Outreach
The cold email that gets a reply from an importer
An importer's procurement inbox gets a dozen identical Indian supplier introductions a week. The only thing that separates yours is whether the first line proves you looked them up.
Here is the email a European procurement manager gets eleven times a week:
Dear Sir/Madam,
We are a leading manufacturer and exporter of ceramic tiles from Morbi, Gujarat, India, established in 2009 with state-of-the-art infrastructure and an annual capacity of 12 million square metres. We export to 40+ countries and are ISO 9001:2015 certified. Please find attached our catalogue. We look forward to your valued enquiry.
Nothing in it is false. Nothing in it is about them. It could have gone to any of four thousand companies, and the recipient can tell, because it did.
Why it fails, precisely
| What the email does | What the reader concludes |
|---|---|
| Opens with your company | This is about them, not me. Delete. |
| "Dear Sir/Madam" | They don't know who I am. |
| Lists capacity and certifications | So does everyone. These are table stakes, not differentiators. |
| Attaches a catalogue | Work for me, before I have decided I care. |
| Asks for "your valued enquiry" | No specific next step. Nothing to say yes to. |
| Says "40+ countries" | Unverifiable, and irrelevant to my market. |
The fix is not better adjectives. It is a different opening premise. Demonstrate, in the first sentence, that you know something specific and true about their business. Shipment data hands you that sentence for free.
The structure
The five rules behind it
- One specific, true, checkable fact in the first sentence: product, lane, frequency. Never a number you cannot defend if they ask where you got it.
- Under 120 words. Procurement reads on a phone between meetings.
- One ask, and make it small. A 15-minute call is easier to accept than a quotation request, which implies work on their side.
- No attachment on first contact. Attachments from unknown senders trip filters and suspicion in roughly equal measure.
- Write like a person. "I saw", "we run", "worth a call?", rather than "we are pleased to introduce our esteemed organisation".
Say what you know, not where you got a file. "I see you've been importing porcelain through Hamburg" reads as ordinary market awareness, which is what it is, since shipment manifests are a matter of record. "Our database shows your 14 shipments in the last 12 months" reads as surveillance and puts the reader on the defensive. Same fact, opposite reception.
Three templates
1. First contact
Subject: 40×40 porcelain, Mundra, quick question
Hello Markus,
I see Bohnenkamp brings in glazed porcelain through Hamburg fairly regularly. We manufacture the same specification in Morbi and ship that lane at 26 days port to port.
Two things that may or may not be useful to you: we hold stock in 40×40 and 60×60, and our minimum is one 20' container rather than a full 40'.
Worth a 15-minute call next week to see whether it is worth quoting? If it is not relevant, just say so and I will not follow up.
Jaydeep
[Company] · Morbi, Gujarat · +91 …
[one link]
That last line matters more than it looks. Giving the reader an easy exit raises reply rates, because a two-word "not relevant" costs them far less than ignoring you and wondering whether you will write again. And a clean no is genuinely useful to you.
2. Follow-up, one, not five
Subject: Re: 40×40 porcelain, Mundra, quick question
Hello Markus,
Following up once on the note below, then I will leave it.
If a landed price to Hamburg would be more useful than a call, tell me the specification and volume and I will send it. No call needed.
Jaydeep
One follow-up, five to seven working days later, on the same thread. Offer a different, lower effort path rather than repeating the first ask. If neither lands, stop. Leave the account for next quarter, when you will have a new reason to write.
3. Incumbent displacement
For a buyer you can see is supplied by one exporter, consistently, over a long period. Do not attack the incumbent. You are asking to be second, which is a much easier request to grant.
Subject: second source for porcelain, not asking you to switch
Hello Markus,
You clearly have a supply arrangement for porcelain that works, and I am not writing to ask you to change it.
What I would ask for is to be your second source: a quoted price on file, a sample approved, and capacity reserved. It costs you an hour now and it is worth having the quarter a container is delayed or a price moves.
Can I send a sample and a landed price to Hamburg for your file?
Jaydeep
Buyers with a single supplier are exposed and usually know it. "Be your backup" is an offer to reduce their risk rather than to create work for them. Second suppliers become first suppliers with striking regularity.
Sending it properly
| Detail | Do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | 20 to 30 individually written per week | Beyond that they stop being individual, which is the whole mechanism |
| Timing | Tuesday to Thursday, 08:00 to 10:00 their time | Arrives at the top of the inbox they triage first |
| From | A named person at your own domain | info@ and sales@ read as broadcast, and get filtered that way |
| Domain health | SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured | Without them a large share never reaches the inbox, and you will never know it happened |
| Sending tool | Your normal mail client, or a tool that sends one at a time | Bulk-mail headers get sorted into promotions |
| Language | English for most of Europe. Local language for France, Italy, Spain, Latin America, Japan | A two-line translated opening earns its effort in these markets |
| Tracking pixels | Leave them off | Corporate filters flag them, and open rates are not a business metric |
B2B outreach to EU recipients is generally handled under GDPR's legitimate-interest basis, but that is a basis with conditions rather than an exemption. Write to a business address about a genuine business relevance, identify yourself and your company clearly, provide a real opt-out and honour it immediately, and keep a record of why you contacted them. Some member states and sectors are stricter. Canada's CASL and similar regimes elsewhere have their own requirements. If you are running volume outreach into the EU, spend an hour with someone who knows the rules for your markets. It is worth doing once, properly.
What to expect
Twenty properly researched emails a week, one follow-up each, aimed at buyers who verifiably import your product, is a realistic programme you can sustain. Reply rates on evidence-first outreach run well ahead of broadcast introductions. But the reply rate is not the number that matters. What matters is how many of those replies came from companies that could actually buy, and that was decided before you wrote a word, when you built the list and checked who was on it.
Two hundred emails to a bought list produces nothing and takes an afternoon. Twenty emails to a researched list produces conversations and takes a day. The second one is cheaper.
