Cold Email Automation: Why Should You Do it for Your Business

The power of automation in scaling any online marketing and sales strategy is undeniable. If you send a few emails manually for a short time, it's unlikely to have an effect on you or your business.

However, if you want to make effective use of cold emailing as a dependable and predictable source of qualified leads, you'll need email automation.

When we talk about automation, we're not only talking about software. Using virtual assistants and independent contractors to run cold email marketing automation is also possible.

You may automate almost anything that is automated and does not require specialized knowledge.

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Advantages of Cold Email Automation

Cold email automation does a lot more than simply saving you time and effort. Here are three ways email automation improves cold email campaigns:

1. Automate Email Follow-Ups and Workflows

Customers have a lot of responsibilities. They may want to talk to you again, but something comes up—priorities, emergencies, or timing.

You'll never know if you don't follow up if you don't ask.

You may create follow-up sequences and define the volume, delay, and schedule for each using automation.

You may simply sit back and let the automated email software handle it this way.

You can also establish trigger points and automate processes that distribute different follow-ups to various prospects depending on their actions or predetermined criteria.

2. Easy Personalization

Consider how you would write a prospect's name, company name, and city into every email. It's a time-consuming process.

You may upload a lead list with all of the required information using email automation.

It extracts the pertinent data and places it into the appropriate placeholders.

3. Allows Testing and Analysis

Without tracking, monitoring, and analyzing, you won't know what's working and what isn't. If you don't have any data and your reply and conversion rates are low, you won't be able to identify your issue.

There may be a variety of reasons why your emails are ending up in the spam folder, your subject line may look spammy, the prospects might not be a good fit for your offer, or you could have a weak CTA; it just might be anything.

By using an email automation solution, you can take a data-driven approach that not only helps you identify bottlenecks but also enables A/B testing.

You may create different subject lines, email bodies, and call to action for your campaign to see what works best.

In one place on the QuickMail dashboard, you can examine and filter data from all of your campaigns and apply it to optimize them.

Cold Email Automation Process

Let's see how you can get started with automating cold email campaigns.

You'll need cold email automation software before you can begin. Many email marketing solutions are available, including Alore, Reply.io, and GMass...

Build a List of Prospects

In this stage, you create a buyer persona, identify lead buckets, make a list of businesses, identify decision-makers, and obtain their emails.

Locating your niche is a one-time process that does not need to be automated.

From scraping lead buckets to researching prospects on social media to locating emails, the following steps in the list-building process are all time-consuming and may therefore be avoided.

On Upwork, you can easily locate VAs that will automate this step for you.

Write a Cold Email Sequence

Writing a cold email sequence is not a repetitive process. Here are some things to consider while creating a cold email series:

• Use a non-spammy subject line: Subject lines should be relevant to your email message and should ideally be personalized. Deception may help you achieve high open rates but few good replies.
• Keep your email's body short and to the point. Your prospects don't want to hear about your awards or years of expertise. They're looking for actual advantages that will help them develop and address their problems.
• Finally, customize the message: Finally, your prospects would most certainly deduce that they are a part of an email marketing campaign.
• A line or two about them makes them feel like you at least made an effort to understand their company.
• Personalizing emails is time-consuming and is the only recurring step in creating cold email content. Consider hiring a VA to assist you with research and personalization.
• Check your sentence construction and grammatical accuracy: You don't want your prospects to think you aren't a native speaker of their language.
• If you're not sure, double-check your cold email sequence and ask for help from a proofreader.
• Spelling mistakes may make emails appear more human, but there's no evidence that they have an impact on their effectiveness.
• Credibility: Have you worked with a well-known organization or a rival worthy of your respect? Have you delivered exceptional work that can be verified? Mention it.
• Include a clear call to action: A call to action that is precise, efficient, and
  concludes with a question is ideal.

Set Up the Campaign in an Automation Tool

After you've gathered all of your materials, it's time to cook. Here are the instructions for setting up your automated email campaign.

Import Lead List

You may upload the list as a CSV file or import it from Google Drive or a CRM using third-party connections.

Using integration with Google Drive and Zapier, QuickMail makes teamwork easier for teams.

You can also use Hyperise to verify email addresses and change the sequence without leaving the platform.

Insert Placeholders to Personalize

The next stage is to import your email template. Personalize the prospect's first name, company, location, and job title using placeholders.

For example,

Hi {first name}

Congratulations on your promotion to {job position}

Would appear in the email as,

Hi Dave,

Congratulations on your promotion to VP Engineering

Add Follow-Up Sequence

Your ideal customers are hectic. So don't take it personally if they don't respond to your email.

Prospects may not reply to your emails for a variety of reasons.

Because we assume that prospects do not want to hear from us, many of us do not follow up because we believe the prospects do not want to hear from us.

The email marketing automation tool is a powerful software that allows you to automate your email campaigns.

It's usually difficult to figure out how to improve the follow-up sequences in such a program; two concerns typically arise:

• How quickly should you start following up?
• When should you give up following up?

Spacing out the follow-ups by two weeks or more is too casual, and your sequence will likely lose momentum.

Every day is too intrusive, and it appears as though you are attempting to shore up your absence by following up every day.

On the other hand, spacing out the follow-ups by two weeks or longer is unprofessional and may result in a loss of momentum.

The ideal time between your first and second follow-up is four to seven days.

On a monthly basis, schedule the following ones for weekly, and if they don't get back to you after a month, convert your cold email campaign into a drip campaign and send emails once a month.

These are merely suggestions; if a certain plan works better for you, use it.

There is no clear answer when it's time to stop contacting people. Some people abandon after a few emails since they feel it's intrusive.

Prospects may unsubscribe and accuse you of spam, which might damage your deliverability.

As long as you don't require more money or personnel, some people will continue indefinitely because it doesn't take any more resources.

Optimize the Campaign

Optimizing sending volume, rate, and timeliness are intended to mimic human behavior for both the recipients and algorithms.

It contributes to a high email deliverability rate. Sending 200 emails per minute is a sure way to get caught by the spam detectors.

If you're just getting started, send 15-25 emails each day to get good results. Gradually, increase your sending frequency until it reaches 50-100 mails each day.

There is no set limit; so be on the lookout for decreasing open rates as indicators of poor email delivery.

Also, set the send time for between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., which is a wide enough period of time to properly space out your emails.

Monday through Friday may be used to run the campaign, according to studies, with no significant difference in open rates between weekdays.

Checklist for Cold Email Automation Process

When it comes to scaling up cold emailing, a lot of individuals use automation.

If you're launching a cold email campaign for the first time, manually send a few emails beforehand.

Here are some things to avoid if you're new to automation.

Do Not Contact List

Sending a cold email to a past or existing customer or prospect might be unpleasant, especially if you're offering a discounted offer they don't qualify for.

You also don't want to end up in your rivals' inbox with your best email marketing tactics on a platter. If you have a big enough prospect list, you can't say who ends up there.

To be on the safe side, include a "do not contact" list in your email marketing platform. To make this list quickly, add all of the domain names that you've ever sent an email to.

Run a Manual Check

When scraping lead information, there may be a few anomalies. As a result, you may inadvertently utilize the "LLC" or "Inc." from the company name in your email - a clear indication that it's automated.

Alternatively, fields with missing values can cause merge tags to be empty or accept irrelevant data.

Before you start a campaign, conducting a manual overview of each phase might help you avoid making mistakes later.

To ensure that everything is in order, send yourself a test email. You put yourself in the shoes of the recipient and identify areas for improvement while reading the test email in your inbox.

Avoid Following Up on Colleagues

Imagine you're getting a response from a prospect, but your automated emails keep following up with their coworkers.

This is one of the instances in which email automation can help people, not replace them. Make sure to add additional prospects at the same firm to your "do not contact" list if you get a reply.

Get Your Sales Team Ready

Automation begins the sales cycle with an email. The bottom line is that automation works only up to a certain point.

To put it another way, you need your sales team to qualify, process, and close leads. It's a wasted opportunity if your sales team can't handle onboarding new customers
and the number of new leads it receives.

Nurture Cold Leads

What happens when you don't hear from your prospects? You can either stop or continue nurturing them.

Lead nurturing is the process of developing connections with prospects at all stages of the buyer's journey.

It's a long-term endeavor because, while the prospect may not be a perfect fit for your product right now, they may become satisfied customers as they progress.

In Conclusion

Drip campaigns, as opposed to cold emails, are less frequent and have a more subtle CTA, but they offer greater value in the form of e-books, white papers, videos, case studies, blog articles, and webinars.

However, the methods for nurturing chilly leads with an effective email drip campaign are based on the same fundamentals as cold email automation.