So you decided to order an email campaign with a third-party company, but at the same time you’d like to keep tabs on the whole process? Too much meddling, email blasts done on your own, or deliberately keeping any prior actions hidden may all negatively impact the end result.
Cold email mistakes
You may be unaware of mistakes you’re making that will sabotage your campaign effectiveness. If you hire professionals then trust me, don’t interfere with their work too much. In this post, you’ll learn what not to do when outsourcing cold emailing.
The very foundation of a campaign is a properly configured email inbox. If you decided to outsource sending emails, make sure there are no tech issues. You must’ve received instructions on what to do in order to allow experts from the external company to fine-tune all aspects of the campaign. Try not to make their job any harder. Campaign reach and success depend on a properly set up inbox.
Check your domain
The business you choose will send emails using your account, so first, see if there are any limitations in terms of how many messages you can send and if so, make this explicitly clear.
You don’t want a situation where it suddenly appears you can’t reach all the companies you targeted.
Apart from a properly configured email account, you need to always consider the transparency and reputation of your domain.
It’s being affected by the actions your company has taken in the past such as:
- email-based marketing campaigns,
- newsletter blasts,
- previous cold emailing campaigns, etc.
If you have ever sent emails on your own or used any commercial emailing tools, you need to let the outsourced company know about this.
Been blasting emails? Don’t keep it a secret!
Imagine a situation where you’ve been always observing the law carefully and this one time you violated the rules slightly – you got fined for speeding. You became a record in a police database. From now on, even if you won’t commit a serious crime, you’ll be looked at closely.
The same goes for emails. If you’ve ever run a sloppy email campaign (for instance, you had to work with low-quality prospects – you’ve sent a newsletter to 2,000 addresses half of which were outdated), then you must’ve been spotted by anti-spam filters.
You didn’t even have to spam people, all it took was a minor mistake. That said, make sure you inform the company you’re working with about your email past. The sooner, the better.
This will allow the company managing your campaign to react and solve any issues quicker, saving time for both parties. Whether or not you’ve been doing mass emailing before will become clear one way or another.
Let the specialists design your email content
When outsourcing an email campaign, you most likely want to have a say when it comes to your perfect cold email contents. Sometimes, you may be trying too hard, though.
Don’t focus on details and don’t devote too much time to minor issues – you’ve hired specialists whose job is to take care of these things. Unlike you, they’ve sent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of effective cold emails. They know what words to avoid and how to design content that makes people open and react to messages.
Getting involved in tweaking the template (“hi” instead of “hello” to start things off, or “kind regards” instead of “best”) won’t solve all your lead generation problems. If you’re outsourcing cold emailing, leave these issues to the experts – there’s a reason you decided to use their services after all.
Watch out for deliverability rate
You want to use phrases like “the best price”, “free cash”, “absolutely for free”, or other expressions along the lines of “order now” and “promo”? Well, sadly, they just can’t make their way into your emails.
Anti-spam filters are checking emails in terms of particular keywords and registering fragments of messages – explains Sebastian Kajzer, Email Delivery Specialist at RightHello.
If you want your emails to have the best possible deliverability rate, remain open to changes and suggestions made by the experts you hired. Oftentimes, you can convey the same meaning using different words.
Beware of links and memes
You absolutely want your emails to have UTM or shortened links, right? On top of that, you’d like to add in a meme to keep things fun and a link to your corporate blog. Tread carefully.
All tracking links reduce deliverability, the same goes for too big images in the email contents – explains Sebastian Kajzer.
Messages containing this kind of “attachments” are under particular anti-spam scrutiny. That’s why it’s better to perfect the message you want to convey and the words you use for this purpose. Again, you’ll be better off leaving this issue to the experts.
Don’t shoot yourself in the footer
If during the consultation stage the outsourced company is asking you to make a change to the footer, don’t try to cling to it at any price. This seemingly trivial issue may determine whether your message reaches its addressee.
And what are the specialists paying particular attention to? Most of all to its length and sophistication. All it takes is a single link in your footer, which has previously been blacklisted, for spam filters to reject the entire message and consider it spam.
Your footer should be:
- short – include only the most crucial information such as person’s name, position, contact details, and some basic information about the company,
- clear – to make the message displayed on a phone easy to read (it’s estimated that over 30% of recipients are reading emails on their smartphones),
- contain only up to one link.
That said, if the outsourced company points to the fact you need to change something, just do it. Don’t sabotage your own campaign.
To wrap things up:
Email is the fastest way to reach decision makers or businesses you had no previous contact with. Negligence or ineffective flow of information may render the campaign a failure. Incorrectly configured email account, poor contents, or even a bad footer can all affect the positive results you’re striving for.
