Digital marketing is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have in 2023. The same can be said about email marketing, as each year, it is proven that email campaigns are still a major driver in lead generation, sales, and growing revenue.
Another undeniable fact is the return on investment. Statistics show that for every $1 spent, there is a $36 ROI from cold emails.
To start an email marketing campaign, marketers must first do outreach through cold email campaigns and understand what cold email practices they must implement to make the best of their time and effort.
This article will serve as a comprehensive cold email guide that will enable marketers to plan and execute effective cold emailing strategies perfectly.
Table of Contents:
- What is Cold Emailing?
- Advantages of Cold Emailing
- Four Elements of Cold Emailing
- How to Plan an Effective Cold Email Strategy
- Research the Best Time For a Cold Email Outreach Campaign
- What's Next?
What is Cold Emailing?
Cold emailing is the practice of sending the first bit of electronic mail correspondence to individuals or companies. In most cases, the recipients of these emails are from someone they've never heard of or had contact with.
Most successful business deals that are closed every day begin from cold emailing; in fact, 55% of people prefer email as their #1 way to hear from businesses and nonprofits.
4.3 billion people were active email users globally in 2023 (over 100 million more than the previous year) for business or personal matters. By the end of 2026, that figure is projected to go over 4.7 billion.
By 2027, the worldwide email marketing market will be worth 17.9 billion dollars, up from its 2020 valuation of 7.5 billion dollars.
Cold emails are a means to find potential collaborations, create relationships with influencers and companies, and increase brand recognition and awareness.
Advantages of Cold Emailing
- Cold emails are scalable
- Cold emails increase lead generation and the email list of your company
- Cold emails boost business and customer engagement
4 Elements of Cold Emailing
To ensure that cold email outreach has a positive response from recipients, email marketers should implement these four elements in their cold email campaigns.
- Deliverability
- Targeting
- Eye-catching
- Value
1. Deliverability
Not having high email deliverability will decrease the chances of getting a good return on your email marketing campaign.
Email deliverability means delivering the right message to the intended target audience and bypassing measures like spam controls and email bouncing. Make sure you verify email addresses before you send cold emails. Having a fresh list ensures you get better engagement from the outreach.
Thus, ensuring the email contains the right message and is formatted correctly so it doesn't get siphoned off by spam filters is essential for increasing your chances of getting high open rates.
2. Targeting
As mentioned in the deliverability element, when an email is not sent to the correct email addresses, it does not fulfill its intended goal of increasing awareness and sales.
Putting extra effort into finding the proper email addresses and lists for a specific product or service should be a top priority for an email marketer.
3. Eye-catching
Make your cold email as eye-catching as possible.
A way to do this is by writing subject lines and offering something to your recipients. Recipients are far more likely to open an email that offers them something they can gain.
4. Value
Offering value to recipients from the first email exchange can create a sense of loyalty on the recipient's part.
However, only offering value should not be all you do.
Companies should keep their word when recipients continue a purchase, as not delivering the promised value will damage your company's name and reputation.
How to Plan an Effective Cold Email Strategy
The first step when starting to plan a cold email marketing strategy is to set up a new email address. This new email address should include your company's name so that email recipients can identify that the email came from a reliable email address and is not spam.
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Set up an email domain
After creating an appropriate email address, insert an email signature with the help of some email marketing tools, like Mailbutler.
It's crucial not to dive into sending cold emails from the moment the email address is created. While waiting for the email account to warm up and for spam filters to get acquainted with your new address, email marketers can try doing the following:
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Build an email outreach list
Cold email outreach campaigns are effective as long as the email addresses companies are reaching out to are relevant to the company's offerings.
Researching and figuring out the right target audience for cold email outreach can significantly impact email marketing operations.
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Write multiple email scripts
Sending the same email content is not effective. Try having different versions of a cold email to avoid sending the same email templates and contents to every email address on your email list.
Moreover, this will help you figure out which types of cold emails work best for certain recipients.
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Make sure that your email isn't considered spam
To avoid emails ending up in the spam folder, email marketers can check how likely their messages will be considered spam by using email tools.
After leaving some time for the email address to be active, you can start by sending cold emails slowly, increasing the number of emails sent per day. For example, you can start by sending ten cold emails on the first day, twenty on the second day, and so on.
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Research the best time for your cold email outreach campaign
The timing of your cold email outreach will impact the response rate of email marketing campaigns.
Thus, to ensure that cold emails bring the best conversion rates, marketers must determine the best times to send - or schedule to send - cold emails to their recipients.
What's Next?
Some may think that sending cold emails is the last step.
However, some extra steps should be incorporated into the email marketing strategy to ensure the campaign is effective and will run smoothly in the long run.
Cold Email Marketing Metrics
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Open rate
The open rate shows the number of times your emails were opened by your recipients.
When the open rate of an email campaign is low, it's a sign that marketers need to work on writing better subject lines to improve open rates.
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Bounce rate
The email bounce rate shows how engaged people are with the business.
The bounce rate indicates the number of people who have not shown interest in continuing to get to know a business by leaving its website without doing anything.
When the bounce rate is low, businesses should check if the problem is in the email or on the website.
Perhaps the website doesn't offer what was promised in the email, or it isn't user-friendly - either way, something needs to be improved.
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Spam score
When it comes to cold emails, it is important to keep track of how many cold emails land in the spam folder. This score can give an idea of what marketers need to do to improve efficiency.
Many other rates can be useful when email tracking, such as the unsubscribe rate, conversion rate, and return on investment.
Wrapping Up
Creating a cohesive and effective cold email marketing strategy can be stressful. However, implementing some of the tips and tricks provided in this guide can have a positive outcome.
Cold outreach is a great way to increase brand awareness and increase sales.
Nevertheless, to ensure that your cold outreach campaign's goals are achieved, you must learn everything you can about your recipients to ensure that your product or service is relevant.
