Content that works in cold emailing = negative marketing

So cold emailing has become my best avenue for getting clients. What has been working particularly well is creating content that creates fear/doubt and attacks the status quo (which is everyone's biggest competitor).

I write an email, create a blog post with negative titles, then follow the PAS copywriting formula, and it works. Prospects reply, meetings get booked, and some people buy.

The content is negative but helpful and I get a few compliments about it from people who reach out to me. I find that taking a negative angle really helps to cut through the noise of "The Top 5 Reasons You Should Do X", or just people sending them emails to connect for 15 minutes to discuss XYZ benefit. It shows in my opens, click-through rates, and replies. I also pre-qualify the list which helps even further.

In an inbox, a threat stands out; their RAS (reticular activating system) lights up. I got an email months ago from a marketer that had the subject line "You cheeky little..." and it jumped out to me. I just had to click it because it made me feel something. It offered me a cliffhanger of not knowing what was inside. Unfortunately, the rest was bait and switch with no follow-through. Just another generic autoresponder email with a clever subject line.

I feel that purely positive content has its place.. after the customer has been in enough pain to look for a solution, to reinforce the direction that they were already headed, at least in the context of cold email