What are the risks and alternatives to cold email prospecting?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from LinkedIn recommends personalizing outreach by researching prospects, tailoring messages to their needs, and providing value upfront instead of generic sales pitches, as a warmer alternative to cold emails.
Email marketer from Woodpecker explains building genuine relationships with prospects through networking events, social media engagement, and providing helpful content can lead to warmer introductions and reduce reliance on cold outreach.
Email marketer from Email Geeks mentions he could share horror stories about the negative outcomes of continuing cold email practices.
Email marketer from Quora suggests that cold emails are more effective when they are highly relevant to the recipient's industry, job role, or recent activities. Thorough research and personalized messaging can increase engagement.
Email marketer from Reddit suggests using lead magnets such as ebooks, webinars, or free trials to attract potential customers and build an email list organically as an alternative to cold emailing.
Email marketer from Sales Hacker shares that warming up email addresses before cold outreach can improve deliverability and avoid spam filters. Warming up involves sending emails to a small group of contacts and gradually increasing volume.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares their experience with sales teams using 'cold email specialists' who scrape emails for lead generation. They highlight a shift towards lead generation through content marketing, writing good content, ebooks, and improving SEO.
Email marketer from SuperOffice explains that social selling using platforms like LinkedIn provides opportunities to engage with prospects, build relationships, and learn about their needs before initiating direct contact.
Email marketer from G2 recommends creating valuable and informative content that addresses the pain points of your target audience. By attracting potential customers through content, you can build trust and generate leads without resorting to cold emailing.
Email marketer from HubSpot Blog explains that cold emailing carries risks like violating GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and potential damage to sender reputation, which can lead to blacklisting. Alternatives include inbound marketing, content marketing, and leveraging social media.
Email marketer from Reply.io advocates Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to target specific companies and key decision-makers with highly personalized campaigns. This targeted approach can be more effective than broad cold emailing.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Spamresource explains that blocklists are lists of IP addresses and domains known for sending spam. Being listed on a blocklist can significantly hinder email deliverability, causing emails to bounce or land in the spam folder.
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that the perception of relevance is crucial for inbox placement. Cold emails, by their nature, often struggle with relevance, which increases the risk of being filtered or marked as spam.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that sending unsolicited emails can seriously damage your sender reputation, especially if recipients mark your messages as spam. This can lead to deliverability issues for all your email campaigns, not just the cold emails.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that cold outreach using shared content or infrastructure with your main mail program can negatively impact transactional or marketing mail deliverability, potentially making recovery difficult due to B2B filtering.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Mailchimp emphasizes that using purchased or rented email lists is against their terms of service and can lead to account suspension. They advocate for permission-based marketing and building an organic email list.
Documentation from SendGrid explains that implementing sender authentication methods like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is crucial for improving email deliverability and avoiding spam filters. These methods verify the sender's identity and prevent spoofing.
Documentation from the FTC explains the CAN-SPAM Act requirements, including accurate header information, a physical postal address, an opt-out mechanism, and honoring opt-out requests promptly. Violating CAN-SPAM can result in hefty fines.
Documentation from GDPR outlines the need for explicit consent before sending marketing emails to EU citizens. Non-compliance can result in significant penalties.