Landing jobs with cold emails

1
FREELANCER TIPS

• Landing jobs with cold emails

More freelancer tips on www.freelancermap.com...
2
Landing jobs with cold emails

• Cold emails can be an extremely good ways to find
  new gigs. As a freelancer, you might often get
  the feeling that people are getting jobs out of
  the blue without you even having had the chance
  to compete with them. And youre right many
  openings dont get advertised at all. The best
  professionals in any line of work know that they
  have to take the initiative and differentiate
  themselves from everybody else. Writing emails
  out of the blue allows you to do just that.
• Its no easy undertaking though. The majority of
  cold mails will get ignored for various reasons.
  This article is here to assist you in writing
  better cold emails and increase your chances of
  getting noticed in five steps.

3
1) Identify the right recipient

• The very first thing you have to do when
  considering a cold email is to find the person
  who will have the time to read it and the power
  to actually help you. It is hard to make a
  general statement about who that person is, but
  you can exclude a few options pretty easily. It
  is most definitely not the _at_info address, neither
  is it the HR department which gets buried by
  hundreds of emails each day. It may not be the
  CEO either, as he or she likely has enough on
  their plate as it is. Finding the middle ground
  between those will require you to some
  investigation on Google, but it is more than
  worth it. If you dont send your email to the
  right recipient, you might as well not send it at
  all.

4
2) Subject lines done right

• After you identify the decision maker, you can
  start thinking about your email. The first of the
  pitfalls lies in the subject line. Never, ever
  forget to fill it out and think carefully about
  how you do it. Avoid being generic at all costs.
  Some people like to make very personal subject
  lines like John, Id like to help you with SEO.
  This personal approach wont always work, but it
  illustrates the most important thing about the
  subject line of cold emails saying what you can
  do for the client.

5
3) Make a good opening or land in the spam folder
in 5 seconds

• Once you are certain you can make it through the
  first stages and your email is actually likely to
  get open, think about how you start. Again,
  people dont really have time to read through a
  whole email, most just skim it, especially
  clients who are likely to get similar offers many
  times a day. Thats why the beginning is crucial.
  In the best case scenario it answers two
  questions a) how you heard of your client and b)
  what you can do to solve a specific problem.

6
4) Sweet, short and precise

• Your email should be about as long as any
  paragraph in this article. Five to six sentences,
  this is all the space you have. Dont waste it.
  After the opening, the things left to mention are
  the experience in the field youre pitching for
  and your call to action. Get straight to those
  points and keep them short.

7
5) Never forget a call to action

• There is only one last thing you need for a good
  cold email. A good call of action looks something
  like this I would like to discuss the details
  sometime next week in case youre interested. Let
  me know at contact details or Could I send
  you a few idea? Ideally, the answer to those
  questions will be yes or an appointment to meet
  up.
• If your cold emails go unanswered, dont despair.
  Follow up with a new one after a week or two,
  since it is likely that your pitch just got
  buried. Try different things out and make your
  own conclusions about what works and what doesnt
  for the field and clients youre after.

8
Further freelancer tips available on
http//www.freelancermap.com/freelancer-tips Cont
act freelancermap.com Contact person Doreen
Schollmeier - International Affairs Mail
info_at_freelancermap.com Skype doreen.schollmeier P
hone 49-911-37750286 facebook
www.facebook.com/freelancermapInternational Twitte
r freelancer_INT