To make money, we got to spend money. Cold email marketing is one of the best channels you can spend your money on to get the most return on investments.
But, to get the most out of your campaigns, you’d need to streamline and scale with the help of automation. This is where quality cold email marketing software comes into play.
You can find thousands of tools to help you streamline your emails. We want to help you narrow it down to find the tool that’s fit for your needs. In this article, we’ll be covering:
- The basics of cold email marketing software.
- Features you need to look out for.
- The best cold email marketing software and what makes them great.
What Are Cold Email Marketing Software?
There are several avenues where brands can acquire new customers. We’ve got social media, SEO, and even professional channels like LinkedIn.
However, email is still among the most preferred channel. The keys to success here are a combination of several factors, all of which are driven by data.
With the help of the right email marketing tool, you can transform this data into actionable information. But, to do so, your email marketing tool must also have the right features.
Cold Email Marketing Software: Features
There won’t be a one-size fits all email marketing software. But some can get close. You want an email tool to help you scale, automate, and analyze. So, look out for these features:
AI-Powered Warm-Up
The bare minimum you’d want in every email campaign is having your emails reach your prospects' inboxes. This is measured through “email deliverability.”
A lot of factors can affect deliverability. Among the most important are the subject line, form line, and your email’s reputation.
Unfortunately, your email reputation isn’t something we can take a look at. But, email service providers use this to determine whether your emails are for the inbox or the spam folder.
The easiest way to improve our email reputation is through email warm-ups. We need to show that our email address is legitimate and not just made for spamming marketing emails.
Find a tool that can automate this. You’d want one that can write natural-sounding emails and send emails at an interval so they don’t get flagged by spam.
Scalability
We need cold email marketing software to scale our email campaigns. Choose a tool that can help you automate repetitive tasks and help you reach more prospects.
Research how many emails per day or month the software will provide. Are the plans flexible enough to cater to all business sizes? What automation features are included?
The features you need to scale might be different from other brands or companies. But, as a rule of thumb, you want a tool that can provide you with the following:
- Customizable cold email templates.
- Advanced scheduling features.
- Email tracking and analytics.
- A robust list of email service provider support.
- Automated email triggers.
Automation
Scaling and email automation go hand in hand. You can easily personalize 10 or 20 emails. But what if you need to send emails to thousands of prospects?
Find a tool to automate repetitive tasks, personalization, behavioral triggers, and email tracking. These features can help you scale your operation regardless of your company’s size.
To help you narrow down your choices, look for automation tools that can help you:
- Create personalized email templates.
- Automate lead nurturing.
- Send milestone emails.
- Upsell or cross-sell based on user behavior.
- Send transactional emails after completing specific actions.
- Segment, clean up, or validate your email list.
Email Validation
Another key metric to track in your email campaigns is your email’s bounce rate. A high bounce rate means many of your emails “bounced.” The main culprit—invalid email addresses.
Your email’s reputation will be negatively affected when this happens. Email validation ensures that your list’s addresses exist or aren’t broken.
This is important as you’d want your analytics to be as clear as possible to accurately represent your progress. Validating your email list is the best solution for this concern.
Campaign Creation
Automation might be essential for scaling your campaigns, but you still need to do some heavy lifting. Behind every successful email campaign is a solid email strategy.
Luckily, most email marketing tools come with pre-built campaign templates that you can personalize. Some even have multi-channel outreach options.
A big part of campaign creation is email segmentation, identifying your target audience, and curating emails to fit their description.
After creating your email brief or campaign outline, that’s where automation comes in. You could do first-touch cold email campaigns, cold email follow-ups, or drip sequences.
Analytics
The email marketing tool you choose has to have analytics. Tracking data allows you to see if goals are met, strategies are effective, and if you’re getting positive ROI.
Analytics on your email marketing tool also has to be intuitive. Find a tool with an analytics dashboard that shows all the important metrics, campaign progress, and comparisons.
Comparing campaigns can help you build better strategies and let go of those not working out. But you can only do this with the help of the right analytics tool.
Cold Email Marketing Software: Your Options
As mentioned earlier, there are thousands of email marketing software to choose from. You’d need to do a lot of testing to find out which one fits the best for you.
To help you with the research phase, we’ve curated a list of 9 email software that fit all the requirements for a great email marketing tool.
Instantly
You know we got to represent! Instantly is the perfect tool that can help you streamline and automate your email marketing campaigns.
The analytics dashboard is optimized to let you see and understand your data faster. Testing strategies are also made easier thanks to Instantly’s A/B testing feature that can compare campaigns.
Most email marketing software requires you to pay per account. Instantly allows you to infinitely scale outreach with unlimited accounts and email warmups at flexible price ranges.
Here are Instantly’s key features:
- Advanced and intuitive analytics dashboard.
- Email validation and bulk domain testing.
- Automated personalization.
- Campaign Builder.
- Automated email triggers/ email nurturing sequences.
Pricing:
- Growth - $30/month (Best for businesses starting to scale email campaigns).
- Hypergrowth - $77.6/month (Best for established businesses that want to expand faster).
Mailshake
If you’re part of an SME (small and medium enterprises), you’re going to love Mailshake. Not only is it great for cold emails, but you can also use it for social media and LinkedIn outreach.
Mailshake comes built with an AI email writer to help you create sales copy at scale and works with all email providers.
Although Mailshake doesn’t have a free trial, it does have a 30-day money-back guarantee!
Here are Mailshake’s key features:
- Cold email templates
- Email verification
- AI-powered copywriter
- Native Integration with top CRMS like Salesforce.
- Deliverability tool
Pricing:
- Email Outreach Plan: $58 (Best for marketers and founders).
- Sales Engagement Plan: $83 (Best for sales teams Includes free dialer minutes to North American phone numbers).
Reply.io
Reply is one of the most user-friendly email marketing tools in the market. If you’re working with a team, Reply could be perfect for you. With its powerful reporting system, you can easily translate data from key metrics into helpful information.
Email automation is also made smarter thanks to triggers that can filter users depending on what a user does or doesn’t do.
Here are the key Features of Reply:
- Easy and Intuitive setup.
- Collaboration tools for marketing teams.
- Personalization and automation.
- Email campaign automation.
- Flexible pricing options with extension features.
Pricing:
- Offers a 14-day free trial.
- Email Warmup plan: $29 per email account/month.
- Email search extension: $0 - $99.
- Starter plan: $60/month per user.
- Professional plan: $90/month per user.
- Customer pricing options.
Woodpecker
Woodpecker is one of the leading email marketing software, especially if you’re in the B2B industry. The tool allows you to send personalized automated cold emails, follow-ups, and sequences.
Unfortunately, Woodpecker only offers seven follow-up emails. It can also be costly for small businesses as its pricing plan includes separate add-ons or features. If the cost of extra add-ons isn’t necessarily something you need, you can check out Woodpecker alternatives.
Here are Woodpecker’s main features:
- Automated A/B testing.
- Snippet-based email personalization.
- Strong customer support.
- Unlimited team members per slot.
- Customizable pricing options.
Pricing:
- Offers a 14-day free trial (with all add-ons).
- 50 contact emails daily: $40 - $59 per slot/month
- 200 contact emails per day: $44 -$64 per slot/month.
- Unlimited contact emails: $49 - $69 per slot/month.
The price range depends on the selected add-ons and features.
Klenty
If you’re more into sales email marketing and sales engagement, try out Klenty. It can offer automated personalized emails, follow-ups, and detailed reports for every campaign.
The tool is intuitive, with a simple user interface. You can also integrate the tool with Zapier and Pipedrive CRM to automate more of your email workflow.
Here are Klenty’s key features:
- Analytics offers live-feed reports for key email marketing metrics.
- Detailed reporting for all email campaigns.
- Duplication detection to help clean lead lists.
- Email automation.
- Personalization.
Pricing:
- Free trial available.
- Startup plan: $50 per user/month. (Best for small teams starting to scale).
- Growth plan: $70 per user/month. (Best for growing teams focused on sales).
- Pro plan: $100 per user/month. (For bigger teams with advanced outreach strategies)
- Enterprise: customer pricing
SalesHandy
SalesHandy is one of the best email marketing tools for automated sequence email campaigns. You can add up to 49 follow-up steps and schedule emails to trigger based on conditions.
It auto-pauses your sequence if it detects that your emails are bouncing. And deliverability is also a non-issue as SalesHandy’s system uses human-like email scheduling so your emails don’t end up in spam.
Here are SalesHand’s top features:
- Automated cold email sequences.
- AI writing assistant.
- A/B testing strategies.
- Lead generation with Saleshandy Connect.
Pricing:
- SalesHandy offers a 7-day free trial.
- Outreach Pro: $94/month.
- Outreach Scale: $179/month.
- Custom quotations.
- Agency-scale quotations.
Outreach
Outreach is like the Swiss army knife of email marketing and sales. It can do cold email marketing and even make calls in other regions or countries.
An SMS integration feature provides additional info on prospects to hyper-personalize your emails. But these features come with a hefty cost.
Here are Outreach’s key features:
- Sales Engagement.
- Deal management.
- Sales forecasting.
- Email automation.
- Pipeline Management.
Pricing:
- A request is needed for a quote.
Salesmate
Try out Salesmate if your team wants to focus on email marketing and managing sales. It offers an efficient way to manage the sales pipeline and even automates your sales processes.
Much like Outreach, Salesmate offers more than email automation. You can use the tool for prospecting, cold calling, and improving overall sales productivity.
Here are Salesmate’s key features:
- Automated cold email sequencing.
- SMS integration into an email sequence.
- Team collaboration.
- CRM features.
- Integration with over 700 apps.
Pricing:
- $12/month for email tracking, synchronization, and templates.
- $24/month includes goal management and shared team inbox.
- $40/month expanded inbox limits, power dialer, and increased email sequence limits.
If you plan to integrate Salesmate into other apps, consider some integration issues. Depending on your plan, there’s also a limit on the number of emails you can send.
SalesLoft
Focusing on sales marketing and engagement has never been easier, thanks to Salesloft. It’s a platform designed to engage, track, and analyze data from prospects.
Users get a clear outline of your sales campaign in an intuitive dashboard. It can also be integrated with both Sales Navigator and Salesforce CRMs for easier personalization.
Here are SalesLoft's key features:
- Robust sales analytics features.
- Best for large sales teams that need help managing their pipeline.
- Cold email campaign automation
- SMS integration
- AI-based re-engagement triggers.
Pricing:
- Available upon request.
SalesLoft is a great tool for established sales teams. However, the high cost might not be best suited for smaller companies. If you go for a lower-tier plan, it may have integration limits.
Key Takeaways
Every cold email marketing software offers its own set of benefits. It's up to you to decide which one fits the best for your business. The email software you choose should include the following:
- Automated personalization to help you scale your campaigns.
- Email validation to ensure low bounce rates and clean email lists.
- Email templates to streamline the workflow.
- Warmups that can boost email deliverability.
- Intuitive analytics to help you develop better strategies for future campaigns.
You can get all of these and more Instantly! Sign up for free today and take your email marketing campaigns to the next level!
