In this article, we are going to discuss the fundaments of a successful cold email campaign.
To improve the performance of your email deliverability, follow these guidelines:
Research your contact list
A researched contact list is key. Make sure your audience and your sale offering are aligned. This means that the relevancy of the service you offer needs to be of interest to the people you pitch to.
You have full control over whom you are going to sell your products or services.
We suggest you use Linkedin Sales Navigator as the source for collecting your leads. You can use our Chrome Extension to find emails from your Linkedin searches.
Do not buy lists on Facebook groups or from questionable sources. That is always a bad idea.
Target a B2B Audience
A B2B campaigns target businesses with products or services a business can benefit from. This type of outreach campaigns will perform better compared to B2C campaigns.
Our software specializes in B2B Cold Email outreach.
Email Copywriting
As for the email copywriting, there are important considerations.
Use personalization
At the minimum, you should personalize your email template with the name of your contact. Use personalization in your email body and email subject line.
The more you personalize your email template, the better the chances to improve your email deliverability. Some possible personalization options include using your contact’s name, your contact’s company name, and any other related information you have about the contact reinforcing your pitch.
Our software will pick up your CSV file’s headers to use them as variables in your email template. We call these variables custom fields.
Be concise
Make sure your email is easy to read and that you make clear your selling points in the first or second line of your template. This can guarantee a higher engagement level if what you offer is relevant to the contact.
Remember that you are talking to people and not robots. Use a conversational tone when approaching your audience.
Use a clear Click-to-Action
A clear click to action will provide a unique point of interaction for conversion.
Avoid using multiple links in the email body, and make sure you enable click tracking to get a report of click-through rates.
Avoid Complex HTML styling
Web elements like images, multiple links, tables may distract your contacts. A simple text-based email or a simple HTML email usually performs better.
We think you can use HTML to style your click-to-action call and improve readability by using item lists.
Use Content Spinning
When we refer to content spinning, every email you send should have a different text from the previous email.
Sending the same text over and over will be easily tracked as a promotional email. Even if you send a few emails, it will be flagged as promotional if the email’s content is repetitive.
Use personalization in addition to rotating the content to change the text pattern of your outbound emails.
Example on how to use content spinning in our software:
{Hello|Hi|Hey} {name}{,|.| }
{This is John, from ABC.|My name is John, and I represent ABC.} I see your company {company_name} is requiring of…
When using this syntax, the software will randomly use one of the provided options. In the case of the example {Hello|Hi|Hey}, the software may use “Hello” in one email and “Hi” in the next one. Using the content spinning feature, you can guarantee that your email text pattern changes on every email you send.
Validate your Contact Lists before sending
An email bouncing rate above 2% will impact the performance of your campaign. Email providers use the bounce rate to determine a sender’s quality and result in a lower score in the inboxing algorithm.
Our software provides email validation using external SMTP servers that validate if the email exists or if the email address is invalid. You can also use any other trustful email validation service.
It is also important to understand that our software automated reputation protection may delay your email delivery if your email bounce rate is high.
Warm-up your Email Account
Warming up an email account is key at the early stage of the account and should be a process that should remain active always.
The email warming process aims to guarantee engagement and positive activities on the receiving provider to establish your reputation.
This process is even more important when using a new domain name with no previous sending history. A recently registered domain name will carry a questionable reputation and should be warmed up before sending to a large number of contacts to avoid poor deliverability.
Even with a reputable and established domain name, the email warming process is required as you will be sending from a new SMTP server recently assigned to your domain.
The email warm-up process will helps in building a reputation to these elements of your account:
- Domain name
- Email address
- SMTP server IP address
Establish a Sending Schedule
Establishing a sending schedule should consider the timezone of your contacts and when your contacts are available to read your emails.
As we specialize in B2B cold outreach, you should be targeting your contact during usual business hours. In this manner, a Monday to Friday schedule is suitable, and as people are at work in hours that range between 7 AM to 6 PM.
Sending emails 24 hours a day the 7 days of the week is just abusive and will get penalized by receiving providers.
Set your Email Cadence
The speed at which you send emails is another factor that can impact your deliverability. Sending emails in bulk or with a high frequency can be considered an attack on the receiving provider. Do not overwhelm a provider with connections.
Space out each email by delaying the next email 30 seconds to 10 minutes apart. The larger the delay, the better the chances to reach the primary inbox of your contacts.
In our software, you can set a sending schedule at the extended menu of the campaign, under “Sending Hours.”.
Track Mail Delivery Errors
The Mail Delivery errors are emails that bounce back with important information about possible abusive behavior generated by your campaigns.
The reports may include spam-related complaints or a bounce notice.
If a provider is complaining about spam-related problems generated by your emails, you should promptly fix the issue to avoid the escalation of the abuse.
In the event of spam complaints, the possible fix may include reviewing the contact list and product relevancy or changes in your email template copywriting.
If you are getting a bounce error, it could be that the email is bouncing because the contact does not exist in the provider or a soft bounce error like a full mailbox. In the case of hard bounce, you should remove the contact from your list.
Our software will automatically flag a hard bounce as an invalid contact, and it will not send more emails to it. If you receive spam complaints, the software will block any outgoing email to the reporting provider until the block expires. The blocking time could range between 1 hour and 30 days, depending on the complaint’s categorization.
Anti-spam Regulation Compliance
Some providers will track if your promotional emails comply with general anti-spam regulations. Adding up a signature at the end of your email and using automated unsubscription links are key to avoid getting penalized by a provider.