Email marketing was valued in February 2023 at $10.89 billion and the sector is projected to reach $17.9 billion by 2027.

 

 

It’s no surprise, as cold emailing remains the most cost-effective email marketing strategy, allowing brands to build brand awareness and reach more people faster. Add to that, cold emailing provides a massive return on investment of $40 for every $1 spent.

 

 

So, it’s only expected that 82% of marketers worldwide integrate email marketing into their lead-generation efforts.

 

 

However, despite the benefits cold emailing offers, marketers know cold emailing is a tricky business. The truth is, it’s easy to get cold emailing wrong and make your messages seem too sales-y or just plain annoying. 

 

 

But when done right, cold emails can be one of the most powerful tools in an outreach campaign arsenal. Here are the taboos to avoid in your cold email campaign and the practices you should use instead.

 

 

Email Marketing Practices to Avoid

 

When sending cold emails, you should know certain practices that may get you on people’s nerves. Once you annoy your recipients, you’re more likely to say goodbye to potential customers who can help grow your business.

 

 

So, here are three examples of annoying email marketing practices you must avoid to stand a chance in your prospect’s email inboxes.

 

 

#1: Not Personalizing Your Emails

 

Customers can easily spot it when businesses lack personalization in their content. As a result, you risk losing 52% of potential customers just by not personalizing your content.

 

 

For example, when you start your email with improper salutations, it immediately makes your readers feel like your email isn’t personally for them—it’s generic. You can only hope they didn’t immediately move it to the trash.

 

 

Here are the three basics of personalized cold emails:

 

• Email list segmentation: Group your contacts into what they have in common, like key demographics or where they are in the buyer’s journey. Doing so helps you send emails that are relevant to your recipients
• Timeliness: Figure out the best time to reach out to your potential customers with content and promotions. Ensure that you’re sending it at a time that makes the most sense for them
• Human touch: Make it clear that a real person is sending your email rather than making it feel like a generic brand. This human-to-human connection is the heart of your personalization efforts

 

Customers expect a personalized experience—as if you’re talking to them face to face. Your content should directly relate to why your prospect would benefit from your product or service. Unfortunately, although this is not rocket science, many marketers continue sending impersonalized cold emails to their email lists.

 

 

#2: Attempting to Sell Immediately

 

The goal of every business is to sell as much as possible, but you shouldn’t attempt to sell in the first cold email. Cold emails are meant to make an initial introduction, that could lead to a sale Aggressive sales pitches push your prospects away, alienating customers and losing potential profits for your business.

 

 

When doing cold emails, it’s crucial to build a connection with your prospects and guide them throughout the buying journey until they’re ready to buy your product or service. You can do this by sending quality and valuable content and offering special deals not found on your website.

 

 

#3:  Sending Empty Messages

 

By empty, we mean messages without value. Doing this wastes everybody’s time with no purpose or benefit to the reader.

 

 

Your goal with cold emails is to generate leads, nurture your leads, and lead them to become customers or brand ambassadors. Every email you send should be a step on that journey, and each one should have a purpose.

 

 

Your email recipients’ inboxes get flooded with hundreds of emails daily from different marketers. And doing all these three won’t help you stand a chance of engaging your prospects and boosting your sales.

 

 

Email Marketing Practices to Follow

 

So, how should you do your cold emails?

 

 

Don’t waste time crafting messages your recipients won’t even read. 81% of small and midsize businesses still direct their attention to email marketing for customer acquisition and 80% for retention, so no matter how small your business is, you have the power to reach the right people through email marketing 24/7—you just have to do it right.

 

 

Here are three ways to improve your cold email outreach campaigns:

 

#1: Get Personal

 

If you’re helpful and convince your prospects that you can solve their problems, they will trust you and enjoy hearing from you. Giving your prospects helpful information, tools, and ideas increases your opportunity to have a loyal customer base by 70%.

 

 

You can start by providing your email lists with valuable resources like eBooks, articles, and webinars to establish yourself as an authoritative source about the topics relevant to your product and industry. 

 

 

More than that, use cold emailing to show appreciation for your customers by sending them personalized messages with special offers or discounts. By being helpful, prospects and customers will see you as a brand that values relationships and keeps its promises.

 

 

#2: Use Localization Tactics

 

Localizing your emails means adapting your email content to ensure recipients receive messages translated into their language and relevant to their region and culture. After all, 65% of consumers are more likely to engage in messages written in their native language—opening the gates to exploring a big pool of prospects.

 

 

If your recipients can’t understand anything about your email, how are they supposed to engage and interact with you? As a result, you’ll have a high unsubscribe rate, low email engagement, and weak conversion rates.

 

 

When localizing your emails, you’re not only translating the message into multiple languages. You also have to cater the entire email body to the locale of your prospect—from email subject lines to imagery.

 

 

#3: Keep Your Message Short and Easy

 

Most people skim content materials, including emails, rather than reading verbatim. And remember, the average human attention span today is only 8 seconds. That’s not long, so to capitalize on your small window of time, keep your cold emails short and easy to understand. Email content with short and direct messages has a 51% response rate and a 16% click-through rate, which you can cater to by keeping your emails between 50 to 150, or around 5 to 15 lines of text.  

 

 

Overall, your readers should be able to easily see and understand what your email is all about and what you want from them as they skim read.

 

 

Do Cold Emailing The Right Way and Enjoy Success

 

There’s no one-size-fits-all cold emailing formula. However, the practices mentioned above can help you get started and maximize the high ROI of cold outreach campaigns. By avoiding the annoying practices and following the right ones, you can ensure that each email you send is purposeful, localized, and easy to understand—leading your prospects towards becoming customers and boosting your company’s overall sales.

 

 

Cold emailing is a skill and art, and success doesn’t happen overnight. You need to put in lots of effort and time integrating the best practices into your strategies, which can be daunting. But it doesn’t have to be.

 

 

At ScaleUpSales, you have access to a pool of cold outreach experts who can guide you through cold emailing the right way. You no longer have to spend time perfecting the craft of cold outreach because we do that for you. We ensure that your cold email campaigns highlight your business and resonate with your target audience, resulting in more quality leads and bigger profits.

 

 

Start cold emailing the right way and watch your results skyrocket. Contact us today!