Terrible Cold Email Alumni Response Rate (Semi-Target)
My cold emails have had a response rate of 5% since I started sending them in October. Probably have sent emails to 250 different alumni (following up twice if they don't respond, so about 700 emails total) and have had about 30 calls. What am I doing wrong? I'm running out of alumni to email at some banks -- these banks are the ones where I haven't had a single alumni respond to my emails. I've tried sending both personalized and non-personalized emails and have had similar hit rates (I always mention the club/frat/etc. connection if there is one). Here are my templates for reference (school finance club recommends putting availability):
Non-personalized:
Hi ________,
I hope your Tuesday is off to a great start.
My name is _______, and I am a sophomore majoring in Economics at [semi-target]. I'm very interested in Firm and would love to hear about your time in the [] group and any advice you might have for me.
If you're open to it, I'm available before [availability]. My schedule is flexible if other times work better. I've also attached my resume for your review.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Best,
______
Personalized (example):
Hi _____,
I hope your Tuesday is off to a great start.
My name is _____, and I am a sophomore majoring in Economics at [semi-target]. I saw on LinkedIn that you previously worked at ______, and I'd love to hear about what prompted the transition and how your experience in the [] group at Firm has compared.
If you're open to it, I'm available after [availability]. My schedule is flexible if other times work better. I've also attached my resume for your review.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best,
_________
Bump
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Response rates aren’t a function of how many emails you’ve sent but rather how many people you’ve emailed. Rn you are 30 for 250 which is closer to 12% and is normal. Just send a lot more emails and it’s okay to email non alums that you have something in common with (hometown, sport, activity)
Would emailing non-alum help for recruiting? I know it helps for general networking / career, but I wasn't sure how helpful it'd be if alumni are going to be reviewing my app
depends on the firm and location. some firms do things through school recruitment teams, some have it so any person can update the tracker. always worth networking bc if a call goes well enough they can refer to your school team yk.
This is my personal preference for when students outreach to me so take with grain of salt. I usually weigh my workload against how interesting the person is from the email. Yours is standard, professional and will make me consider it, but I would not jump on it. I need flare, something weird or funny, to get me to respond because of the effort. That being said your resume being clean is table stakes.
What are some things that would be considered flare? Not really sure what the line is between weird/funny and unprofessional
Adding "flare" will get the guy above to respond to you, but also drop your ex-guy-above response rate.
Would recommend talking about specific industry interests - even a sentence or two can be super helpful and differentiating. Or any shared clubs, similar majors - as long as you're polite, humble, and pithy about it, it'll provide a little intrigue.
Honestly I've had just as much luck with emailing people who aren't alumns. University of Michigan has a template which I think is pretty good if you tweak it. Have a strong title
VP here (been doing this since I graduated). I’m just here to point out that, while it may be something you’re doing wrong, it’s also very likely that everyone is just getting crushed by Q4 pitches and deadlines. I have responded to maybe 5 cold emails out of dozens I’ve received and that response was just to push the call out to January when things have settled down. I’m much more likely to jump on the phone literally any other time of the year and that has been the case effectively since I started in this industry 5+ years ago.
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