All marketers would agree that email outreach is one of the primary channels for lead generation. Leveraging email outreach may bring a substantial untapped conversion potential and lets you reach a broad audience without breaking the bank for advertising costs.
However, email outreach may also have downsides if you don’t utilize the right strategy. For instance, it could fall into the cold email vs. spam discourse. Cold emails may come across as spammy if you don’t take the time to personalize your messages. Additionally, some recipients don’t like receiving unsolicited emails and may mark them as spam regardless of the content.
If your email outreach has not been successful, read on to discover a new approach and form the right strategy to make it work.
What Is a Cold Email?
A cold email is a form of direct email marketing where a message is sent to a recipient who has yet to express any interest in the sender’s products or services. The sender may not have any prior relationship or connection with the recipients.
Cold email is often sent to a large list of recipients profiled as potential customers to market to. It aims to introduce a new product or service to a potential customer and generate new leads or sales.
What Is a Spam Email?
A spam email is an unsolicited, unwanted, or irrelevant email sent to a recipient without their consent. Spam emails are often sent in bulk to many recipients, and the content often includes commercial content, such as advertisements, scams, phishing attempts, or malware.
Spam emails are a common problem, and they can clog up inboxes, slow down email servers, and even harm the recipients’ computers with malware. Because of this, many email providers have implemented spam filters to automatically identify and block spam messages. Spam emails are also illegal, and laws and regulations are in place to prevent them.
What’s the Difference Between Cold Email and Spam Email?
If you run a business and plan to send an email campaign, always obtain consent from the recipients before sending them any email, to avoid being considered spam. Cold email and spam email are often confused, but they are different in several key ways:
Potential To Convert Into Sales
Although cold and spam emails target recipients with no expressed interest in the sender’s products or services, they differ based on the possibility of the target recipients considering the products or services presented by the sender.
Often, the list of recipients in a cold email campaign contains potential target customers with better chances of converting into paying customers. On the other hand, a spam email’s target list can have a random list of recipients who may or may not be relevant to the sender’s content or offer.
Email Campaign Content Quality
Cold email content quality is more refined than spam email quality in terms of purpose. An effective cold email campaign has a more relevant email body tailored to the recipient’s interests and needs. The messaging in a cold email is more personalized, precise, and straightforward.
On the other hand, a spam email has content that may or may not be relevant to the recipient. Typically, the content structure could be more general, robotic, and sometimes misleading. A spam email doesn’t care if the recipient has a better chance of being interested in the offer. Instead, it only aims to reach as many random people as possible to advertise, run a scam, spread malware, or phish for the recipient’s information.
Legitimacy of Implementation
Cold email is legal, while spamming is illegal. A cold email is a legitimate form of direct email marketing, while spam email is unsolicited, illegal, and not to mention a nuisance
The key difference is that cold email is sent with relevant intention and following best practices, while spam email is sent without permission and often with malicious intent. In addition, if the recipient does not want to receive future emails from a cold email outreach, it should be easy for them to unsubscribe. It is a different case in spam email, as it can be difficult for the recipient to opt out of it.
Factors That Make Your Cold Email Go to Junk or Mark as a Spam
Several factors can make your email go to the recipient’s junk or spam folder:
- Spammy subject line: Using all caps, exclamation points, or words and phrases that are commonly associated with spam (e.g., “free,” “earn money,” “click here”) can trigger spam filters.
- Use of spam trigger words: Aside from spammy subject lines, the use of certain words and phrases, such as “Congratulations,” “Free,” “Guaranteed,” “Winner,” and “Millions” in your message body, can trigger spam filters.
- Unsolicited email: Sending emails to recipients who have yet to opt-in to receive them can make your email look like spam.
- Poor sending reputation: Sending large volumes of emails from the same IP address, or having a high bounce rate, can cause your email to be marked as spam.
- Incorrect or missing authentication: Email authentication is a process that helps to verify that the sender of an email is who they claim to be. Your email can be marked as spam if it does not have proper authentication.
- Incorrect email format: Emails that are not properly formatted, contain broken links or have missing images can be marked as spam. Additionally, some emails with aspects like oversized fonts, multiple exclamation marks, many images, and little text can also trigger spam filters.
- Sending from a free email service: Sending from a free email service like Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL can make your email look less legitimate and more like spam.
By avoiding these factors, you can help to ensure that your emails reach the inbox of your intended recipients.
How to Make Your Cold Email Outreach A Success
Cold email outreach can be a powerful way to generate new leads and sales for your business, but it can also be challenging to get a response from potential customers. If you carefully craft your messages and target your audience, cold emailing can effectively reach new customers and generate leads and sales.
Here are some tips to help make your cold email outreach a success:
Research Your Recipients
By conducting prospect research, you can identify potential customers who are most likely to be interested in your cold email offers. Make sure you reach out to the right people by researching
their backgrounds, interests, and needs. Researching your recipients can also help create targeted and personalized cold email campaigns that increase their chances of engaging with you and allows you to convert leads into paying customers.
Run an Email Quality Check
Sending emails to invalid or non-existent addresses can result in a high bounce rate, negatively impacting your email domain’s reputation and leading to emails being blocked or filtered as spam. Moreover, sending emails to inactive or unengaged recipients can lead to low engagement rates and poor campaign performance. Verifying email addresses using reliable email checkers can ensure that your message is being sent to active and engaged recipients, resulting in higher open and click-through rates and, ultimately, better campaign performance.
Use a Clear Subject Line
The subject line is the first thing the recipient sees when you reach out to them for the first time. A compelling subject line can make all the difference. A subject line that grabs the recipient’s attention and communicates your message’s value can help increase the chances of your email being opened.
Personalize Your Message
A generic message will be less likely to garner a response than one that is tailored to the recipient. Personalization is key when it comes to cold emailing. Avoid long, sales pitched messages; instead, focus on providing value and highlighting the benefits of your product or service to the recipient.
Include a Clear Call-to-Action
Tell the recipient exactly what you want them to do: book a meeting, visit your website, or call your business. Additionally, be mindful of the recipient’s time and make sure your message is concise and to the point.
Test and Optimize
Like many other marketing strategies, testing and optimization are also recommended in cold email outreach. Launching a cold email campaign will not instantly guarantee that your message will resonate well with the target audience; this is why a split test or A/B test is recommended. Create two or three email versions with different subject lines, email copy, and calls-to-action. Perform the test to determine which will stick and garner the most open rate and positive replies.
Don’t Forget to Follow up
80% of sales happen not on the initial cold email outreach but on follow-up emails. If you are still waiting for a response, feel free to follow up with a friendly reminder. Following up with your recipients can increase the chances of getting a response. A maximum of two to three follow up is ideal. If the recipient still doesn’t reply, it most likely means they do not want to engage, and you must respect that.
Respect Recipient’s Privacy
Always respect the privacy of the recipients by not sending them emails after they inform you they are not interested or after they tell you not to contact them. Allowing them to opt out of future communication is the professional thing to do, and it will also help not to have your message marked as spam by your recipients. Including an unsubscribe link to your cold email is ideal as it follows laws and regulations that can identify your outreach as a cold email than a spam email.
Other Considerations
Here are other considerations to add to your cold email outreach strategy:
- Use a professional email address: Using a personal email address or a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo can increase the chances of your email being marked as spam. Make sure to use a professional business email domain in your cold email outreach to add legitimacy and credibility and increase the chances of your email being taken seriously.
- Verify your domain and IP address: Verify your domain and IP address with major email providers such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. This can help to improve your email’s deliverability and prevent it from being marked as spam.
- Use a reputable email marketing service: A reputable email marketing service can help ensure that your emails are delivered to the inbox, and they often have built-in spam filters and deliverability features.
In Conclusion
Mastering the art of cold email outreach is crucial for success in outbound selling. The cold email involves effectively reaching out to and engaging with potential customers, even those with whom you have no prior connection, in order to move them through the sales funnel.
Cold email outreach can be a highly effective way to generate new business, but ensuring that your approach is not perceived as spammy is crucial. People are naturally skeptical of unsolicited messages, and if your cold email outreach strategy is not compelling enough, your message is likely to be ignored or even blocked.
When crafting your cold email outreach strategy, it is crucial to personalize your message as much as possible. Personalization can be done by researching the recipient and tailoring your message to their specific needs and interests. Additionally, it is vital to be upfront and transparent about the purpose of your message and how it can benefit the recipient. By doing this, you will be able to build trust and establish a connection with your prospect, making them more likely to engage with your message and move further down the sales funnel.
Use Proven Effective Prospecting Outreach Process
Lauer Media Company can be a reliable partner for your sales prospecting and cold email outreach campaigns. Our team of experts has extensive experience and knowledge in sales and thorough prospects research and lead nurturing. We can help you develop a targeted and effective cold email outreach strategy.
We understand the importance of identifying and qualifying the right decision-makers and influencers in your target market. We have a proven effective B2B sales system that can increase your chances of building positive relationships with potential customers and ultimately increase your chances of closing a sale.
Let us help you achieve your sales goals. Contact us to learn more about our sales prospecting and lead-generation outreach capabilities.