As a Marketing Manager, I am always contemplating email marketing, especially for outreach. The subject line, the content, what is going to cut through, when is the best time to send, the data…but while these all need careful consideration, perhaps it is down to timing and maybe a little bit of luck.
Over 7 years ago I worked as an Appointment Setter. I was constantly cold calling and cold emailing. I had a decent success rate and I was proud of the role I had carved out; my approach was working. I was setting good meetings and winning new clients for the agency.
Post GDPR and Covid, the new business world seems saturated with cold emailing and LinkedIn connection requests, and it feels this approach could be frustrating our prospects rather than positively engaging with them. Could it also be affecting our success rate of generating new leads?
As we fight for our prospects’ attention in a crowded inbox, are we lucky that our emails are even read, let alone elicit a response! We want to reach and engage with useful and relevant content but one of my recent prospects explained that she receives at least 60 unsolicited emails a week, and has in fact received over 30 in one day! How do you possibly stand out in an inbox that full? What makes your content worth reading over the next email, rather than being deleted due to an overwhelmingly busy workload? Should we be contemplating other methods or should we simply keep evolving our marketing emails with optimised content and CTAs?
In the tough world of business development, I am growing an even thicker skin, building my resilience and tenacity. Sometimes it’s hard not to let a negative response take the wind out my sails or a poor CTR rate knock me back, but as email marketing continues to evolve, I’ll keep optimising campaigns, researching best practice and developing my knowledge. Cold emailing is an important acquisition channel, but let’s not forget we are all human. Let’s remember to communicate with respect and conviction and then perhaps we may improve our campaigns, increase open rates and start meaningful conversations with new leads.
Simple tips for improving your open rates
Over the years I’ve picked up a few tricks for improving the open rates of cold emails and getting cold prospects to engage:
- Give careful consideration to your subject line.
- Keep your emails concise and compelling.
- Preview and test your emails before sending them.
- Monitor the performance of each email campaign to note trends and consider A/B testing.
