How we always land in the inbox
Having Clean Data
The first step to having a high open rate (80-90%) is to ensure that you are sending emails to verified email addresses.
One of the most common issues that agencies run into when it comes to deliverability, is their data accuracy.
Guessing an email address is a quick way to land in the spam folder.
There are many tools out there that you can use to find the correct email address of a lead such as snov.io, Lusha, UpLead and Anymail Finder.
You can use these tools to fetch the valid email addresses from a website url, or you can use LinkedIn tools like Contact Out to find their email from their LinkedIn account.
One of the most crucial metrics in a cold email campaign is the bounce rate.
If you are getting anything above 4%, you are likely to find yourself in the spam folder and you'll have a horrible open rate (Sub 40%).
Personalisation Wins Every Single Time
The second thing you must do to increase your email deliverability is to PERSONALISE your emails.
If you are still stuck in 2010, you should learn about personalised cold emails.
If you are not including at least 1 sentence that is unique to each recipient, you are asking to be ignored first of all and second of all you will not attract much interest.
Surf Digital personalises the first sentence of each email that we send - we call it a Personalised Compliment.
A Personalised Compliment or "Icebreaker" is basically a sentence at the beginning of your email that is unique to that specific prospect.
This could be anything from a customer review to a new product launch.
For example, if you wanted to send me an email you could say something like "I came across the work you did with Engaging Partners, it's great how you were able to help them land a meeting with BarbershopCo!"
Personalising your cold emails and LinkedIn sequences are a must.
They will not only help increase your response rates, but you will become more trustworthy in Google's eyes.
You are sending authentic emails individually to each prospect, which is not spam.
Less Is More
When we review cold email copy from other cold emailers, the most common mistake people make is the length of their email.
A cold email does not need to be 5 paragraphs long.
It does not need bullet points, and you do not need to mention everything you have done in your life.
What you should be doing is following a framework. There are many styles of cold emails and our favourite is the following:
1. Personalised Compliment
2. Who we are, what we do, and how we can help
3. Reasonable call to action
If you follow this framework, your email should look something like this:
"Hi Joel,
Well done on the recent success with Notion, I read that AF Digital was able to help them decrease their CPL by 20%, that's huge!
Surf Digital has recently helped the likes of Attention Experts, AdVisible and MultimediaX book 20 meetings each month through our smart omnichannel Cold Email and LinkedIn sequences.
Is AF Digital in the position to take on more clients right now? If yes, please let me know the best time for a call this week.
Thanks,
Thomas"
Only contact prospects that fit your ICP
You should not be contacting over 100 prospects per week. If you are sending 500 emails per week, that is another way you can find yourself in the spam folder - why?
Because you are SPAMMING emails.
That is a lot of emails, and if you are including follow ups, you're looking at a ridiculous amount of emails.
But what if I want to scale?
Well first of all, if you actually have a defined ICP, there won't be a million leads out there for you to contact.
You will be working with small lists, which is actually a good thing.
This will mean you can focus on each lead individually and put time and effort in to research the prospect.
If you have a defined ICP, you will likely be sending between 80-100 emails each week.