We’ve all been there. You kick off your email campaign with high hopes, only to discover that your carefully crafted emails are landing in spam folders - even the ones you're sending to your colleagues.
It’s a nightmare scenario, but the one that can be avoided. Here’s how I’ve learned it the hard way, so you don’t have to.
Step 1 – The Art of Email Warm-Up
You’ve written your cold email sequence, found contacts using a lead generation service, and jumped into your cold outreach campaign. “Just 30 emails per day, that should be safe,” you think to yourself. Hahahahh, yeah right. First month goes by, there are some replies. Few more months goes by and your reply rate dwindles. No, your emails probably aren’t terrible. They’re just ending up in spam.
Lesson number 1: Always warm up your email.
Tools like Lemwarm can help with this. If you are short on budget or just don’t want to pay for any tools there are other ways to warm up your email:
- Encourage communication with colleagues – ask them to always reply to your emails, even if it’s just a simple “Thank you”. High reply rates keep you out of the spam folder.
- Sign up for 10 or more newsletters to get inbound traffic.
- Include an unsubscribe link in your cold outreach campaign emails. People you are targeting are more likely to press unsubscribe than to report you as spam.
Step 2 – Don’t Overwhelm Recipients with Unwanted Content
When introducing yourself, explain what you do and how you can help your potential client. Resist the urge to load your first email with links, photos, and PDF files.
Yes, your goal is to entice potential clients to schedule a meeting. But you don’t need to include every team-building photo, your extensive company profile, and links to dozens of projects in your initial email.
Use your first email for a brief introduction. Then, in your follow-up email, share relevant files, your website, company profile, and other important information.
Step 3 – Craft Subject Lines That Resonate, Not Repe
Just think how often you delete an email from an unknown sender without even opening it. The deciding factor? The subject line. If it’s irrelevant or overly salesy, it’s likely to be dismissed. Don’t overthink it. Write your subject lines as you would when emailing a colleague. Keep them short, sweet, and to the point.
You can do whatever you want with this information. Just know that I have managed to screw up 2 email domains so far but the third one has been safe for two years already. 😀
I fucked up, so you don’t have to.
