How to Warm Up Cold Leads With Content Before Emailing Them

Warming up cold prospects before your email arrives increases familiarity and reply rates. Here is how to pre-warm using content.

The concept

Instead of cold-emailing a complete stranger, introduce yourself through content they see before the email arrives. When they open your email, they have a vague sense of having seen your name or brand before. This shifts the interaction from cold to lukewarm.

Pre-warming tactics

LinkedIn profile views: Visit their LinkedIn profile before emailing. They see the notification, register your name, and when your email arrives, there is a subconscious familiarity. LinkedIn content engagement: Like or comment on their posts. This puts your name in their notifications and creates a positive association. Retargeting ads: Upload your prospect list to LinkedIn or Meta and run low-cost retargeting ads. When they see your brand in their feed and then receive your email, the two impressions compound. Content sharing: Publish thought leadership content on LinkedIn about topics relevant to your prospects. If your prospects see your content organically, they arrive at your email with built-in credibility.

The sequence

Week 1: Visit prospect's LinkedIn profile. Engage with one of their posts. Week 2: Send Email 1 of your cold email sequence. Week 3: Send Email 2, coinciding with another LinkedIn touchpoint. This layered approach creates multiple impressions across channels, significantly increasing the probability of a response.

Scalability

LinkedIn pre-warming is manual and time-intensive. Reserve it for your highest-value prospects. For broader campaigns, LinkedIn retargeting ads provide similar pre-warming at scale with minimal effort.

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