Email conversion writer and strategist Laura Lopuch launched and grew her freelance business by 1400% in 4 months using 328 cold emails – just one of which brought her nearly $20,000 in revenue.
56% open rate.
positive response rate was 9%
The average open rate for cold emails is 26%, so she pretty much went rogue with her cold email campaign.
Email dissemination can work – if you use it for its intended purpose.
But what is email communication? How is it different from equally powerful email marketing? What are the best tools for cold emailing (and why you can’t use a standard ESP)?
The difference between cold outreach emails and marketing emails is that outreach emails are addressed to people who don’t know you yet and marketing emails are addressed to specific audiences who have opted in to receive your emails.
Cold email outreach is for new leads that you find yourself. You can find these insights through…
Sending targeted ads to people who visit your website
Do outreach on social media and LinkedIn (based on their profiles)
Extracting a list of decision makers at target companies (or working with a data enrichment service to help obtain this list)
LinkedIn currently has over 610 million members. The network has 303 million monthly active users and 40% of them visit the site daily. Imagine how many of them are potential leads.
Email marketing is a message you send to people who have signed up to receive information from you. This can mean:
- Someone who signed up for a free trial
- Someone who has visited your site before but hasn’t engaged
- Someone who already subscribes to your newsletter and other promotional emails
- Someone who has already turned into a customer – a customer you want to keep
Email marketing is designed to show potential customers the benefits they could unlock by becoming a customer. They are not meant to be pushy, sales-focused emails, as most of the contacts who receive them are not yet ready to buy from you.
What does a cold email outreach sequence look like?
A cold email contact sequence can have anywhere from 8 to 12 touch points that include emails, phone calls, and meetings. The steps might look like this:
Day 1 – Email 1
Day 2 – Call 1 (Leave Voicemail)
Day 3 – Email 2
Day 4 – Call 2 (No Voicemail)
Day 5 – Email 3
Day 8 – Call 3 (Voicemail)
Day 11 – Email 4
Day 15 – Email 5
Day 21 – Email 6
Day 35 – Email 7
Day 50 – Email 8
The sales information process is subject to two things:
Who is your business?
Who are your prospects?
You should be sent to a highly targeted audience, not who everyone else is targeting.
If you want to start a place, make sure you include the following in your email:
An introduction
The reason you are applying
A relatable connection (highlight something you both have in common, like your former co-worker, or highlight something they worked on recently that you liked)
Ask the question
The purpose of these sales pitch emails is to create common ground, make a connection with a prospect and try to schedule a meeting.
In an ActiveCampaign prospect sequence, the process and cold outreach emails look like this:
Decide which sequence a prospect goes through.
Build different sequences based on different interests. You can, for example, set up sequences for things like “General”, “Software”, “Events” or “Chicago”
Add contacts and then put them in a sequence.
Sequences have tasks for us to call or email. Some of the emails are templates that appear automatically, and others we customize.
Start the contact! We usually send about 4-8 emails in 30-45 days.
The number of emails sent will depend on how cold prospects react.
Tailor your content to highlight how our platform can be right for them. An email can highlight a customer’s use cases that match the prospect.
What does email marketing look like?
Email marketing varies widely and comes in many different styles.
What types of marketing emails can you send people?
- Content emails (both closed or not)
- Welcome emails
- Emails for events or webinars
- Emails about company culture
- Emails about products
Spotlight customer story
A great way to help potential customers get to know your business better is to show them how others have enjoyed working with you. Our customer testimonials are one type of marketing email we send.
What are the best tools to use for email communication vs email marketing needs?
There are a few features you need from a cold email outreach tool:
Ease of use – it’s hard enough to reach strangers without making the platform difficult
Templates – save even more time with a ready-made message that you can customize as needed
Email tracking – get notified when your email is opened and better understand who is most willing to talk next
Integration with other tools – like Salesforce!
Outreach is a complete, end-to-end platform with extensive cold email features along with features for voice, email, and social media. It is very helpful for marketing teams who need a comprehensive tool to help generate leads. Outreach.io offers cloud, web, and SaaS deployment.
But more often than not, you don’t give up on an opportunity as soon as they stop responding to your messages (or even after they say they’re “not interested at this