Automate Your Cold Emails and Follow-ups

Marco

Congratulations!  Today is your day!  

You built a great prospect list!

Your cold emails are off and away!

….well not so fast.

Before your calendar starts filling up with meetings, you need to make a write effective email copy then push send.

4 Options For Sending Cold Emails

Option 1: Send the email(s) one by one from your inbox.

Who: The only folks I’ve spoken with who still send cold emails manually either 1) don’t know that there are automation tools available or 2) they just don’t understand that sometimes you need to spend money to make money.  (ps – if your argument to send emails one by one is that you want to personalize every email, keep reading this post.  Automation can and IS fully-automated or semi-automated…if you choose the right tech)

Pros:

  • Nothing new to learn.  If you know how to write an email, you have the required skillset to send cold emails one at a time.
  • Cost = Free to use, but potentially $100s – $1,000s of dollars lost per month in wasted time.

Cons:

  • Wasted Time.  Identify 10 new prospects you want to email and start your stopwatch. Next, open a new compose window, then copy and paste the email body, subject line, and email address.  Even if you are using the same template you have sitting in Word or a Google Doc this is going to take a few minutes per contact.  Repeat this until you’ve sent all 10 emails and make note of the time it took.  All that time could be spent working your pipeline and talking to clients.
  • Potential Errors.  If you are customizing your email with the recipients name, company, or job title, there is always a chance for a fat fingered typo which kills your credibility with the reader.
  • One email isn’t getting the job done.  Most prospects won’t reply to your first cold email, and you will need to follow-up.  This is where it gets messy.  Set a calendar reminder and come back to your Sent folder a few days later.  Open each email, then copy/paste or manually write out your follow-up.  Repeat this another 5-10 times over the next few weeks.

Option 2: Send your cold emails with a mail merge.

Who: You likely generated sales from your first set of cold emails but realized it takes too long sending one by on.  A mail merge is a step in the right direction but it will create bottlenecks and there are better options.

Pros:

  • Easy to set up.  You’re likely using GMail + a Chrome extension that syncs with your google sheet or let’s you upload an excel spreadsheet.
  • Ideal for people who want to send out a ‘one email’ campaign.  Why would you ever just want to send one email though?  At least half of your replies will come from email follow-ups 2 through n.
  • Cost = Free to start and less than $50 for upgraded features that come standard in similarly priced and better performing solutions (keep reading).

Cons:

  • Doesn’t scale.  What does this process look like 6, 12, 18 months from now?
  • Sending follow-ups requires a manual review and updating of your contact spreadsheet to filter out folks who replied or unsubscribed.
  • Wasted Time.  Hopefully, you know enough to send more than one follow-up and you’ll need to repeat this entire process for each step of your cold email campaign.  All that time could be spent working your pipeline and talking to clients.
  • Can’t track duplicates or suppress contacts/companies that may be your competitors or clients.
  • May require additional tech (plugins) to track clicks and opens.
  • Can’t manage opt outs automatically exposing you to CAN-SPAM risk.
  • Potential Errors.  You still need to manually copy/paste contact data, fix typos, and correctly format the variable/placeholders/inserts to avoid the ‘Hi <first_name>’ kiss of death.

Option 3: Using the wrong automation system like MailChimp or Constant Contact

Who: 1) You manage sales and marketing at your company and use something like MailChimp for lead nurture, newsletters or announcements, so why not use it for cold emails?  OR  2) Your marketing team uses MailChimp and you convince them to create an account for you to send your cold emails.

Pros:

  • If you have been sending cold emails on these marketing automation platforms and haven’t had your account shut down yet, you have that going for you…which is nice, for now.
  • You know how to set up an email campaign now, so replicating this process on a platform built specifically for sending cold emails will be easy.
  • Cost = $50-$100+ per user with some of the more well known solutions costing organizations $1,000s+

Cons:

  • These systems are built for marketers to send emails to opt-in subscribers through dedicated IPs.  They want to send out United Airlines’ 10M subscriber ‘last minute special’ emails, not your cold emails!
  • Your account on these systems get will shut down eventually (I’ve seen this happen).
  • You’re risking your company’s ability to send out emails because you picked the wrong system.
  • Potential Errors.  Basic knowledge of HTML is suggested for these systems to avoid formatting errors.

Option 4: Using the RIGHT automation system like Replyify

Who: You take a modern approach to sales and understand the importance of leveraging your time by using a online (SaaS) tools to be more productive.  Clients aren’t beating down your door (yet) asking you to take their money and you’ve spent way too much time not selling your product or service effectively.  But that’s about to change.

Pros:

  • 1 click integration, no IT department approvals required
  • Real time and historical open, click, reply, and unsubscribe detection.
  • Email and non-email (ie – phone and social) campaign steps so you can replicate the way you sell in real life.
  • Automated customization with variables to insert values (name, title, company) OR semi-automated customization which gives you control over how much or how little you want to add to an email template before it is sent to your contact.
  • To-Do management and notifications to stay on top of your pipeline so you don’t have to constantly update your calendar with reminders to not drop the ball.
  • Safeguards like suppression lists, auto-pause when you get a reply, duplication detection and more.
  • Emails and replies are sent directly from your email account, not a 3rd party, so you’ll end up in spam or the ‘promotions’ folder less often.
  • Collaborate with your team or, if you’re an agency, manage multiple accounts from one interface.
  • Bonus: integration with SellHack to sync contacts and get credited back if/when bounces happen.
  • Cost = Free to start – $99 month to month pricing (for unlimited)

Cons:

  • The number of emails you can send per day may be limited to several hundred new emails per day based on your email provider or internal configuration.
  • You need to plan and write an at least 5-10 emails that will be sent automatically over time (usually 30-45 days).  If you don’t want to do this, then you should hire someone to help.

In conclusion:

  • Each of the 4 options for sending cold emails is FREE to start.
  • The biggest risk is choosing a platform that doesn’t allow cold email.
  • A repeatable process, compelling email copy, and the right technology platform will generate a positive ROI for your time invested running an outbound campaign.
  • Always remember to follow CAN-SPAM or your country’s own rules for unsolicited email.

Questions, comments or feedback?  Drop us a note.