mrjosco

Sorry for another email question, but I am about ready to go but worried about pulling the trigger on my first test.

I know the iCANN Spam act rules for sending cold emails, but wanted to get some advice from those who follow the rules and send cold emails. I know there are a lot of you who do this. At least, I think there are.

First, what autoresponder do you use? Both Aweber and MailChimp hate this kind of email - even if you DO comply with iCANN spam. They get spam complaints, so they shut you down. Or, that is at least what I hear.

Do you just send one at a time from your gmail email? (I am using WillR's method from MMM - have a mockup and current situation side by side. So each email is customized)

Second - those that have been doing this method - have you gotten many complaints? Are they reporting you as spam and getting your email banned?

I know this can be effective - but anything effective that can harm my business long term is not worth it. I plan on supplementing this with direct mail and cold calling - but email is something I can do any time of day or night.

adeelv

CANspam allows for "human" level speed of cold emailing. Afterall, if someone has made their email public then it'd be stupd for them to not allow it. Its when you automate and send 100s of 1000s that you can potentially get into an issue. But, I have done the following and have not had problems so far.

I do 5,000 cold emails a day. I use a yahoo account, a gmail account and up until recently had used a hotmail account. I also run some cold emails from my actual business account. I recently checked my score on senderscore.org and turned out I was a high volume sender and had great reputation amongst the spam filters.

Having said that, I am sure I am getting caught in some spam filters but so does copyblogger, gigaom and yes, even the senderscore.org company that is managed by an incredible email company such as return path.

I would focus more on making sure your cold emails have a human touch. A good rule of thumb is that if you won't do it in person, then don't do it in cold email. And you'll be fine. Ex., don't send the same person emails over and over again. keep cold email less than 100 words, and make the subject line customized such that it at least has their name. Then you are good to go.

You can use Toutapp for some of your emails. Also, you can use the pointofmail.com service to track your emails and only followup cold emails with those who you can see have either opened the email or clicked through it.

I have implemented the above tips and have seen 30% open rates regularly and 25% CTR regularly.

Hope that helps.

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mrjosco

Thanks! This is a huge help. I am impressed you are able to get 5000 out a day. I will be lucky to dig up 5000 emails in a week - and I use a scraper!

I plan on doing just a few a day - and I intend to make them as personal as possible. They will include a comparison of their current set up vs. what I am offering.

For me it will take at least 5 minutes to do one email - seeing as I have to set up a mock version of their site up before sending the email.

We will see...

To be honest I don't expect a huge response from the emails, but I would like to track who opens and then follow up with a call.

If I get a sale, just from the email, that would be icing on the cake.