Best Practices To Create A Great Cold Email Campaign

When you are sending a cold email campaign, your primary objective is to ensure prospects read your emails and reply back to them.

Following the practices below should help you create successful cold emails campaigns:

Subject line:
Keep the subject lines short (3-7 words) and relevant. Short, simple and personal subject lines get higher open rates. However, don't use one-word subject lines.

Avoid using words that are known to trigger Spam Filters Common spam-trigger words

Don't add RE: to subject lines if it's not a reply.

Don't use ALL CAPS.

Don't use exclamation marks in your subject line.

Email body:
Keep your email body short (upto 125 words).

Long cold emails (150+ words) with advertising / sales copies are often ignored or (worse) marked-as-spam by prospects.

Don't use ALL CAPS and avoid spelling mistakes.

Never use readily available templates as there is a chance that these templates might have been abused by spammers and there is a high chance using the same template would attract your emails to be marked as spam.

Plain text emails vs designed-html templates:
Plain text is preferred if you are cold emailing, especially for sales, cause it makes the emails look personal to the recipients, and hence better received.

However, you may try designed HTML templates and see if they work better for you.

Put yourself in the shoes of a prospect (recipient), and see if the email finally looks like its sent personally and is not a mass email.

Opt-out / unsubscribe link or text:
You should include an unsubscribe link in each email.

It's much better if uninterested recipients unsubscribe from your campaign rather than mark your emails as spam. Even a 1% spam rate (1% of recipients marking your emails as spam) can result in all your emails going to the spam folder in future.

Learn how to include unsubscribe link / text in your emails.

Question count:
While sending cold emails, your objective is to get a response from the prospect (even if they are not interested in your proposal / offer).

For this reason, you should have 1-2 questions in your email. They make your emails actionable and compel the recipients to respond back. Emails with 1-2 questions get upto 15% more responses.

Reading level and positivity:
Use simple, straightforward language in the email, and keep the tone positive. Simple, positive emails are more likely to get responses.

Follow-ups:
For running successful cold email campaigns, it is very important to follow up with prospects that have not responded to your previous emails.

In general, you should have at least 4-5 follow-ups spaced out over a 3 week period. Keep the follow-up emails short and simple.

The follow-ups get a higher response rate than the opening (first) email in cold email campaigns.

Email deliverability:
It is very important that your emails reach the prospects' inboxes and are read by them. SmartReach.io offers you several features to help increase this email deliverability such as free email validation, spam tests and campaign warm-ups, you can read more about them here

Campaign Soft Start:
Campaign Soft Start helps you build up your email reputation, therefore increase the chances of your emails reaching the prospects' inboxes (not spam folder).

To know how this feature works read here.

Spam Test:
While starting your campaigns, run a Spam Test, and fix the issues that get reported. Learn more about Spam Tests here

Spintax
Spintax is a syntax format used to create variations of a specific piece of text. Spintax allows you to create dynamic and personalized email content, improving deliverability and increasing the chances of generating positive responses. By understanding the Spintax format and utilizing nested Spintax, you can maximize the potential of your email outreach efforts. read here