and find very impactful.
- Compliment them and generally say nice things about them by either congratulating them for a recent job promotion, getting a new job, receiving an award, or making a speech to arouse their interest in your email.
Highlight your product or service value
If you have stayed long enough in the sales and marketing field, you would understand that the only thing your prospect or customer cares about is what can benefit them – bring them value.
After successfully building a connection with your prospects in the opening line, it’s not enough to slack off in the following paragraphs as the flow of value in your email can hold them through to the end of the email. If you manage to get their attention in the first paragraphs, your next paragraph should focus on the value that you can offer.
Specifically, highlight how your product can solve their problem with social proof to get them to buy into your business solution. Your ability to pitch your product or service in such a manner can get them to take your desired result – schedule a call, book a meeting, or initiate sales.
Check out this example below,
Create a convincing call to action
A call to action (CTA) is a written instruction that you give your recipients at the end of your social media marketing content or email to guide them on the next steps to take. After gaining their attention and interest in the email body, your call to action has to finish the work by adding a call to action that tells takes the communication a step further.
Just so you don’t share high-quality information that they just forget, you have to ensure your CTA takes them a step closer to you. Consider asking for a good time to call, sending them a meeting scheduling link to set a meeting, or just request for feedback from them.
Check out this example below,
A Basho email sequence to win your email campaigns
An email sequence is a series of emails that are sent automatically with automation software to prospects with the aim of converting them to a customer. The ultimate goal of designing email sequences is to get prospects to reply to cold emails, get them to sign up and build awareness.
If you are going to be designing email sequences with the basho email strategy, consider the following guidelines:
1. First Contact
This guideline follows through with the earlier explained basho email tips, it is the first email you send and so you must ensure it contains all the tips given above – research prospects, write a catchy subject line, personalize your opening line, highlight your product value and use a convincing call to action.
2. Follow up with “Value add”
“Value add” is the term that explains when you send your prospects a valuable resource or link that can help solves their business problem to show how interested you are in helping them solve their problem.
This guideline rules that when sending your follow-up email, you should include something that goes beyond just talks.
In your first email, you have already told showed them your knowledge and willingness to solve their problems, the second email should them this by including a link to a video, blog, or an attached document that can help them read more about how they can improve. Check out this example below,
3. Follow the 1-2-3 email
The 1-2-3 email is the practice of presenting email recipients with three scenarios that mostly relate to them based on the information you have about them and their points. With the 1-2-3 email, you provide your prospects with three problem suggestions based on what you know they are currently facing.
For example, if you are sending an email to prospects struggling to hit their sales target, your suggestions could be;
Hi Mark,
I am Zee from Toydings,
- Are you currently struggling to covert your leads?
- Do you have poor leads?
- Do you wish to increase your average revenue growth?
From the example above, the three questions highlight some of the problems the prospect could be facing, and by seeing that they are compelled to pay attention to you. Check out this example below;
4. Use a break email format
The Break-up email is one of the most effective follow-up email templates that sales reps use when they are not getting a response from their prospects. This is an interesting type of email with a different approach from the normal cold emails.
Rather than coming to them and trying to sell to them, you are telling them you are leaving, since you haven’t heard from the in a while.
This type of email grabs their attention and arouses their curiosity – making them read the email to check the content if they missed the previous ones. A good example of this is below,
5 Basho Email Templates to Work With
Basho emails are personalized emails targeted at high-value accounts like CEOs, CFOs, Managers, and other top-level executives. This email strategy is the best option if you struggling to get your prospect’s contact details – direct desk phone numbers, email addresses, etc., and need to gain their attention to enhancing sales development.
Consider adding customer data, including their recent blog title, their podcast (sales acceleration podcast), recent awards, new job, or personal interest to gain their attention.
To gain a better understanding of this, consider the following templates.
Template 1
Template 2
Template 3
Template 4
Template 5
Conclusion
It can be frustrating to send well-crafted cold emails without getting a response from the prospects, probably because you failed your grab their attention. This is why a lot of sales reps use the basho email strategy to craft winning cold emails that get a response from the top business leaders.
Now that we have taken you through all the tips, and guidelines with some templates to enhance your understanding of basho emails, it’s time to take charge of your cold email campaigns with emails that drive results. Check out the detailed guide for how to write a follow-up email.