Cold Email Outreach 101: How to Drive Leads and Traffic at Scale

Most businesses are in near-constant pursuit of more leads and traffic—the main drivers of revenue, at least in an online setting.

One of the most popular strategies for driving more leads and traffic in a business setting is cold email outreach. But how exactly does this strategy work and how can you make the most of it?

Why Cold Email Outreach?

First, let's cover the basics. A cold email is any email sent to a recipient who doesn't already know you and isn't expecting an email from you. Cold email outreach is the practice of sending out many of these emails, with the hope that at least some of the recipients respond and engage with your business.

It’s true that many people don’t open or respond to cold emails, but because of the scalability of cold email, that isn’t necessarily important. Cold email outreach is a numbers game, but don’t misinterpret that to mean it’s spam. Quantity and quality are important to make it work, but its scalability is unparalleled in the online marketing space.

Cold Email Outreach vs. Spam

What makes cold emailing different from spam? Well, if you’re not strategic and careful, you can indeed spam people with cold emails.

Nobody likes to deal with spam. This poses two central issues to cold emailers. First, you’ll need to find a way to stay out of your targets’ spam folders. Second, you’ll need to find a way to convince your email openers and readers that your message is not, in fact, spam.

Good cold emails, which are not spam, are:

• Targeted. Cold emails should be specifically directed to people based on their demographics and preferences. It's not spam if it's an offer well worth considering.
• Valuable. Cold emails should offer something unique and appreciable to your target recipients.
• Reasonable. In other words, you shouldn't send too many or be annoying or abusive.

To comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, give people an easy way to opt out of receiving future emails, and include your physical address in the footer of your emails.

How to Drive More Leads and Traffic

So how do you drive more leads and traffic with cold emailing?

Target Relevant Prospects

You’ll want to start by building a targeted list of prospects for your outreach campaign. The best offer in the world won’t be effective if you don’t send it to irrelevant people, so you need to nail your target prospect list first.

Make Sure You’re Landing in Inboxes, Not Spam Folders

Don't get caught in spam folders. These days, landing in inboxes is actually the hardest part of a cold email outreach campaign. There are just so many factors that go into deliverability of your emails, I can’t cover them all here, but see this guide for a list of the main factors you need to know.

Reply Promptly

If you want your cold emails to be effective, you need to respond to incoming replies quickly. The faster you respond, the more likely the interaction is to result in a sale or a positive impression.

Improve Your Value Offer

People will be much more likely to open, read, and respond to your emails if you improve the value of your emails. Freebies, special offers, important information, and even entertainment (such as humor) all qualify as value, so get creative with your messaging. Stand out and don’t sound like every other cold email you have in your inbox. Ask yourself, if you got this cold email, would you reply to it?

Use an Effective Subject Line

Most cold emails die when recipients glance at the subject line and decide not to open it. Effective subject lines are short, simple, and punchy. I like to use “introducing myself” as a subject line because it piques curiosity, while not being deceptive. After all, it’s true that I am introducing myself, and I have an offer I’d like to tell you about!

Follow Up

A single email is often going to be dismissed, but follow-ups can get people’s attention. I generally send one follow-up email three days after the initial email goes out, and only if people don’t reply to the original email.

Pro tip: You can include links and images in your follow-up emails as long as the original email made it into the recipient’s inbox; the follow-up emails will also land in the inbox! Just don’t send links or images in initial emails, because they make it far more likely those emails will land in spam folders.

A/B Test

Test out various subject lines, value offers, and messaging in the body of your emails so you can figure out what works best for your market. Any good cold email outreach tool will support A/B tests.

Measure the Right Metrics

You should measure bounce rates and reply rates. Sadly, you shouldn’t measure open rates anymore (this used to be a big metric for measuring deliverability) because doing so causes a tracking pixel to be inserted in your emails. That tracking pixel is easily detected by email service providers like Gmail and Outlook, and they’ll often send emails straight to spam folders that have them.

Instead, measure reply rates to see if your emails are landing in inboxes. A reply rate above 1% is great (not including out-of-office replies). If you have objective analytics to help you understand how your campaign is performing, you'll be in a much better position to fine-tune it.

Reach More Prospects with Cold Email Outreach

Cold email outreach is an essential part of a balanced digital marketing strategy for any B2B business. It’s uniquely scalable, while enabling you to get your message into the inboxes of your target prospects.

Use this guide as a starting point for launching your cold email outreach campaign.