Email marketing is still rated a top-tier lead generation strategy by a third of all marketers.
While this traditional approach to lead capture has recently been outshone by social media strategies and SMS targeting, email outreach still plays an essential role in a successful marketing strategy in 2024.
This said, according to experts, less than 30% of outreach emails are opened in a modern-day consumer landscape.
With this in mind, we’re delving deeper into the strategies behind a successful outreach campaign and unlocking some of the key tactics to use when aiming to boost your placement rate in a competitive inbox.
What is an Email Outreach Campaign?
Email outreach is the process of creating and outreaching promotional emails to your B2B or B2C targets.
An outreach campaign usually consists of sending emails to what we call ‘cold’ leads, which suggests that they are not part of your current network and have not interacted with your products or services before.
This can make email outreach extremely hard, as you’re trying to attract the attention of potential demographics, rather than your loyal consumers.
In order to succeed when launching a cold email outreach campaign, you must ensure that your email stands out from others in the inbox, offers a punchy subject line and a quick call to action.
Email outreach campaigns consist of creating detailed prospect lists, crafting sellable content, and planning a follow-up campaign to boost placement scores.
The most common form of email outreach is the cold email outreach process. This involves sending an email out to contacts who have not previously interacted with your brand.
While this form of outreach can be tough, the key here is to think outside of the box with your email templates, but we’ll get to that later.
Could Your Website Impact Your Email Campaign?
A powerful outreach campaign could also improve your website engagement. If you consistently link to your landing pages within your email outreach, most subscribers will visit your website as their end destination.
This said another major factor to consider when crafting an email outreach campaign is the performance of your CTA link. If a user clicks on your call-to-action after interacting with your email, they expect a streamlined jump from the inbox to your website.
To ensure your site loads in seconds, design your landing pages with usability in mind. Avoid overly complicated graphics that take longer to load, and make sure that your website host can handle a large influx of trafficwhen email campaigns go live.
How To Upgrade Your Outreach Campaign For A Higher Placement Rate
If you want to improve your placement rate success in 2024, look no further.
Securing email leads can be tricky, especially when you’re outreaching cold to an inbox packed with competitors.
However, if you know your targets inside out and hook your recipients right from the subject line, you may have a better shot at improving your position in the inbox.
Email warm-up plays a big role in the outreach process. By gradually increasing the number of emails sent from a new email account, you build a positive reputation with email service providers (ESPs).
How It Works
The system is designed to simulate genuine user interactions, which includes sending, opening, marking as not spam, and even replying to these warm-up emails. This mimicking of real user behavior helps to foster a positive reputation for your email account.
To ensure that these warm-up emails are recognized as legitimate communications rather than automated messages, Smartlead injects a unique “Custom Warm-Up Identifier Tag” directly into the body of each email. This way, email service providers (ESPs) are less likely to flag them as spam.
Once you enable the warm-up feature, you can expect to receive warm-up emails from unfamiliar sources as part of the process.
It’s worth mentioning that warm-up emails are separate from your regular email campaigns. They do not count against your daily sending limits, allowing you to focus on building a solid sender reputation without impacting your outreach efforts.
This ensures that your emails do not end up in the spam folder. With this in mind, here are seven simple changes to make to your email outreach campaign for a victorious outcome.
1. Start Segmenting Your Audience
Before we teach you how to create an email that hits at the right pace, it’s important to know who you’re sending it to.
Depending on how well you know your target audience, a well-researched email campaign could contain target buzzwords and offers that encourage consumer engagement.
This said, when cold outreaching, you’re often targeting a wider demographic of buyer personas, meaning that the content that works for one may not work for the other.
Here, you should apply a tactic called email segmentation.
If you segment your audiences into target groups based on factors such as age, gender, location and the products/services they may have interacted with before, you can create multiple email outreach templates that specifically target their needs and gratifications.
This in turn ensures that your email is applied directly to your individual target’s interests and pain points and encourages them to open the email.
2. Hook Your Recipients Using The Subject Line
The first indicator of a positive email outreach campaign is the success of the subject line. If your subject line stands out to the consumer, you’re twice as likely to receive some inbox engagement.
Powerful subject lines stand out. Experts at Hubspot found that 35% of email recipients engage with a message based on the subject line alone, so it’s vital that you spend some time on this.
Opt for a short and snappy subject line, packed full of buzzwords that are likely to grab the attention of your targets. Better still, if you’re offering a discount or releasing a new product, ensure that your subject line encourages readers to take action.
Smartphone scrollers are especially keen on to-the-point subject lines. With less time to dedicate to reading full emails on the go, your subject line immediately tells a target if your email is even worth opening.
Without a powerful subject line, any work you put into your email body will simply be wasted, unopened and moved to the inbox bin.
3. Personalize Your Outreach Efforts
Personalisation has become a powerful tool to use in a digitalised marketing landscape.
Experts suggest that a personalized email receives 20% more replies than a generic alternative.
When personalizing your outreach strategy, there are a few things to remember.
Firstly, ensure that your email template remains genuine, despite personalisation efforts. There’s nothing worse than a generalized automated email template that has been crafted with a classic ‘fill in the blanks’ strategy.
Avoiding spam-words ensures that your target knows that you’re speaking directly to them. This could be in the form of referencing something of theirs on another website, giving them a compliment or talking about a topic that they have mentioned on their own platforms.
This is a brilliant tactic to use for journalistic outreach or when talking business-to-business (B2B). ‘Warming up’ your cold lead could be the difference between a reply, and an email that is swiftly deleted from the inbox.
Email personalization is even easier using. Using their built-in spam filter to highlight any potential spam words as well as Spintax to improve your deliverability and avoid spam pockets, you create a robust email template ready for the inbox.
4. Incorporate UGC
On the topic of warming up your email targets, why not also leverage user-generated content within your email template to engage your audience and build credibility?
There are a few ways to utilize UGC in an email outreach strategy. These are:
- Snippets of customer reviews
- Company experience stories
- Third-party endorsements
- Previous competition winners and their competition entries
- Social media clips and content
It’s no secret that customers look at reviews before interacting with a brand, so why not save their time by embedding your testimonials on your email template?
Including user-generated social proof in your email strategy tells a target that you’re proud of your successes and are confident that your customers are happy with your service. This alone builds credibility and encourages readers to take action on your email.
5. Include Company Case Studies Too
Alongside UGC content, you should also endeavour to add your own social proof to your email campaign.
If you want to build your credibility in front of a cold target, ensure that you’re able to back up the claims you make in your subject line.
For example, if you’re speaking to a B2B, potential client, add a line that looks like this:
“We’ve had great results with companies like {client 1}, {client 2}, and {client 3}”
Or
“We’re already working with {client 1}, {client 2}, and {client 3}”
Here you want to name-drop your most successful clients and case studies and even hyperlink these, to encourage readers to dig deeper into your previous achievements.
6. Add A Powerful CTA Before The End
The whole point of an email outreach campaign is to encourage customers to complete an action at the end. Therefore, you must include a strong call-to-action throughout your email body and within your subject line.
Experts at WordStream found that emails using just one CTA button or phrase got 371% more clicks than email templates without.
The key here is to add your CTA before the end of your email. Busy targets are less likely to read to the end of your email, so give them the chance to take action after the first line.
A great rule of thumb is at the beginning, in the middle and at the end for good measure.
7. Follow-Up, Follow-Up, Follow-UP
Did you know that a whopping 70% of emails don’t make it past the inbox the first time around?
Recipients are often bombarded with multiple messages every day, so it’s easy to slip through the net.
This is when a follow-up becomes crucial. Not only can a follow-up help you seal the deal, but it can remind forgetful targets that simply forgot to take action on your message.
The key here is to leave an appropriate window of time between the first email and the follow-up. If you shoot too early, you may annoy your targets. However, if you shoot too late, they may no longer require your products/services and be shopping with a competitor.
Our advice is to shoot for 5-7 days before sending a follow-up, this gives consumers enough time to check their inbox and react to your initial outreach.
By understanding how these components interact, you can better manage your campaigns and optimize email delivery, ensuring that your follow-ups are timely and effective!