5 Main Steps for an Effective Cold Email Marketing Strategy

Vincenzo Ruggiero Feb 23, 2022 — 5 min read

In a previous post, we explained what a cold email was and what its main parts were: sender, subject, message body, signature... We also gave you a series of tips to optimize each of these sections, so if you still you have not read it, I recommend that you start with that text, before taking the next step.

Today I am going to give you some keys to integrate your cold email into your marketing strategy and convert your cold contacts into sales. Because this is one of the most powerful tools to establish new business contacts and create lasting relationships with your future clients, but only if there is an adequate strategy and a series of steps that I will present below are followed.

Basics: leave nothing to chance.

Before carrying out your cold email marketing campaign, you should optimize three fundamental questions:

1. First of all, make sure you have the right platform and tools for your cold email campaigns. This issue is more important than people often think. Cold email campaigns often fall short of their sales goals due to simple technical issues, such as lack of server capacity, inefficient or disreputable email software, etc.
   Before starting your cold email strategy, make sure you have the best tools: a mailing automation platform like Overloop and a good server. I recommend you use a proven payment server, such as Google Workspace or similar. Avoid free solutions, especially if you want to run a large-scale cold email campaign. You will save a lot of headaches.
2. Take the time to optimize the basics of your future emails. Your profile and your email signature are much more important than you can imagine, as they will directly affect the first impression of your prospect when opening your email.
3. Make sure you use proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC…), which prevents your cold emails from turning into SPAM. We will soon publish a post on this matter, to help you correctly configure the email authentication of your account.
4. Another interesting piece of advice in this section is that you warm up your email account. Don't just create a new email account and start cold email blasting, because the result can be quite painful. Instead, it is important that the account you are going to use for your marketing strategies has a previous walkthrough and, so to speak, proves that there is a real person behind it, not a malicious bot. There are different tools that can help you warm up your email account and, of course, the sending rate will also depend on the age of your email account. If you have questions about this matter, do not hesitate to contact the Overloop team and we will be happy to answer your questions.

Optimize your mailing list before you start cold emailing

Once your email account is set up and you've made sure all the details are ready to work with it, it's time to work on your contact database. Avoid just sending emails to all your contacts, because the disaster will be guaranteed.

Make sure you perform at least two actions prior to sending emails:

1. Check your mailing list. It is important that you avoid sending cold messages to email addresses that do not exist or that cannot receive them, because you will receive hard bounces that will affect your reputation as a sender. This is one of the biggest dangers when developing email marketing strategies, as it can cause the achievement rate of your cold mail campaigns to plummet.
   To avoid situations like this, I recommend using an email verification tool, which is the fastest and easiest way to clean your database and ensure optimal results from your mass mailings. Go to Bouncebuster and create your free account for a first contact with this type of tool. You will see how your life will be much simpler from now on.
2. Optimize your mailing list. This is a step that is not usually given much attention, but keeping a clean and well-organized mailing list is also an essential part of any email marketing campaign. Try to keep the list clear, with the column headings well labeled and the data organized in their corresponding columns. This will make it easier for you to classify your email lists, segment by interests, etc. This way you can prepare more personalized cold email campaigns that will give better results than generic mailings.
   At this point, Overloop will make your life much easier when it comes to organizing your contact lists and preparing your cold email campaigns. I encourage you again to create a test account and see all that Overloop can offer you for sales email automation.

Plan your cold email campaigns well, don't rush

You now have your email database clean and all the tools are ready to start sending emails. And now that? Before clicking on “send”, spend some time planning your campaign well, based on the marketing objectives you want to achieve with it. A cold email will always be focused on meeting several goals, which we can summarize in two:

1. Get the prospect to open it and read it.
2. Obtain an action from them: a response, a registration, a phone call, a purchase or any other conversion that is relevant to your company.

To increase the probability of achieving these two stages, it is essential that your campaign is well planned from the beginning. First of all, segment your database and try to define specific audiences, which will allow you to send more personalized and relevant emails to your recipients. Take some time to analyze the data of the companies or people you are going to contact and, from there, segment them to adapt the messages to their needs.

Personalize the content of your cold emails and take care of the details

Once you have detected the characteristics of your target prospect, it will be easier for you to adapt the subject and content of the message to their needs. So the next step will be to plan the content of the message well, always keeping in mind the 4 main points of all cold emails:

1. Sender
2. Subject
3. Content of the message: introduction, presentation of your product or company and call to action
4. Signature

We have already talked about these sections in our blog before, but in summary, always remember to focus on the prospect and their needs, instead of making texts that are excessively commercial or focused on direct sales. If, in addition, that message and that value proposition are personalized for a segmented audience, the probability of success will increase significantly.

It is also important that you take care of the details throughout the message. Good spelling, proper writing, an appropriate tone when addressing your prospect... remember that your cold email will be your future customer's first contact with your company. Everything must be taken care of, down to the smallest detail.

Measure, analyze and make decisions. Don't be discouraged.

Sometimes, as much as we have planned and optimized our cold email campaign, we may not get the desired results. Perhaps the bounce rate has been too high, or the responses obtained have not been as expected. This is a possibility that is there and should not be ruled out. But you should not be discouraged because of this, but learn from it and make decisions that improve your future results.

Cold mail tools like Overloop offer you multiple metrics that will help you review the performance of your email marketing campaigns. Be critical and make decisions, but always in a constructive way. Experience itself will help you optimize your email marketing campaigns better than anything else. Don't be afraid to do A/B tests to determine which versions of your emails work best. Also, do not rule out testing with a part of your audience, as a previous step to the definitive massive sending of cold emails. Both tools will help you measure the impact and response that your mass mailings can achieve in advance, so you should definitely include them in your email marketing strategy.

In conclusion, I recommend you pay attention to all the phases of an email marketing campaign for your cold campaigns: technical aspects, database, planning, personalization, writing, tests and sending. All of them are important and require attention.

Good luck!