Cold email is one of the most lucrative, sustainable, and scalable marketing strategies. Once you finish setting up the infrastructure, all you need to scale is to get more leads and domains.
But success with cold email doesn’t happen overnight. You have to put in the work, learn best practices, and figure out what type of email copy works best for your audience. This takes time.
Luckily, you don’t have to go through the gauntlet and spend hours testing what works. This article will teach you the best cold email tips to jumpstart your next campaign.
Cold Email Essentials: Tips for Getting Started
Before sending emails in bulk, you will need the proper cold email infrastructure. Here’s how you get started with all the technical setups for cold email:
Buy Alternate Domains
You need to protect your main domain. It isn’t advisable to use it for cold email marketing. Instead, buy alternate domains specifically for cold outreach.
For example, if your domain is “Superchairs.com,” your alternative domains could be:
- Getsuperchairs.com
- Trysuperchairs.com
- Gosuperchairs.com
When buying domains, stick with “.com” or country domain extensions like “.uk, .ts, or .us.” Domains with .biz or .online have poorer performance.
Setting Up Domain Authentication and Forwarding
You can’t use new domains for cold email immediately after buying them. Domain authentication and forwarding are needed first. This includes the following:
- SPF: Ensures only authorized servers can send emails from your domain
- DKIM: Ensures messages haven’t been altered or compromised during transit
- DMARC: Authenticates messages from your domain
- MX Records: Directs emails to the right inboxes
Forwarding means redirecting alternate emails to your main domain. When prospects click on the alternative domain “Getsuperchairs.com,” they’ll be sent to “Superchairs.com” instead.
If you want to set up domain authentication and forwarding yourself, here’s our guide for cold email technical setups.
Instantly also has a Done For You (DFY) setup that takes care of everything from buying alternative domains to the technical setups.
Warming Up Sending Accounts
It’s recommended that you use three sending accounts per domain. Before using new sending accounts, they need to be warmed up first. Email service providers view sending accounts as spam if they haven’t been warmed up yet.
Email warmup occurs naturally over time through organic communication. Instantly streamlines and automates email warmup for you.
After linking your domains, you can enable warmup for every sending account you have for free forever. We recommend warming up first for at least two to three weeks.
Best Cold Email Tips from Subject Lines to CTAs
Beginners struggle with cold email because of a disconnect between what they think should work and what does. To avoid this issue, here are some of the best tried, tested, and actionable cold email tips to implement in your next campaigns:
How to Craft Engaging Subject Lines
Subject lines are the first thing prospects are going to see. They have to be engaging enough to pique their interest. Here are some of the best ways to do just that:
- Focus on the benefits: What’s in it for your prospects when they open your email? Will it provide value, help meet their needs, or appeal to their curiosity?
- Add a bit of intrigue: Try and add a bit of intrigue to your subject line. Have it reflect on potential issues they have or unconsidered needs.
- Humanize subject lines: Don’t be robotic. Avoid being too salesly or transactional. Keep the subject line casual (or semi-casual depending on your target market).
- Always personalize: Personalization can come in different forms. You can personalize using first names, specific pain points, company names, or industry-related news.
- Relate it to your copy: Subject lines must align with the rest of your message. Don’t use clickbait. Think of it as a short intro to your email.
Here are some examples of subject lines to take inspiration from:
- {{first name}}, we found a better way to do {{task}}
- This is how we improved {{pain point}}
- Want to scale up {{operation}} at {{company}}?
These subject lines are personalized, target needs, and build intrigue. They’re also examples of dynamic subject lines with custom variables. Instantly can use these custom variables to personalize cold emails for each lead in your email list.
Hook Prospects With a Persuasive Email Introduction
Email introductions are crucial for holding our prospects’ attention. Don’t focus too much on talking about yourself or your company. Instead, talk about your prospect.
The intro should show prospects that you sent the email to them specifically because of a beneficial business opportunity, did your research, and aimed to provide value.
You can also try email icebreakers for your introduction. These could be questions, comments on shared interests, noteworthy observations, or a sense of urgency. Here are some examples:
- {{New industry trend}} is coming. How are you handling it?
- I saw you’re working with {{prospects’ client}}. That’s a massive account, great work!
- Congratulations on starting {{service}}; how are you handling {{common pain point}}?
Always Provide Value
Ensure prospects get value from your email even if they don’t reply or schedule a meeting. Let’s say you’re an agency offering email marketing services.
You could give quick email marketing tips or an outline of what you can do for them so that they’d have an idea of how to do it themselves or know where to start.
Naturally, it would take time for them to study and execute the services you’re pros in. But you’d still stay top-of-mind when they need a faster and more efficient way of doing it.
Focus on Benefits Instead of Features
Prospects don’t want to know the features your product or service has. They want to know what’s in it for them. What are the benefits they can get?
Reframe your features into benefits that look tailor-made for each prospect. The best way to do this is to identify unique pain points and align your unique selling proposition to solve them.
Let’s say you’re starting a consulting business and want to use cold email to find new clients. Instead of saying, “We can create tailored and actionable strategies for your company,” you can say, “We can cut down operation costs by X% by systemizing A, B, and C....”
Cold Email is the Intro, Not the Sell
It will take multiple touchpoints before prospects convert. The issue is that marketers treat cold emails as a way to sell when they should be used as an introduction.
Selling happens later in your drip campaign. Aim to get a meeting with you in your cold email first. Even a reply is already a win.
After the cold email, prospects must be nurtured to keep you top-of-mind. Each email needs to bring value. But if you still get no reply, remove them from your email list.
Clean Your Email List
When prospects don’t open your emails or if emails always bounce, deliverability can quickly take a nosedive. Low deliverability signals ESPs that emails from your domain might be spam.
It’s best practice to consistently clean your email list and remove people who don’t reply or engage with your email. Don’t worry about reducing the number of leads in your email list.
Finding leads that fit your buyer persona is as easy as a few clicks with tools like Instantly B2B Lead Finder. You can also enable the evergreen feature that saves your search parameters and automatically adds leads to any of your running Instantly campaigns.
One Email, One Call-to-Action (CTA)
Every email should have a CTA. But don’t make the mistake of including more than one. Having multiple CTAs will end up confusing prospects.
Having one CTA ensures a clear direction for the next steps you want prospects to take. If you want prospects to read a case study you did, have that as the sole CTA.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use sentences that support your CTA toward the end of the email. Let’s say you want prospects to read a case study. In the email, you can say:
“I think you’ll find a lot of useful information in our latest case study for XYZ.”
Then, at the end of the email, you could say something like:“I’d love to hear your thoughts on the case study”
You’re still asking prospects to read your case study with your closing line.
Use A/B Testing to Find Your Best Performing Email
Data is on your side. This means cutting the guesswork in cold email with the help of A/B testing. You can A/B test different subject lines, intros, unique selling propositions, and CTAs.
With Instantly, you get to A/B test multiple factors in a single campaign. There’s also the auto-optimization feature that finds your best-performing email. Once the best-performing email is found, Instantly will automatically send that email to the rest of your leads instead.
Key Takeaways
Following cold email tips and best practices ensures you get a good head start on your first campaigns. As always, remain flexible, trust the data, and make adjustments when necessary.
To recap, here are the best cold email tips to implement in your next campaign:
- Use subject lines that are intriguing, personalized, and aligned with the copy
- Cold email introductions must be prospect and benefit-centered
- Don’t go for the hard sell in your cold email
- Clean your email list by removing non-responsive leads
- Use one CTA for every email
- Leverage A/B testing to find your best-performing emails
One of the most important tips for cold email is using the right tools. That’s where Instantly comes in. It’s the perfect tool for cold email outreach, prospecting, and lead management. Try Instantly for free today.
