Is this overkill for cold emailing?

I have been tweaking my cold email template for the past few weeks and would like to know thoughts on this one:

"Hi {Name},

I’m {Me}, a rising senior studying finance at the [non-target SEC], pursuing an MSF after I graduate. I am pursuing a career in investment banking, and would like to learn from your experiences at [Boutique Bank].

I admire {Bank} reputation for advising high-growth tech and tech-enabled businesses, especially how your team combines deep industry knowledge with thoughtful execution. I’d like to hear more about your approach to advising clients and your perspective on the IT services and cloud space.

If you’re open to it, please let me know a couple of times this or next week that works best for you. My schedule is pretty flexible, and I’m happy to do my best to work around yours.

Or if it’s easier for you, I’ve also included some of my availabilities below:
Thursday (6/26): 11 am - 1:30 pm EDT
Friday (6/27): Anytime after noon EDT

I have attached my resume for your reference. I look forward to speaking with you.

Best,"

I can't tell if I should add the detail about the bank in the body or just take it out entirely. Obviously, the details in the body change for each bank, but each body has similar wording/structure to this one. Any advice on how to move forward with this would be great!
 

4 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Including times that you are available and your background is great, try to steer the message towards WHY you're interested in the bank and really hone in on personalization - IE "I am incredibly interested in X coverage because of my Y background and as such would love to learn more about your experience in X." Try to formulate it about a specific question and aspect of their work ideally, not just something about the bank. 

Personalization is really everything with cold emails - make your message tailored to each individual that you are reaching out to and try to find as many points in common as you can. Ultimately junior bankers are incredibly busy and if they have a random cold email that could have been written from anyone they are unfortunately going to throw it in the trash 99 times out of 100 (speaking from personal experience).

In my experience it was only once I started to hone in on personalizing emails that I was able to really improve hit rates. Ultimately it's not really always a numbers game and the people I know who were able to really succeed in the process were those who worked their networks (school alumni, etc) and super-tailored emails to those people. 

 

Thanks for the response and the help- I appreciate it. 

Would you send this same type of email to a senior banker, or would you change the format?  

 

I’d also recommend taking the fluff out. Be straight to the point. “This is who I am” “This is why I want to talk (Short and to the point)” “Here is when I am available and my resume attached”.

Also, personalization is key, don’t have Chat spew out garbage and Copy and Paste and send off

 

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