Cold email is a vital tool in your outreach strategy. Email outreach has the power to unlock relationships with new businesses or partners. It’s a method that can dramatically increase your lead generation efforts and top line. If you find doing it manually onerous—you need cold email outreach tools.
Cold email outreach is when you email a prospective client or collaborator that you’ve not contacted before. The aim is to start a conversation, get to know the recipient, and see where it leads. Specialist outreach tools make this process efficient and effective.
Is cold email outreach the same as spam? No. Spam and cold email differ thanks to the personalized, tailored, and value-driven content that cold email has to offer. There’s a genuine expectation of mutual gain within the email. Unlike spam emails that seek to scam, misinform, or profit from the recipients.
In this article, we’ll explore:
- Best practices for cold email outreach
- How to choose a cold email outreach tool
- Core features of cold email outreach tools
The Importance of Cold Email Outreach
For many businesses, cold email outreach is overlooked. It’s seen as an outdated marketing and sales method that more modern options, like social media, have surpassed. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Cold email outreach can connect with people on a personal level. You’re appearing in their own inbox with a tailored message. Compare that to a post or message that appears as they’re absentmindedly scrolling through social media. One will clearly resonate more.
Lead Generation and Network Expansion
It’s easy for your network to stagnate unless you’re meeting new people all the time. Email outreach encourages expansion. Every new connection you make can lead to more opportunities within your network.
Cost-Effective Marketing
The overall cost of a cold email outreach campaign is considerably less than other marketing methods. The two main costs are the cold email outreach tool you select and the people on your team who will use it. Compare that to other marketing channels, and it’s significantly more cost-effective. Consider SEO or PPC; both have substantial monthly costs that often cost thousands of dollars.
Brand Awareness and Credibility
Your brand awareness increases as you build connections with new individuals and businesses. More and more people are learning of your existence and will remember your interaction. If these interactions are positive and deliver value for the recipient, then it’s a net positive outcome for everyone involved. This, in turn, increases your credibility.
Cold Email Outreach Challenges
It isn’t all roses. As with all forms of marketing and outreach, cold email presents some challenges you should be aware of before launching a campaign.
Low Response Rates
Chances are that you’ll send hundreds, if not thousands, of emails, and very few will garner a response. The recipients of your campaign haven’t engaged with you before. They’re unlikely to engage with you immediately upon receipt of your email. The key is to craft content that piques their interest, resonates with them personally, and encourages a response. You can also dramatically increase your chances of getting a response by sending a follow-up email.
High Volumes
Thanks to the above challenge, cold email is a numbers game. You need to be sending in high volumes at a regular pace if you want to find success. Dealing with email lists that are thousands of people long is a major task. That’s before you have to send an email to each of them. Then follow up. Then, hopefully, engage with their response.
Realistically, this is unmanageable for all but the largest email teams. That’s where you need the helping hand of a cold email outreach tool.
Compliance
Laws around the world strictly govern the sending of emails. The CAN-SPAM Act protects US citizens, while the GDPR laws protect Europeans. These laws aim to protect the populace from receiving unsolicited spam emails. It’s your job to understand and interpret the compliance regulations so that you stay on the right side of the law.
Spam Filters
Spam filters continue to grow in sophistication. Even your well-intentioned cold email could find itself in the junk folder. You might find yourself asking why your emails are going to spam and why you suffer deliverability issues. There are many potential reasons. Thankfully, cold email outreach tools can assist with your deliverability woes and give you a solid foundation from the start.
Building Trust
Cold email recipients will be hearing from you for the first time. You need to reassure them that you’re not another spammer. The solution is to craft emails that don’t just capture their attention but also promote your credibility and the value you have to offer.
The Core Components of Cold Email Outreach Tools
These are the features and elements that the best cold email outreach tools will offer you. As you examine the list, consider the needs of your specific business. What aspects are most important for you and your team?
- Personalization at Scale: Cold email is most powerful when personalized to the recipient. Without personalization, the recipient feels just being plastered with another advertisement. Your tool needs to be able to handle the personalization of thousands of emails at the same time.
- Automated Follow-up: Following up is a necessary part of cold email outreach but can easily become overwhelming. Especially when different campaigns are sent at different times. The best tools will automate this process by sending emails following a certain trigger.
- Performance Analytics: You need to understand the performance of your campaign and what degree of success it is achieving. Many tools have analytics dashboards as part of the software, allowing you to track important email marketing metrics.
- List Management and Segmentation: It’s important that your email list is adequately managed. Long lists can be split into smaller segments. This allows for hyper-targeted content and specific strategies. Strategies based on demographics and interests.
- Compliance: Tools must adhere to compliance regulations. They should ensure that any campaigns you send follow the law.
- Template Creation and Management: Starting from scratch is a laborious process. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when many have already found success with certain templates. Look for a tool with a library of cold email templates you can customize and manage.
- Integration with Other Tools: This new tool must deftly integrate with your current tech stack. Remember, this tool is there to increase efficiency and effectiveness. If an integration isn’t available or the tool will hamper your processes, reconsider using it.
- A/B Testing: Having the ability to test one version of your outreach against another is a helpful feature. It allows you to test and then adapt accordingly, greatly improving the effectiveness of your campaign.
- Lead Generation Features: The leading tools have features that allow you to find leads and email addresses from within the same ecosystem. This means you can populate your email list without having to manually upload lists.
The 4 Best Cold Email Outreach Tools
Instantly
Instantly doesn’t just offer cold email outreach but also includes a vast B2B lead database. One of the best features of the outreach tool is the AI-powered account warmup feature. This deliverability-boosting tool takes your email account and prepares it to a point where it is ready to send thousands of emails daily. Without it, ISPs and email providers may mark your account as a spam sender.
When accessing Instantly, you’ll navigate an intuitive dashboard that allows you to manage your campaign at a glance. It also clearly displays the most important email marketing metrics and the success of your campaign so far. It also allows you to access the various accounts you might have added to your master account. That’s especially important if you’re adding lots of different email accounts to the tool. Chances are you will add many, seeing as Instantly allows you to add unlimited accounts per subscription.
Most businesses will find that Instantly merges with their current tech stack with no issue, thanks to the long list of integrations.
As your business scales, you can upgrade from tier to tier until you reach the top tier, where you can send 500,000 emails a month. That’s more than enough for most businesses looking to work with Instantly.
Instantly's pricing starts at $37 per month, with the most popular Hypergrowth package costing $97 per month. The Light Speed package costs $358 a month and offers an enterprise-level solution. The B2B lead database is priced separately at $47 a month for 1,000 leads a month, up to $492 a month for 25,000 leads a month.
Snov.io
Snov.io bills itself as a complete sales toolkit that also includes a CRM platform. This may be appealing if you're looking for a tool that can do more than just find emails for you.
It includes a full sales CRM, email warmup, and an unusual technology checker. That’s alongside the usual email finder, verification, and email campaign tools that many tools include.
The technology checked enables you to learn about the technology stack that potential customers use. This is especially useful if you're trying to promote your product against the one they are currently using.
Snov.io's free plan is intended to be a trial but includes most core features. Paid plans begin at $30 per month and increase at variable rates until you reach the managed service, which begins at $2,999 per month.
Reply.io
Reply.io is an AI-powered tool that has many different options available to businesses of all sizes at a relatively affordable price. The free trial allows users to test out their B2B database and then use an AI sequence generator to create email automation. Reply creates sequences across multiple channels (beyond email sequencing software). This means you can create an automated sequence that takes place over email, SMS, WhatsApp, and social. You can also include stages for tasks for the sales team.
Reply.io also offers features such as email validation, which is essential for clean lists and maintaining a low bounce rate. The Jason AI is a useful tool for those who need help with their email copy. However, we’d always recommend adding your personal touch before sending it.
Reply starts at $60 a month for their sales engagement package, usable across one mailbox. To access the multichannel sequencing and email warmup, you’ll need to pay for the Professional tier at $90 a month.
Lemlist
Lemlist provides an easy three-step process for B2B businesses. The process includes automation setup, personalization, and measurement. While it's a good place to start, you will undoubtedly need to consider other factors when creating a campaign.
Lemlist does have an email account warm-up feature, but it costs $29 per seat per month. This quickly adds up when combined with the standard email outreach plan's starting price of $59 per month. Since account warm-up is an important part of email outreach, seeing this as a standard feature would be nice.
Lemlist's email builders offer extensive personalization options. The template editing process includes a step for personalized image creation. It's an unusual but appealing feature.
Key Takeaways
Choosing the right tool for your business is not something you should rush through. First, ensure that it will be suitable for you and your team. Many cold email outreach tools mentioned provide a free trial, so try before you buy. It's an excellent approach to guarantee you're satisfied with the tool before fully adopting it.
- Always consider your specific requirements when looking at options.
- Remember, cold email outreach brings more than just leads. It improves brand awareness and credibility, too.
- Ensure that you and your software are compliant when launching a new campaign.
Manual cold outreach at scale is unachievable without gargantuan effort. Instantly makes it simple. An intuitive dashboard, easy campaign management, and powerful deliverability tools turbocharge your outreach. See for yourself and try Instantly!
