Cold email

What is email prospecting really worth? Often, it appeals to people because they think they spend much less time sending an email than making a phone call. Many people dream of mass campaigns where the same message is sent to several thousand prospects.

But it almost never converts. Cold emailing makes sense when targeting large organizations and for complex sales. But this implies investing in the quality of your prospecting database at least as much as for a telephone prospecting team.

There are very good B2B databases, which you can then enrich to better qualify your prospects. Cold mailing tools are very often really profitable investments: from automation to reporting of your campaigns, they can really save you time and money.

A good cold emailing campaign is at least as time consuming as a telephone prospecting campaign. However, the time spent qualifying prospects often costs less…

#1 Build your cold emailing file

If email prospecting saves time compared to telephone prospecting, it does not exempt you from skipping the qualification step.

The pitfall to avoid at all costs when you build your email prospecting file is the invalidity rate of emails.

When it comes to deliverability, there are different criteria that come into play but sending emails to non-existent recipients risks lowering your deliverability rate; worse, it can damage the reputation of your sending domain name. It is therefore essential to test the existence of email addresses in your contact list.

Hence the interest in building (or buying) a quality prospecting file by looking for the right information, and by cleaning your lists regularly so that it is up to date.

You can also use existing databases and enrich them (from your CRM for example).

#2 Write your B2B prospecting emails

The writing of your campaigns is a crucial step to create a link with your prospect. Pay close attention to where the prospect is in your sales funnel.

The subject line of your email should be carefully crafted – don’t forget that a professional receives an average of 120 emails per day. Take inspiration from what others have done before you (and from our examples), and personalize as much as possible, with a very clear (but light) call to action. Do not neglect what may appear to be secondary, such as the sender’s name or signature.

Don’t hesitate to test your different mails. And always be clear and synthetic.

#3 Shooter: our best tools to send your cold email campaigns

An emailing campaign also includes a whole technical aspect that should not be overlooked: the tools, the deliverability, the set-up. Pay attention to the timing of the mailing (day of the week and time of day) and again, don’t hesitate to do A/B tests.

A cold mailing software can be a very good ally for this technical part – either paid software like Leadin or free extensions like Google. Some tools are specialized in testing your emailing campaigns, a good investment to have a reporting on your campaigns.

#4 Manage your B2B cold mailing campaigns

An email campaign does not stop after sending well-written emails to your prospects. Very quickly, the question of follow-up and reminders arises: we recommend a minimum of 4 to 5 reminders with a minimum interval of 2 days between 2 consecutive mailings. You also have to take care of your follow-up emails: each email must bring value to your readers.

Source: Woodpecker, Cold Email Statistics Based on Sending Over 20M Cold Emails

A successful cold mailing campaign is not just about sending well-written emails to your prospects but is often part of a prospecting campaign, sometimes multi-channel.