How To Write The Perfect Email To Investors

How to write the perfect email to investors as an entrepreneur?

The art of emailing investors is one of the most important skills to master as a startup entrepreneur.

That’s not changing any time soon either. It will literally make or break your startup venture.

At a minimum, performing poorly here will make everything far harder, longer, and more expensive.

Doing well here can bring incredible amounts of funding, from your favorite investors, and accelerate your business to greater heights than you thought possible while powering through any challenges along the way.

So, how do you write and send the perfect emails to investors?

Why Email For Communicating With Startup Investors?

Investors Prefer Email

Email is still the number one method of communicating for business leaders and investors in startups. They just prefer it.

Sure, there is WhatsApp, Twitter, voice calls, Google Meet, and in person, but this group is still email power users.

It is the best way to get through to them, engage with them, and work with them.

These connections are hard enough to make and maintain already. The last thing you want to do is to make it more complicated or to decrease your odds of success.

Save your innovation for your actual product and business model.

Email is the way to reach and communicate with investors, period. And that’s the reason why you should know how to write the perfect email to investors.

Prospecting For Funding

One of the top reasons to write emails to investors is for fundraising.

This process can range from making more casual connections far ahead of your needs, to asking for advice along the way, preparing them for your next fundraising round, sending your pitch deck and due diligence items, to negotiating and all of the follow up that you need to do between that first touch through to closing and putting the money in the bank.

In most cases, this is going to be a multi-step campaign with multiple series of email sequences based on the stage of the relationship.

Sending Investor Updates

Email is the ideal way to send investor updates.

Again, this can range from setting up future fundraising campaigns months or years in advance, to actively fundraising and pitching along with your pitch deck.

It will likely also be a big part of the follow-up and lead nurturing process throughout the months of your active fundraising campaigns.

Then it will also be used in follow-up after funding is secured and between future rounds.

Emails like this should also play a key part in your shareholder interactions, as shareholder letters, and prepping for board meetings.

Keep in mind that in fundraising storytelling is everything. In this regard for a winning pitch deck to help you here, take a look at the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

[emaillocker id=693]ACCESS THE PITCH DECK TEMPLATE[/emaillocker]

The Most Common Issues With Emailing Investors

There are many common mistakes and lazy habits that can seriously reduce the effectiveness of emails in this setting.

That’s on top of the typical issues that can impact all types of email and messaging.

Emails Blocked Or Stripped By Spam Filters

If your emails are blocked or stripped of their important contents before even making it into investors’ inboxes then they don’t even have the chance to open them or search for them in their mail.

This can happen before even making it to the spam box. Email service providers may just bounce the message. Or they may block images and attachments.

They can do this to suspicious senders who they have flagged as potential spammers.

Or they may do it based on the words used in your email. Unfortunately, there are a bewildering number of very common words that now trigger spam blockers.

When learning how to write the perfect email to investors, you’ll figure out how to avoid getting blocked.

Too Much Inbox Volume

Even if you get through the blockers, there can just be too much noise for your unexpected email to get noticed.

It may be diverted into a lessor viewed folder, or just be drowned in the mass of volume.

It probably isn’t uncommon for respected investors to be inundated with hundreds and thousands of emails each and every day.

Even just from others like you pitching them their startups for funding, and from existing startups in their portfolio.

This means you really have to make your emails stand out, and ace the follow-up.

Unappealing Email Subject Lines

It’s no secret that subject lines are a big deal when it comes to emails.

They are pivotal for success. Your subject line really has to nail it every single time or you don’t stand a chance.

Investors won’t even consider opening your email without a powerful subject line.

If you can’t get those open rates then all of your other metrics are going to perform poorly too. You immediately slash your chances of success.

In addition to the few words of the subject line itself, other key factors involved in getting your emails opened here include the from name and email address, and the first few word snippets of your message.

The Email Body Content

Some entrepreneurs and marketers put a lot of thought into the subject line, and then completely drop the ball on the content in the body of their messages. This is a complete waste. All you did was burn their trust and attention.

This may be far worse than not getting your message opened at all. At least you wouldn’t have burned the connection.

Each and every line matters. And that’s why you should know how to write the perfect email to investors.

The Closing

You can get everything else right in your emails, and then totally blow it when it comes to the closing.

There’s no point in getting the opens, crafting a nice message, and then completely failing to close them, and get readers to take the next step.

Ideally, you’ll have three calls to action throughout your message.

Your Email Signature

Your email signature is a powerful tool that can make all of the difference in the quality and fruitfulness of your investor relationships and get funded.

There is quite a bit of freedom and flexibility in creating an email signature.

You may include various methods of communicating with you, as well as strategic links to take them further into your funnel and CRM.

This is also a key part of your branding and positioning. Give it some thought, and use it as an advantage.

Email Attachments Versus Links

Attachments are a big source of problems when sending emails to investors.

They can greatly contribute to your message being blocked as spam, may often be stripped, or just not trusted enough to be opened or shared.

They also offer no control or tracking abilities which greatly hurt your ability to measure and optimize success.

Tracking & Measuring Performance

Gut instinct can be valuable in business, but only a fool uses that as an excuse to ignore the facts and data.

There are all types of analytics available to you. They will show you what you are doing wrong, and how to write the perfect emails to investors if you will just look at them.

Or at least have someone else watch them and act on them. Otherwise, you are just flying blind, wasting money, time and opportunity.

Your company and mission will pay for it dearly. If you don’t want to deal with this or pay attention at all, then you might be better just playing the tables in Vegas than doing a startup.

If you would like more in-depth information about how to cold email investors, check out this video I have put together. You’re to find it helpful.

How To Write The Perfect Email To Investors

Who Will Write Your Investor Emails

The first step in writing the best possible emails to investors is choosing who should write them.

Don’t underestimate the fact that this is equally as important before your first round as it is for after you are funded and are in later rounds.

There is a lot on the line here. Everything is on the line. It is a high-value task.

Yet, it is often one that founders should not be doing themselves. They can still find more value in doing other things with their time. They may not be ace copywriters themselves.

This is not somewhere to be cheap. Think about the ROI. Think about efficiency and results.

If you have a professional copywriter on staff already, then they may help. If you’re not sure how to write the perfect email to investors, find a freelancer who specializes in this type of content.

Recognize That Every Line Of Text Is Important

From the subject line through the closing and signature, every line matters. Each line needs to be carefully crafted to get the reader to keep on reading the next line, and the next.

The quality of the writing from a strategy and sales perspective is far more important than the volume of content, or even spelling and grammar.

Mix Up The Media

Don’t get married to one format or type of media and template until you’ve tested them. Even then it can be smart to mix it up to keep it interesting.

Try mixing up plain text emails, with video emails, and those using colored templates and images.

Also try varying between corporate type email messaging and formatting, and more personal emails. You may be surprised at which gets the better results.

Get The Timing Right

Getting the delivery right is just as, if sometimes not more important than what’s in the email. Timing your delivery is crucial for getting emails noticed and opened.

The right timing can be found with some testing, though an email marketing pro can help you get it right from out of the gate too.

If you have done your basic homework and research in advance, and deeply and intimately understand your prospects and investors, you’ll know the ideal time to send and schedule those emails.

Again, you can experiment with automating emails, versus carefully personalizing them.

Double Check & Test Before Sending

Again, while the content is more important than perfect grammar and spelling, it is smart to edit and double-check your messages before sending them.

Run them through a spam filter and be sure you are ranking low on spam scores.

Then send test emails to yourself and your team to see how they show up as a recipient before blasting them out.

Double-check and test any links in your emails. Consider split testing your emails to further optimize them.

Monitor & Evaluate Results

Track your results. Now you can be tracking your email performance in real-time.

You can watch your open rates, bounce rates, click-through rates, and use heatmaps to see which parts of your emails are getting the most action.

Make tweaks on the fly as needed to optimize performance on the rest of the batch.

Be sure you are tracking action on the links you have sent too. For example, the interactions on your pitch deck, investor updates, and virtual data rooms.

Record what’s working and not for future email campaigns.

Then follow up, follow up, follow up.

Summary

Writing successful emails to investors for your startup is a big deal. It is still the best way to land them and work with them.

Make sure you avoid these common email mistakes and implement these best practices to optimize for success. Make the effort to learn how to write the perfect email to investors.

You may find interesting as well our free library of business templates. There you will find every single template you will need when building and scaling your business completely for free. See it here.