Advice on Cold List for Email Marketing

Hi,

I suggest you figure out how to micro-target emails to specific personas. Perhaps in batches of less than 100 a day. It worked well in the B2B vertical and you will get far better quality responses in a month, than the 100K/day spam your ‘offers’ to the list with prospects who do not have an existing relationship with your organization.

You can keep these tips in mind when you work at your "cold" email message:

- Keep it short and clear. A "cold" email is an intrusion into the recipient's time and mental energy so it has to be as short and concise as possible. Sending too much information or links to such information is not adding value to a "cold" email. Do not use HTML and images. Send a plain text email and explain the essence of your message straightforward. Tell clearly what you want the reader to do.

- Use a short Subject line. If the Subject isn’t written in a full sentence with capitalized words, it makes it look like you wrote it quickly which is a sign of a personal email not a mass email. To grab the reader’s attention, the Subject line of a “cold” email may not actually say what is in the message. So the reader HAVE to open the email to learn what is inside. Few samples of short yet effective subject lines for “cold” emails:

Quick question for you.
A quick heads up.
[Name] recommended I get in touch.
[Name], not sure if you saw this?
[Name], is the below of any interest to you?

- Include one call-to-action. By giving the recipient the choice, you are making them think about what to do rather than simply doing it.

- Make it easy to reply. You can include your full contact information into your signature. Or you can add one line at the end of your email “Please, hit “Reply” and send me an email”.

- Send followups if the user did not respond to the first email. Someone might simply miss your first email, someone did not have time to reply, so there is nothing wrong with sending a couple of reminders to the recipients from who you did not hear. 3-4 followups are sufficient. If they do not show interest after the 4th email, do not disturb them anymore.

I would not recommend that you use MailChimp or a different ESP because they require a confirmed opt-in list and add a footer with the unsubscribe link to every message. Instead, you can use a hybrid in-house email marketing system with a dedicated SMTP server or free SMTP server, for example, Gmail, so that it looks like you are writing them personally.

Using MailChimp (or similar platforms) would cause some issues - most if not all ESPs or MAs do not allow purchased or cold contacts. There's only a handful of platforms that allow sending to a cold email list such as Act-On or Clickback.

Very good advice from Waterfall. I would also suggest you make sure to clean your list before mailing.

Joshua I would highly recommend when reaching out to the new leads with a simple email asking them a question, prompting them to respond.

Once they respond / show interest in your question then you can email them a few times more before pitching your offer. This will help avoid being marked as spam and help your IP reputation.

Regardless I would still recommend a 3rd party SMTP to help inboxing. Unless you have built up domains and mailing server.