Cold Email Lead Generation

The safe and smart way to use cold email to introduce yourself and start the lead process.

Email has long been a proven marketing channel for communicating with customers and prospects alike.

At first, email was only used to follow up with people who have opted in and agreed to receive your emails.

Today though, email is also used to introduce your business to new prospects.

Generally, this so-called “cold email” is used for business-to-business (B2B) applications.

How cold email is different than opt-in email

If you have been using an email service platform for your email newsletter or other types of communications, you’re probably familiar with the restrictions many platforms have for using purchased or rented email lists.

Opt-in platforms like Constant Contact and Mail Chimp want your email lists to be home grown – that is, they want you to build your own list with people who have opted in (or volunteered) to be on your list.

These platforms are not built for cold email. If you use them for cold email, they will notice – and you will lose your account.

Getting started with cold email prospecting

Before we begin to implement your campaign, we need to understand your lead generation needs.  And this is largely dependent on your sales process and how many sales reps you need to serve.

We can work with a sales team of one or many. But as you can imagine, the more reps you have, the more leads you will need – and the greater investment it will require.

Here are the key questions to ask …

• How many leads do you need?
• What types of leads do you need?
• What type of lead flow do you need?

Email List Building

Before we can build a list, we need to know who you want to reach.  This means developing an Ideal Customer Profile which spells out exactly who you are targeting.

This process starts with a demographic profile, which includes the following:

• • Industry or Industries
  • Company Size by Sales Volume/Employees
  • Job Titles by Function and Seniority
  • Geographic Location (local/regional/national)

Message Development

What is your overall message and what are some of the sub-messages you want to convey?

Some of this may seem obvious, but you may find that one message or sub-message does a better job of grabbing the reader’s attention and generating a lead.

Using A/B split testing, we will see how the market reacts to different emails.

Call-to-Action (CTA)

Your Call-to-Action is a critical piece of your message. It will go a long way in driving your overall response in terms of quantity and quality.

Ideally, you want high-engagement CTAs (like call for a chat, schedule a demo, request a quote, get a free consultation), but these require a high commitment on the part of the prospect and don’t usually generate high numbers.

Alternatively, we can use lower engagement CTAs (like request information, watch a video, attend a webinar) that will generate higher numbers but will require more work on the part of your sales team.

Email Deploy

Your email deployment needs to be automated, but not in larger numbers. Especially at the beginning.

Large volume emails are red flags of possible spam to receiving email servers.

We schedule your emails to go out at a pace that ensures maximum deliverability.

• • Establish a dedicated domain.
  • Use warmup emails to establish a positive email reputation.
  • Start with an initial mailing to establish a benchmark response rate.
  • Test different messages to optimize response.
  • Then, adjust your mailing quantity to fit your particular lead requirements

Response Tracking

When your prospects respond, you will get an email directly sent to your inbox.

We will also be monitoring response on a dedicated email dashboard that will keep track of all your email campaign activity.

How the numbers work

As with many marketing activities, cold email response is a numbers game. Response rates will vary from industry to industry and project to project, but it is largely determined by your Call-to-Action and how you define an acceptable lead.

If your Call-to-Action is an appointment request or a demo request or a quote request, you can probably expect your response rate to be at or below the .005 rate (that is ½ of 1%).

But if you are open to an information request (not yet an appointment), you could move the response rate needle up significantly.

Here’s a simple summary of possible response rates with different email send quantities.

Schedule a Walk-Through

Use the link below to schedule a one-on-one Zoom meeting where we will walk you through our services, our process and our pricing. And bring your questions too.

Click here to schedule a Zoom Walk-Through. Or call us at 508-473-8643 (M-F/9-5/Eastern).