Cold email can be a magic bullet. It’s the most cost-effective, fastest, and scalable vehicle for business growth. You can shortcut success using cold email marketing.
The issue is that people rush to send cold emails at high volumes. While cold emails can fast-track marketing objectives, setting up the right frameworks to support cold campaigns takes time and finesse.
So, we've updated the old ways of email, and this guide will cover modern strategies in everything from technical setups to A/B testing.
Establishing Cold Email Frameworks
Cold outreach isn’t about sending emails in bulk. Think of it as a system. Without the fundamental frameworks, campaigns fall apart. Here’s the game plan:
Buy Alternate Domains for Cold Email and Authenticate
Many make the mistake of sending cold emails using main business domains. Since cold emails demand a high volume of sending, even when everything's right, there are still potential negative effects.
To protect our main business emails and domains, we need to use alternate domains instead. Each alternate domain can have three inboxes. Each inbox can send 30-50 emails daily.
Instantly has a DFY service for buying and authenticating alternate domains. You don’t have to go through the hassle of setting up DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and forwarding. We do it for you!
Warmup Sending Emails Before Campaigns
After authenticating domains and creating sending accounts, you can technically send and receive emails. But you don’t want email providers to think that your new emails are spam.
We recommend warming up emails for 2-3 weeks before using them for cold outreach campaigns. After the warmup period, you can keep warming up daily as you send cold emails.
For example, when you start a campaign, you can send 30 cold emails and 20 warmup emails. Instantly lets you warmup unlimited sending emails for free. It’s perfect for scaling campaigns.
Use a Holistic Cold Email Tool
Don’t settle for an email tool that can only “automate sending schedules.” Finding success in cold email marketing demands a holistic tool that covers all pillars of cold outreach campaigns.
While most email tools rely on integrations to automate workflows, Instantly has everything you need to succeed in one dashboard. You get to automate lead generation, create personalization at scale, and manage leads across multiple channels. We’ll talk more about this later.
Best Cold Email Strategy For Shortcutting Success
We’ve been doing cold emails for a long time. We know the industry inside and out and have learned several key fundamentals you should always consider.
So, instead of spending time and resources testing out what works for you, we’ve compiled a list of actionable cold email strategies to help you shortcut success.
Focus on Building Quality Lead Lists
Cold email is all about volume and quality. A big mistake cold emailers make is not focusing on building quality lists. Casting a wide net won’t work. You must segment leads and tailor content.
Be specific and intentional with the list you create. Verify emails. If you want to streamline list building, leverage the right lead finder tools.
Segmenting Email Lists
Let’s say you have an email list for “contractors near PA.” There are multiple types of contractors. Each of them has different pain points to target or things they value most. After segmenting, you’ll find yourself with multiple email lists, each can be a separate campaign.
Create More Campaigns Instead of Adding Lead Volume
When you segment, you reduce the “spray and pray” aspect of cold email and get hyper-personalized campaigns with content for a specific segment.
You can create a campaign for CEOs and business owners. This campaign's offer and value proposition focuses on helping their business scale and reducing operation costs.
Cold campaigns for members of operations teams can have email copy focusing on productivity, automation, and integrations. Each campaign has its own sequence and messaging.
Verify Email Lists Before Using Them In A Campaign
Your sending accounts should have pristine deliverability rates. That won’t happen if you don’t validate email lists. The last thing you want is to run a campaign and get high bounce rates.
Whenever you get a lead list, whether it’s from a VA and outsourced lead generation agency, or a bought email list, always run it through email verification tools.
If you want to streamline this process, you can use Instantly B2B Lead Finder. All leads you find are prevalidated. The only thing left is to segment leads and add them to specific campaigns.
Cold Email Copy Strategy That Ensures High Reply Rates
Writing email copy that converts is a skill all business owners should learn. Here are some actionable tips to help you write email copy that merits replies.
Lead with Value, Don’t Sell
Cold emails are meant to get a response. They’re not meant to close deals, this happens later in the sales cadence. Instead of trying to sell, provide value. It’s the fastest way to get replies.
Email copy should be value-driven. Don’t always try to use marketing tactics like “sense-of-urgency.” There are ways to use that effectively but we’ll get to that later.
For now, what we want to do is combat generic sales pitches. We can do this by providing actionable tips, highlighting quick solutions to problems, or highlighting untapped opportunities.
Keep it Short
Most business owners skim through emails. Ensure your cold emails are as well. Don’t the mistake of stuffing information in the pursuit of providing value.
Try to lead with a personalized intro. If a prospect is in a specific industry, think about what type of pain points they often run into. Then, provide value on how they can solve the pain points.
Instead of including everything you can do to achieve XYZ for prospects, ask them if they want to learn more information. If they respond positively, then you’ve got yourself a potential lead.
Speak Their Language
You want cold emails to resonate with your audience. The best way of doing so is by speaking their language. That’s why you need to segment leads first and create multiple campaigns.
The language used by a “financial coach” is completely different from a “fitness coach.” If you don’t know how to start with this, you can leverage tools like ChatGPT for email copy.
For example, you can use the prompt:
“I work with {{business}} and help them {{unique selling prop}}. Give me a list of pain points, goals, and current situations. Speak the lingo of my clients. Make it polarizing.
The output will give you a roadmap of what you can talk about in your cold email. Use the output as a knowledge base for your next prompt:
Using this, write an email using the framework:
Hi, {{first name}},
{{personalized line}},
We {{unique value prop}} for {{target niche}} so they can {{target niche goal}} using our {{service}}. We just {{case study}}.
{{CTA}}?
Thanks in advance,
{{your name}}
Here’s the example output:
Speed to Lead
The first business to respond to a lead inquiry often gets the business or at the very least, gets a response. If leads respond to your cold email, that means they’re looking at their screen.
If you can follow up in a few minutes, you’ll likely get a conversation going that nudge leads to a favorable action. Respond later and leads might already be doing other tasks.
You want to be top-of-mind. To improve the chances of replying asap, you can use Instantly’s Unibox feature. It can respond to positive leads based on context and provide what they need.
You can also set up Slack integrations to notify your team whenever there’s a hot lead that responds to a cold email.
Creating Urgency Without Being Pushy
Call-to-actions (CTAs) should nudge prospects toward a favorable action. However, you don’t want to seem pushy. Remember, you don’t want to sell just yet.
When writing your CTA, make sure that it’s also value-driven. Let’s say you’re sending a cold email to an online fitness coach. Instead of saying “Are you free for a 5-minute call to discuss…”
You can say:
- I put together a few quick wins you can do for {{company}}, do you want me to send them over?
- Can I send a personalized video explaining our process?
- We did a case study on {{competitor}} that might interest you, do you want me to send the link?
It takes a bit of testing to find the CTA that resonates best with your audience. So, make sure that you’re also running A/B testing on your CTAs, email openers, and offers.
A/B Test Email Elements To Iterate Cold Outreach
Instantly lets you A/B test multiple email variations to see which one has your best-performing copy. Here are the elements that you should always A/B test.
Subject Lines
Subject lines are the first thing prospects are going to see. Ensure that you’re using personalization for the subject lines.
Subject line variations can include different value propositions. For example, the subject line can mention a pain point, industry news, or an eye-catching statistic.
Opening Lines
The first sentence sets the tone for the entire email. It also acts as a preview when prospects look through their inbox. Here are some of the opening line personalizations you can try:
- Mention the city prospects are in
- Congratulate prospects on milestones
- Mention a mutual connection
- Talk about tools they’re using in their tech stack
- Comment on a recent post they did on LinkedIn
Call to Action (CTA)
CTAs should emphasize the offer you make. As mentioned, it should have a sense of urgency while not being pushy. Here are some CTA variations you can test out:
- Can I send more information about how we can do that for {{business}}?
- Are you the right person to reach out about this?
- I’d love to hear what you think about {{case study}}
Offer
How you package your product or service is essential to cold emails. It’s about how you can sell without actually selling. Think about different angles for your unique value propositions.
The best way to start with this is by highlighting benefits instead of features. For example, every lead generation agency can “help you grow your business.” But what if that is more specific?
“We’ll help you generate 20-30 new qualified leads at a fraction of the cost of traditional customer acquisition vehicles”
Personalize Emails at Scale With Instantly
Automation and personalization sound like they don’t belong in the same sentence. But with the right lead data and AI trained on the best-performing sales emails, you can personalize at scale.
That’s where Instantly comes in. In your Instantly dashboard, go to the Leads tab. On the top right, click on the brain icon to use the AI Prompts tool to generate new columns for each lead.
There are dozens of community prompts to choose from if you don’t know how to start. Once you're comfortable, you can add prompts that can be used for personalization in your copy.
Follow A Cold Email Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)
Cold emails don’t start and stop with automating email scheduling and follow-ups. You need to have a standard across all email tasks.
For example, you can delegate tasks to list builders, appointment setters, and copywriters. List builders handle email list building, validation, and creating personalized first lines.
Copywriters should handle campaigns, sequences, and A/B testing. Appointment setters handle the initial responses, and follow-ups, and manage leads in your CRM.
If you’re using Instantly CRM, you only need one subscription for your entire team, which allows
Key Takeaways
Cold email is a complete system. It’s not just about automating follow-ups and personalized first lines. When you get the fundamentals right, all that’s left is to scale campaigns and grow revenue. To recap, here are actionable cold email strategies you should implement today:
- Establish cold email frameworks: Buying alternate domains and authentications.
- Focus on quality leads: Segment lists, verify emails, and create more campaigns.
- Create quality email copy: Lead with value, personalize, and keep it concise.
- A/B test multiple email elements: Test subject lines, opening lines, CTAs, and offer.
- Personalize at scale using tools built for cold email marketing.
If you need a tool that covers all the fundamental parts of a complete cold email system, look no further than Instantly.ai. Try it out for free today.
