In my last post, I talked about how to find copywriting clients. In my experience, mastering the art of the cold pitching is the best way to get new clients.

Why? Well, let me tell you a little story about the beginning of my freelance writing career. I was living out in LA (ya know, the 10th most expensive city in the world), and I was laid off from my job with only a couple thousand dollars in savings. I knew I wanted to become a freelance writer, but my back was really up against the wall to make shit happen.

I’d already figured out my freelance writing niche (beauty) since I had worked in the beauty industry and pretty much only had beauty-related samples. I tried freelance writing job boards for a while, but they really weren’t working for me. First of all, I rarely saw postings for my niche on the freelance writing boards. And unfortunately, everyoneseems to think they can be a beauty writer, so the competition was steep when there was a beauty-related job. In fact, the only freelance job I ever got out of a job board was writing 1000-word history pieces for $0.08/word. But at $80 a pop, that job definitely wasn’t going to pay my rent. And even that was temporary, as the client eventually let me go for being “too expensive”.

I also tried Upwork. Now, full disclosure: I currently make a big chunk of my income from Upwork. But back then, I didn’t know what I was doing and rarely made more than $35 for an assignment on Upwork. When you calculate Upwork’s hefty fees into the mix, I was barely making enough money to go to Taco Bell, let alone pay my bills.

So I turned to cold email pitching. At my last job, I had written the brand’s blog posts. Nobody else at the company wanted to write the blog, but I always enjoyed it. So I figured that other beauty brands must have the same issue: a dormant blog with no one on the team to write it.

Around the same time, I realized that there are countless beauty brands out there. Go to the beauty department at Marshall’s and look at all the beauty brands you’ve never heard of; the beauty industry is A LOT bigger than just Olay and Estée Lauder. I figured that if I reached out enough, there would be enough beauty companies hiring to support little old me.

This is called “abundance mentality”. I guarantee that there are way more clients in your niche than you could ever dream of. And once you start learning more about your industry, you’ll be amazed at how many potential clients are out there.

I started collecting the names of as many beauty companies as I could find. I put them in a spreadsheet and noted whether or not they had a blog that had been recently updated. If a company had a blog that hadn’t been updated in a while, I sent them my cold email pitch. Most of the time I received no response, but every once in a while I DID get a client! And by continually reaching out, I was able to eventually book enough work to make a living as a freelance writer. Using this method earned me over $4,500 in my first three months of writing. Woo!

*Cold pitching is the best way to gain clients as a new freelance writer.*

WHY COLD PITCHING WORKS

If you’ve never worked on a marketing team before, let me tell you what it’s like: insane. Every marketing team at every company is overwhelmed. They have tons of projects they want to take on and they never have enough time or manpower to complete them.

Oftentimes, they have projects that involve copywriting and they don’t always have a dedicated copywriter to complete these projects. When teams don’t have a copywriter, someone on the team (who is not a writer by trade) has to take on the project. The project takes longer than it should and doesn’t turn out as well as it could have if they just hired a professional copywriter in the first place.

Unfortunately, these marketing teams don’t have time to seek out a professional company for writing projects so these projects go by the wayside, just sitting on a to-do list until your cold email pitch shows up. Most companies know about the benefits of blogging for business, but they don’t have time to write all those blog posts. They don’t even have time to hire a blogger to do it for them!

Then you come with your perfectly-timed, professional cold email pitch, ready to help them achieve their blogging goals. If the marketing team has a budget to hire you, you will truly be a godsend to them. You’re taking a dreaded task off their plate so they can focus on their strengths and everyone is happy.

Now, that’s the ideal scenario. A lot of times you don’t receive any response, but you can’t take that personally. Sometimes the marketing team doesn’t have a budget for a freelance writer. Sometimes they see your cold email pitch, but they’re too busy to respond to it. And sometimes they don’t see it at all. That may sound strange to you, but trust me, I have worked with people who had thousands of unread emails in their inbox. They just don’t see them! Don’t let “no” or non-responsive people stop you from soldiering on and getting that cash money.

*I guarantee that there are way more clients in your niche than you could ever dream of.*

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH COLD PITCHING

Okay, now let’s get to what you actually came here for: how to cold email pitch. There are many ways to do this, but here is the method I used. This is what worked for me and helped me make over $4k in my first three months of freelance writing.

1. Make a Freelance Writing Portfolio

If you don’t already have a freelance writer portfolio, you need to make one before you start cold email pitching. Period. So read this post, make your portfolio, and then come back here for the next steps.

2. Get Your Email Address in Order

Obviously, it’s ideal that you have your own domain name with a matching customized email address (i.e. colleen@glossytype.com), but not everybody has that when they’re starting out and that’s okay.

It’s fine to send your initial cold email pitches from a gmail account, as long as your email address is professional. For example, it’s just your first and last name or the name of your company. Numbers look kind of suspicious and you definitely shouldn’t send it from your middle school email address “jazzyswimmergurl247@gmail.com” . Don’t send from your college email address (you may look inexperienced), and don’t send from a Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL address (you may look out of touch).

Look, I don’t make the biases, but people and spam filters are immediately going to reject you based on these details that many new freelance writers overlook.

If you don’t have a professional-looking email, make one!

3. Create an Email Signature That Builds Trust

We are trying to cultivate the impression that we are professional, reliable people (because we are…hopefully). A good email signature conveys that you are an actual person and not some kind of con artist trolling the web for people to fool.

Here’s what you should include in your email signature:

A small headshot of your lovely face. You don’t need to book a headshot session with a professional photographer. Just brush your hair, put on a blazer, and have your mom take a quick picture of you with your phone and some nice lighting. It’s easy.
Your first and last name.
What you do for a living (i.e. you’re a B2B marketing writer)
Links to your writer website, freelance writing portfolio, and LinkedIn. Don’t include links to your personal Twitter or anything that screams unprofessional.

This is what mine looks like if you need some ideas:

4. Make a Spreadsheet of Companies

I pulled my initial list of companies from stores like Sephora, Ulta, and Target. I literally just copied all of the brands in their beauty departments and pasted them into my spreadsheet.

Then I started researching each brand. I Googled the brand and added their website to the next column. Next I checked their website to see if they had a blog and whether or not it had been recently updated. I added that info to the next two columns.

Next I also created a column for beauty sub-category (for example, whether they are a skincare, hair care, or cosmetics company) to help me tailor my pitch. I then added a column for the cold email pitch date, which I filled in when I sent my pitch out (more on that later). Finally, I created a column to record any responses.

But guess what! I saved you the headache of making this spreadsheet yourself. I’ve got everything you need in my cold email pitch kit!

5. Write a Cold Email Pitch

Now it’s time for the hardest part, which is writing your pitch. Obviously it’s tempting to write just one cold email pitch and send it out over and over again, only swapping out the potential client’s name and company.

However, if done incorrectly, this can come off as totally spammy. I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received that were clearly the same email copied and pasted over and over again offering writing services. These emails are spam. I know that those people don’t actually care about ME. They just want my money. If they’re that lazy with their cold email pitching, I’m guessing they’re also really lazy with their work.

The trick is to leave a placeholder in your template where you write a customized sentence or two for each client. You need to demonstrate that you actually want to work for them and that you care enough about them to do a little research on their business. It’s literally just doing the bare minimum to get them not to delete your email immediately.

You also need to quickly tell them how you can be of use to their company withoutcriticizing them. If they haven’t updated their blog in a year, don’t point that out. Just say you can help write their blog so that they don’t have to worry about it.

Not sure where to start? Download my cold email pitch kit, which includes customizable templates. This will give you the perfect starting point for crafting your own kickass cold pitches.

Finally, make sure to include a link to your freelance writing portfolio in your email. Don’t write, “Let me know if you would like to see examples of my work.” Like I said, marketing people are BUSY. Give them all the information they need to make a decision on whether they should give you a chance in your very first contact.

This applies to everything except pricing. Leading with pricing straight out of the gate looks cheap and you want to come across as valuable as possible.

6. Start Cold Pitching!

A lot of people get hung up on who they should send the email to. They spend hours digging around Linkedin, trying to connect with the right person and find their email address.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS.

Every single company has a main email listed on their website. Send it to that email. Someone reads those emails and forwards them along to the correct department. If your email looks promising, they will forward it to their marketing team.

Each time you send an email, make a note of it in your pitch date column so you can follow up on it later.

7. Follow Up

If you don’t hear back from a potential client in a week, send them a follow up email.

Oftentimes, your email gets buried among others and no one sees it. Other times, they ARE interested in your services, but they forget to email you. You know how things can just fall to the bottom of your to do list and never get done. When you follow up, you are just sending them a quick reminder of your services, which they honestly probably need if they’re so busy.

To find the clients you need to follow up with, just sort the spreadsheet by the pitch date column. Then search for that client in your sent folder and send a second email in the same email chain. That way they still have all the info from the first email at hand.

You can also use a template for the follow up email. Keep it short and simple. Tell them you just want to bump this up to the top of their inbox and reiterate how you can help them out.

You can follow up as many times as you want, but I wouldn’t email them more than three times if they don’t respond.

*Don’t get caught up on conversion rates when cold email pitching.*

HOW DO YOU MEASURE YOUR SUCCESS?

Some freelance writers will analyze their stats and judge whether or not their cold email pitch is any good by how many clients respond and end up signing on with them.

I personally am not a fan of this method. Why? Because unless you’re cold emailing like 100 potential clients per day, you won’t have a large enough sample size to judge whether or not your cold email pitch is any good.

I’m not saying that you should never tweak your cold email pitch, but don’t get hung up on this piece. Many external factors affect whether or not a company opens or responds to your cold email pitch. These factors have nothing to do with the content of your pitch. However, if you’ve been cold emailing consistently for several weeks and never receive any kind of response, I would try to make some adjustments. Don’t worry too much about “conversation rates” or anything like that at this time. You’re literally throwing a bunch of shit at the wall to see what sticks.

The best time to send cold pitches is during working hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but the best time to write cold pitches is whenever you have time.

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME FOR COLD PITCHING?

If you are just starting out as a freelance writer, you may only have evenings and weekends to work on your side hustle. So you may be wondering, if I send an email on Saturday night, will anyone see it?

Well, the short answer is no. If you send an email over the weekend or at night, there is a greater chance that it will be buried in your target’s inbox come Monday morning.

That’s why I recommend scheduling your emails. Plan to send cold email pitches every day (more on that later), but only schedule them during working hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. On Mondays, marketing teams are usually too busy to respond to your emails, and by Fridays, everyone is too excited for the weekend to care about your cold email pitch. So Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays (preferably in the morning) are the sweet spots for sending cold email pitches.

*Rejection stings, but it will sting less with every cold email pitch you send.*

COLD PITCHING CONSISTENTLY IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS

Now here’s the part that no one wants to hear. You have to cold pitch every day.

Assign yourself a reasonable amount of pitches you will send out and do that every day, no matter what. It’s tempting to send out 50 in one day. And that’s fine, as long as you plan on pitching again the next day.

When I started out, I made it my mission to send five cold email pitches every day. I kept a little tally in my planner.

As a new freelance writer, this task is super important, so you should do it first thing, before you do anything else. GET. IT. DONE. Building this habit will put you on a trajectory to success.

Rejection stings, but it will sting less with every cold email pitch you send.

DEALING WITH REJECTION

One more thing. Rejection terrifies many aspiring freelance writers. Yes, rejection sucks. But I promise you it will get easier. The first few rejections will sting, but after a while, you won’t care anymore. You will build up a tolerance to rejection. If you don’t believe me, watch this TED Talk about a man who purposefully sought out rejection for 100 days.

And here’s the great news: repeated rejection actually helps you in other areas of your life. You won’t be afraid to ask for things you want because you won’t be afraid to hear no. Imagine how that could improve your life!

Okay! So now you know everything I know about cold email pitching. Now get out there and get some clients! If you need a little boost to get you started, download my cold email pitch kit. It includes the actual spreadsheet format I used to track my cold email pitches as well as five customizable templates.

Just click on the link below, fill out the form, and I’ll send the kit straight to your inbox!