26 Cold Email Behavioural Science Tactics

If you’re a B2B company and your average contract value is medium to high ($1,000s to $100,000s+), utilising email to break the ice with your target list of best-fit prospects can be highly effective.

The unit economics support it and many prospects use their inbox as a core tool in their daily workflow (your message can become visible and valuable to them, quickly). Validate this, first.

I know this from first-hand experience, not just hypothetically. I got x2 B2B startups off the ground and grew them to multi-million dollar revenue with this approach.

However, email has become a saturated channel in recent years. There’s a lot of noise out there (low quality outreach) and AI is only going to make email more spammy.

It’s hard to punch through and get noticed, let alone build a mobilising perception to trigger a positive response from the email recipient.

Part of the toolset you can utilise to get noticed and stimulate a favourable response is to deploy behavioural science tactics. These tap into biases and heuristics of the mind that influence perception and decision-making.

Theres a ton of them. Below I have picked out 26, along with tactical examples of how they can be utilised to establish a positive email dialogue.

If you are a founder at an early stage startup (pre-sales team) you can utilise these techniques yourself. If you have a marketing and sales team, feel free to pass this along to them.

⚓ Anchoring Bias

What: People are disproportionately influenced by the first piece of information they encounter.

Meaning: Your sender name, email subject, and the first line of your email have an outsized impact on the perception of your email holistically.

Tactic: Your email subject and the first line of your email should be attention-grabbing (pattern-breaking) and contextualise the value of your email in a compelling and relevant way. One example: you can ‘borrow’ the reputation equity of others by referencing them and anchoring onto them. This is a specific example of how to apply this.

💡 Spotlight Effect

What: The tendency to believe that other people are paying more attention to a person than they really are.

Meaning: Re-affirming an ‘eyes on me’ perception in an email can stimulate a favourable behavioural outcome.

Tactic: Reference something the recipient has said or done in a professional capacity (triggering “what is being said about me and what do people think?” vibes). The reference can be a blog, podcast, social media post, etc. This is a specific example of how to apply this.

❓ Ambiguity Aversion

What: People prefer decision situations with known probabilities to decision situations under ambiguity in which probabilities are unknown.

Meaning: If you create a perception that replying to your email will lead to predictable and clear outcomes, recipients are more likely to engage with your message.

Tactic: Provide a clear indication what the recipient can expect from responding to your email. This should be clear to the degree that it neuters anxiety they have about generating an unfavourable outcome (e.g. being pitched something they don’t want). For example, drop the sales vibe and make it obvious that you wish to start a thoughtful dialogue about a specific topic.

⌛ Sunk Cost Fallacy

What: People justify increased investment in a decision based on the cumulative prior investment.

Meaning: Highlighting the investments already made by the recipient can encourage further commitment.

Tactic: Reference the recipient's previous investments, suggesting they can be enhanced and leveraged to be more productive. To paraphrase in simple terms: “I see you spent $100k on this thing, did you know doing X will increase its ROI by 38%?”

🚫 Scarcity Principle

What: The perceived value of a something increases as its availability decreases.

Meaning: Creating a sense of limited availability can increase the perceived value of your email.

Tactic: Highlight why you are one-of-a-kind (without saying it literally) and valuable. This creates a perception that unless they reply, they will never meet anyone else like you. Answer this question: what makes you uniquely qualified to contact them? Avoid obviously superficial ploys, like artificially created “limited availability” offers. They do have their place, but most of the time they are used in an ineffective manner. The recipient first needs to buy into the proposition

👞 Foot in the Door Effect

What: A person is more likely to agree to a large request by first having them agree to a modest request.

Meaning: Starting with a small, easy-to-accept request can increase the likelihood of compliance with a larger request later.

Tactic: If your objective is to get your recipient to agree to a relatively high-investment proposition, like a call, don’t start by asking this. Instead, first get them to buy into the idea of answering questions about their work and role via email. Tip: Don’t say “Can I pick your brain”… just dive into the question.

🔥 Hot-Hand Fallacy

What: The belief that a person who has experienced success has a higher chance of further success in additional attempts.

Meaning: Highlighting recent successes can create a sense of ongoing momentum and the perception that you can bring that success to the recipient.

Tactic: Mention recent successes and achievements your company or product has had, that could benefit the recipient. For example, the success rate you have with clients (make sure to define what success looks like from the perspective of customers).

🧩 Representativeness Heuristic

What: Judging the probability or likelihood of a hypothesis by comparing it to something else that is already known.

Meaning: Anchoring your proposition to an intuitively relatable and complementary concept can make it more appealing.

Tactic: Provide an analogy for what your proposition is and does — “The X for Y”, like “Uber for speed boats”. Or, piggy-back by establishing an association.

🔄 Reciprocity Principle

What: The tendency to feel compelled to repay favours or kindness received from others.

Meaning: Offering something of value (for free) can encourage valuable reciprocation.

Tactic: Provide insights, feedback, and data-points that could help the recipient achieve their jobs-to-be-done and succeed in their role. This can be obtained through independent research, or, by sharing learnings/data gleaned from business operations. You can also feature them on your podcast, blog, or newsletter etc, and provide free exposure (I’ve done this many times).

🆕 Novelty Bias

What: The tendency to be interested in and notice new or novel stimuli over familiar ones.

Meaning: Doing something radically different and interesting can get you noticed.

Tactic: Share something entertaining or funny via email. For example, create and share a meme-style image that makes fun of a situation unique to the industry and role of the recipient.

🐑 Herd Effect

What: The tendency for individuals to mimic the actions of a larger group.

Meaning: Showing that others (particularly peers and aspirational figures) are already using your product can encourage adoption.

Tactic: Highlight the number and type of prospects you are speaking with, or, have provided your proposition too. Doing this in relative and not absolute terms amplifies the effect if you have low market penetration. For example, instead of “0.5% of Fortune 500 CFOs use X”, you say “82% of Fortune 500 CFOs pitched X, chose X”.

👍 Similarity-Attraction Effect

What: The tendency to be more attracted to individuals and things that are similar to us in particular ways.

Meaning: Finding common ground with your recipient can build rapport and trust.

Tactic: Reference shared attributes in your email. So they start to see glimpses of themselves. For example, “I saw you raised a $4m seed round last year. Snap! We raised $3m.”

📆 Spacing Effect

What: Information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a longer span of time.

Meaning: Spreading your outreach narrative over numerous emails is more effective to build memorable awareness and knowledge than attempting to cram it all into one email.

Tactic: Don’t think of your cold email outreach as a one hit wonder. Instead, consider it to be a journey of progressive discovery. With each email, you provide more information, insights, and value for your prospect.

👑 Leader Bias

What: The tendency to assign more competence, worth, and status to someone or something because they are in a perceived leadership position.

Meaning: Creating a perception you’re a leader in a context that the prospect deeply cares about dramatically elevates appeal.

Tactic: Avoid literally claiming you are the “leader in XYZ”. It’s widely overdone to the point it is ineffective in most categories. And, unless the prospect knows this to be true, or perceives it could be true (lot of variables), it’s worthless. Instead, find other ways to establish this perception utilising irrational heuristics or intuitive logic. For example, if you specialise in a certain niche, state that “91% of our customers are B2B FinTech” or “91% of our customers buy custom media buying algorithms”.

🌠 Barnum Effect

What: People will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are, in fact, vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people

Meaning: Using personalised but broadly applicable statements can make your message more relatable.

Tactic: The bar for making an email feel personalised is lower than many people consider, but it’s still high enough that most people don’t put in enough effort to achieve it. Referencing an industry the recipient has worked in (that applies to all prospects in your target list), and then asking a question of it can meet the bar. For example, “I saw you’ve been building in AdTech for years. Have you worked with custom media buying algorithms?”

✔️ Confirmation Bias

What: The tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

Meaning: Aligning your message with the recipient’s beliefs can make it more persuasive.

Tactic: Enlist the recipient’s existing beliefs and perspectives to support your proposition and objective. For example, “Maintaining data hygiene in CRMs is a pain. It’s too prone to human error. But, it feels like there’s no way else to do it”.

👥 Social Proof

What: People tend to conform to what others (particularly peers and aspirational figures) are doing.

Meaning: Showing that others are successfully using your product can build trust and encourage interest and adoption.

Tactic: Name drop recognisable brands that are using your product. Number drop how many companies are using your solution. Context drop the type of companies that are using your solution.

🏛️ Authority Bias

What: The tendency to attribute greater accuracy and gravitas to the opinion of an authority figure and be more influenced by that opinion.

Meaning: If you establish yourself as a person with authority on a specific topic — more so than the recipient— you can lend credibility to your message.

Tactic: Highlight what you are an authority on and back it up with evidence. This can work even with industry experts, by zooming in a on a specific topic. For example, “I have done 100 media mix models for D2C brands, here’s what I found out..”

🏞️ Framing Effect

What: People make different decisions based on how the same information is presented.

Meaning: You can frame your email so that it cognitively disarms the recipient, embracing its content.

Tactic: Word your emails so you come across as curious. If you are perceived to be curious, it’s more likely the recipient will regard you to care and have a vested interest in helping them achieve their business objectives.

📖 Narrative Fallacy

What: The tendency to favour coherent stories over complex facts, leading to oversimplified interpretations of events.

Meaning: Crafting a short and compelling narrative can make your message more engaging and memorable.

Tactic: Share a success story that illustrates the impact of your product. For example, "John, a sales manager, transformed his team's performance using our tool — here’s how he did it…"

😨 Regret Aversion

What: The tendency to avoid decision making due to fear of regret.

Meaning: Emphasising the potential regret of missing out can motivate action. Or, the opposite — derisking the perceived likelihood the recipient will experience regret if they reply to the email.

Tactic: Call out the elephant in the room — the fact you are cold emailing and there’s an inherent time-investment risk from replying. For example, “74% of CFOs that responded to this cold email found the resulting conversation helpful.”

↔️ Contrast Effect

What: The perceived enhancement or diminishment of a measurement when compared with a recently observed contrasting object.

Meaning: Comparing your product in a favourable contrast against something else can enhance its perceived value.

Tactic: Highlight a perceived truth and contrast this with a benefit or outcome of your solution. For example, “FinTech startups pay $100k per year to use 2% of the leading-CRM. With our niche CRM, FinTech startups pay $2k per year to use 100%.”

📊 Base Rate Fallacy

What: The tendency to ignore relevant and balanced statistical information in favour of anecdotal-specific information.

Meaning: Relatable stories can make your message more compelling than representative statistical data.

Tactic: Use compelling anecdotal stories (case studies) alongside statistical evidence to support your claims. For example, "Our startup client ABC was loosing $360,000 per year in revenue until they installed our solution. With this, they were able to hire 3 developers and grow faster.”

👍 Choice-Supportive Bias

What: People tend to remember their choices as better than they actually were.

Meaning: You can utilise a positive perception of a past choice as a mental springboard to your proposition.

Tactic: Remind the recipient of any past positive decisions they made that are related to your product. For example, maybe they installed a CDN that has an app store where your product is featured.

😇 Halo Effect — “Big Logo”

What: A positive perception in one or more traits (like having a “big logo” brand as a client) leads to biased judgments of other unrelated traits.

Meaning: Citing trusted and reputable clients creates an overall more favourable perception of your proposition (and email).

Tactic: Reference endorsements from industry experts or reputable companies that use your product. For example, "XYZ uses us” or “XYZ recommends us”.

🌟 Status Seeking Effect

What: The tendency for individuals to pursue actions that result in social praise, recognition, or elevated status.

Meaning: Your new and innovative solution could be a way for a recipient to achieve public recognition and praise.

Tactic: Highlight potential opportunities for visibility, such as case studies, success stories, or features in trade journals.

That’s it for today. I’ll be back in your inbox soon. 🤘

Martin

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