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Whether you’re just starting or trying to expand your business, cold emailing could prove to be the most effective way of acquiring new customers.
The more targeted and personalized your emails are, the more strong relationships you will build with your customers resulting in increased conversions and revenue growth.
Despite its proven success, many people hesitate to use cold emailing due to widespread myths and misconceptions surrounding it.
In this blog, we aim to bust the six most common cold email myths and provide insights and practical tips to maximize your cold email campaign’s effectiveness.
Myth 1: Cold email means spam
This is the most common myth surrounding cold emails where people often give up on cold emails with just one failed attempt or do not even try it because they think it’s spam! But let’s put it out there loud and clear it is not.
To know the reality behind this misconception it is important to understand that cold emailing and spamming are two different things.
Spamming is sending bulk outreach to all prospects without any personalization, and sending the same messages to all your prospects whether it is relevant to them or not.
Cold emailing on the other hand involves reaching out to potential customers who have shown some interest in your business or who are part of your target audience with personalized messages crafted to cater to your recipient’s interests and needs, making them more engaging and less likely to be perceived as spam.
We recommend following some best practices to avoid getting marked as spam by your recipients even unknowingly:
Avoid misleading subject lines
Your subject line is the first thing recipients see when they open your email and it acts like a window to your entire email.
Research indicates that 46% of email recipients open emails based solely on the subject line, so your subject line can be a dealbreaker.
Having said that it is also important to note that sending emails with misleading subject lines just for the sake of opens can totally reverse the cycle. The more misleading your subject line is the higher are chances that your recipient might mark you as spam!
We recommend keeping the intent of your subject line and email copy the same. Additionally keep it short, catchy, and personalized and below 60 characters.
Use Salshandy merge tags to personalize your subject lines and do the A/Z testing to know which subject line works best for you.
We have compiled a list of subject lines that can help you boost your open rate. You can check it out here.
Write relevant email
Make sure your emails are relevant to the recipient’s needs and interests. This shows that you understand their business and are offering a solution that could benefit them.
In addition, the email must provide value to the recipient, whether through information, resources, or a potential partnership.
One such email is shown below:
Target the right audience
In order to be effective with cold emailing, it is crucial to segment leads based on their behavior, interests, and buying stage. Additionally, you can tailor your message and content to suit the needs and interests of each lead, boosting relevance and engagement.
You can segment your target audience as follows:
- Go to your database and identify the common behaviors to pick the pattern of your ICP and see which customer profiles are showing some pattern. Based on this pattern identify your Ideal Customer Profile.
Once identified you can create Ideal customer profiles of your target company and define them. You can define their industry, revenue, Team size, and goals.
- Once you have created ICP create buyer personas of the people that you will reach out to in your ICP. The buyer personas can define – Age, Location, Daily job, Income, Pain points, benefits, and budget.
- After defining ICP and buyer personas rank each of them in terms of returns and efforts. Analyse which ICP and persona are your recurring customers and will give you more profit and put more effort into their outreach as they are your low-hanging fruits.
- Create & use Saleshandy tags for targeted outreach as per your segmentation for high conversions.
We recommend you read our Ultimate Guide to Creating Your ICP for the best results.
Do more than surface-level personalization
To stand out from the crowded inbox and make an impact with your cold emails, you need to go beyond the basics of personalization. Here is how you can do more than surface-level personalization with Salehandy:
Spintax
Use dynamic content for all your recipients & create custom versions of your email’s greeting, introduction, content paragraphs, and sign-off phrases that resonate with each individual recipient.
Customized Merge tags
Create merge tags as per your requirement and always add them while doing outreach. People love reading their names and things about them so add merge tags all over your email wherever necessary.
Personalization Score
Know how personalized your content is with Saleshandy Email Writing Assistance and optimize your emails.
Also, build trust by showing that you have done your research and understand their unique needs, and be transparent about your own business and what you can offer. Customize your offer for your recipients.
When your email is more about your customers, less likely it is to be flagged as spam.
Myth 2: Only salespeople use cold emails
Despite its association with sales, cold email can be used for so many other things. Cold emails can be used for many purposes, including networking, recruiting, and marketing.
The following are some examples of how cold email can be used beyond sales:
You can network with cold emails
A well-written cold email can help you connect with professionals in your industry and potentially lead to valuable mentorship opportunities.
Eg: To find out about new trends and developments in your field, you can connect with attendees of industry conferences and events.
Nurture your audience
By sending cold emails, you can reach targeted lists of potential customers and get them to act, such as visiting your website or buying from you.
Using cold email automation tools, such as saleshandy, you can improve your marketing efforts by tracking and analyzing your email campaigns.
Eg: A targeted outreach to a list of customers who have shown interest in your products or services, and an offer of a special discount to encourage them to buy.
Consequently, your business generates more revenue and generates more sales.
Recruit good candidates
By sending cold emails, recruiters can target only the most qualified and relevant candidates, saving them time and money.
Eg: Cold emails can be used by recruiters to build a talent pipeline, by reaching out to individuals through cold email recruitment campaign and find candidates that may be a good fit for future job openings based on their experience and skills.
Myth 3: Unsubscription links are bad
People often fear that providing an opt-out option in cold emails might affect their conversions and often ask questions such as:
“Why would I intentionally give my prospects a way to stop receiving my emails? I want them to receive them, not reject them?”
But the fact is it is mandatory to provide an opt-out option in your cold email in compliance with CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR.
Not only this but adding an opt-out option in your email shows respect for the recipient’s autonomy and preferences, and can actually improve your email engagement rates by ensuring that your messages are only going to those who are genuinely interested.
Additionally, it also improves your email deliverability in case your email lands in the wrong inbox and you have not given them any opt-out option your recipients won’t have any choice but to mark you as spam.
A wise option here would be to clean your email list. This removes unwanted subscribers from your list and lowers the chances of your emails landing in spam.
And if this happens multiple times you can say goodbye to your deliverability and reputation.
Here are some best practices to follow in terms of opt-out options:
Make the opt-out link easily visible
Ensure that your opt-out option is clearly visible in emails. You can include an “unsubscribe” link or button if you want the recipient to easily opt-out.
Provide context for the reader
Explaining why the recipient is receiving the email and how it is beneficial to them can reduce the number of opt-out requests you receive.
Automate your cold emails
Automate the opt-out option in your cold email messages using a cold email tool. It ensures that you comply with anti-spam laws and that recipients can opt-out at any time.
Respect opt-out requests
In case someone opts out of your email honor their request instead of sending them emails even after that. By doing this, you can maintain a positive reputation and avoid spam complaints.
You can easily create a customized unsubscribe link in Saleshandy and here is how you can do it:
Myth 4: Follow-ups irritate recipients
Until your recipients opt out of your emails, it is best not to assume they have written you off. Perhaps they missed your email or were engaged in something more important at the time.
Multiple follow-ups always improve your chances of getting that response you were expecting from your cold email. In fact, a study by Backlinko.io found that emailing the same prospect multiple times can lead to 2x more responses.
Here are some best practices that you can follow for follow-up:
Timing is everything
It is recommended that you send emails at a time that is convenient for your prospects. Rather than sending an email according to your time zone, you need to send one according to theirs.
Before sending your first follow-up email, wait two or three days. Depending on the number of follow-ups you intend, you can gradually increase the interval between follow-up emails.
Jog their memory
Whenever you send follow-ups jog their memory about the previous email that you sent so they don’t have to go back and check (which most of the time they don’t).
Add an introductory line that gives them context about the email.
Provide more value
Keep your follow-up email engaging and interesting by providing value to the recipient.
Provide them with something of value, such as a free trial of your product, additional information, or a relevant resource. It not only builds trust and credibility but also demonstrates your commitment to their success.
When tailoring your offering, keep in mind your target audience’s specific needs and interests, and don’t forget that providing value doesn’t have to mean selling.
A simple gesture, like sharing a useful article or congratulating them on a recent accomplishment, can make a big difference in building a relationship.
Automate your follow-ups
Use a cold email automation tool with automated follow-up cycles to save time and increase follow-up success instead of doing it manually.
We recommend using Saleshandy, a cold email outreach software that has the feature of creating unique follow-up cycles.
Some of the follow-ups features that saleshandy has are: a multi-stage sequence with up to 48 steps, A/Z testing for follow-ups, and follow-up step-wise analytics.
Here is how you can create follow-up steps in Saleshandy:
Myth 5: Cold emailing is the same as email marketing
Although both cold email and email marketing involve sending emails to a list of target audiences both serve different purposes.
Cold email is for prospecting and for generating leads whereas email marketing is all about nurturing and strengthening relationships with existing customers.
Since the intent of the email changes so does how it is written and sent.
Check out this article to know which one is the winner out of both.
Myth 6: Cold emailing is costly
In contrast, to the popular belief that cold email is costly, it is the most cost-effective way to reach out to potential customers and clients.
With an ROI of 42$ for every 1$ spent which is the highest amongst all the marketing channels. But this ROI might vary based on the leads and metrics being tracked.
For example ROI of a lead generation campaign, for instance, might be measured by how many leads the campaign has generated. On the other hand in the case of sales, it is measured by the revenue the campaign has generated.
You can easily generate more revenue in cold email without adding any additional cost or resources just by targeting more prospects at the same time.
We recommend checking out this repeatable and scalable model tried and tested by our experts to generate the highest ROI ever:
Check out Saleshandy’s new affordable pricing & plans created to give you the highest ROI ever.
Conclusion
If you have fallen for one of these myths you are not alone. But we hope we were able to clear some misconceptions about cold emailing.
All you need to focus on is doing it correctly and applying the above shared best practices whenever you are doing outreach.
Till then Happy sending!
