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15 Comments

Tips for sending cold emails without spamming?

I spent a few hours today prospecting for new leads. I sent cold emails to various restaurants, but since Instagram is how they communicate with their customers I sent a followup message on there. Instagram must have blocked me because I stopped seeing sent messages in the folder, and then I couldn't send any more. That made me wonder if my emails were also being flagged as spam.

Any tricks you all use to send cold emails "cleanly"?

  1. 4

    Hey @Manuel, here are some tips we provide to @Mailmeteor users, from an anti-spam point of view

    1. Warm-up your email account and stagger mass communications over several days
    • If your account is new, we recommend sending emails to a small list of recipients at first and increase slowly over days (less than 50 emails a day is the ideal scenario).
    • For large campaigns, try sending messages to one group of recipients, wait 24 hours, and then send to another group.
    1. Make sure your contact list is clean
    • If your campaigns have a lot of bounces, email providers will detect that your database is outdated or not legitimate. Make sure to collect email addresses from people who are willing to receive communications from you, clean your database if needed.
    1. Review your email content and formatting
    • Use basic font formatting, avoid colors, HTML structure, keep it simple.
    • If you can, don't track opens or clicks (that's counter-intuitive, but it's because these links may be considered as spammy)
    • Avoid spam triggers in your emails (like "free", "discount",... "viagra" ;p)
    1. Personalize your emails
    • Personalize subject
    • Personalize content
    • Keep everything short and concise, write as if you were sending a Messenger or Whatsapp message to a friend of yours
    • It's not about you, it's about your recipient's needs!
    1. Abide by the anti-spam rules
    • Include a valid physical business address in every email you send out
    • Use clear "From," "To," and "Reply to" language that accurately reflects who you are.
    • Provide a clear way to opt-out of every email you send out, and honor the unsubscribe within 10 business days

    You can check if your email has a high spam score with free tools such as
    https://www.mail-tester.com/
    https://spamcheck.postmarkapp.com/

    Hope this helps!

    1. 1

      Thank you this really does help! I haven't been personalizing the subject. I'll make that change now.

      I tried your spamcheck tool. I got a 5.8. I'm assuming that's good because the dial was in the green section? But I don't have a good idea what the feedback meant. I'm not familiar with the language used which is more on the technical side of the spectrum.

  2. 4

    A good rule of thumb is to reveal your pitch in the second email at the earliest. In the first email, warm it up & ask if they're interested in hearing about whatever you're trying to pitch them.

  3. 2

    Don't send Cold Emails. Send Warm Emails.
    Find out more about their business, what they are doing right or wrong. Lead with value. Share something with them that's uniquely for them. Talk about their business and ask a single question. not a sale.

    1. 6

      That is still cold email right?

      1. 1

        Right. I think a warm email would mean someone else has referred you, or you have some mutual connection that you can reference in the email.

      2. 1

        It warms up the cold email a lot.

        1. 2

          Interesting, I always thought cold email meant you never spoke to them before and warm was you had some contact. No matter how good the content of the email.

  4. 1

    Agreed with what Jean suggested.

    Some worthwhile things to look at:
    https://www.lemlist.com
    https://www.vidyard.com/

    General reading:
    http://www.reply.io blog
    http://www.mailshake.com blog

  5. 1

    @ManuelMaccou to make sure that your cold emails are hitting prospects inbox, you have to ensure multiple parameters. Please find here all of the pieces necessary to hit the primary inbox here: help.autoklose.com/en/collections/2185489-deliverability

    In your particular example, It seems to me that you were copy/pasting the same content. And if you do so, you can easily get blocked on any channel (social or email).

    If you personalize your message, that's great! But if you have more than three spam words and more than 3 URLs, you'll encounter the same result.

  6. 1

    One best things you can do is get as personalized as you can. Make it sound like you're sending a one-on-one email, not a form letter going to everyone. Mentioning specific things about their business is a good way to do this.

    Also, try to avoid a hard-sell approach. Start by simply trying to get a dialog going. Try to provide value before asking for something else in return.

    1. 1

      Thanks. I definitely should have known better and made each message a little more unique and personalized. That way it would have been less spammy and the instagram bots may not have picked up on it.

  7. 1

    Few things:

    1. Restaurants are not the best prospects right now so that also may be a factor. It is probably the worst time to sell to them (or best depending on what you are selling)

    2. Don't just find leads from a list or database or linkedin. Once you find them, do research on them specifically and try to identify something unique that you could help them with. For example, are they using something similar to what you are offering already ? I would email with subject "Are you happy with <competitor-name>" ? Sometimes I would do "Question about <compeititor-name> ". Something that gives them a context related to what they already do really helps.

    I don't know anything about Instagram so can't help you there but good luck.

    1. 1

      Hey thanks for advice. It actually turns out this is the perfect time for my product. The goal is to bring more repeat business to help them recover from the effects of COVID-19.

  8. 1

    Tell stories. Ideas come and go, but stories last.

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