Why Do Cold Emails Fail?

Here are common mistakes that trigger the spam filter:

You are adding too many spam words and characters in your cold email copy. These spam-triggering words filter your emails to the spam folder. Examples of such words are;

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To fix this, use power words like the example below to support your cold email outreach.

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Attaching documents or files to your cold email campaign to people who don’t know you or are not expecting the attached documents pushes your email to the spam folder.

Except if your email recipient is expecting your document, Refrain from attaching documents or files in your cold emails

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To fix this, send attachments only when your prospects request the documents. For example;

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Sending bulk emails to so many recipients at the same time triggers spam alerts in most email service providers. To fix this, set up a “drip” campaign to send your emails in intervals.

The general best practice for emails as recommended by Respona is

A good idea would be to set up 5 groups of 10 emails to be sent throughout the day, with 5-minute delays between emails in a group and with longer (20-30 minutes) intervals between groups.

If your previous emails have a low open rate or click-through rate, this shows that your email recipients are not interested in your emails, which can trigger a spam filter for your subsequent emails.

To fix this, always include an unsubscribe button or link to your emails to request your recipient's permission for your emails. Check out the example below;

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If your information is wrong or contains some misleading information about your email address, the domain name “from”, reply to, routing information, or company information, your email would appear spammy and a potential threat to the email recipient.

Below is an example of this shared by Confluence Mobile,

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To fix this, customize your email signature and your “From” line to include your name, company, and company information. A good example of this was shared by Neil Patel in his article “Email marketing Case Studies: How 4 Companies Increased their Open rates.”

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Sending emails with too many spelling and grammatical errors triggers the spam filter in your recipient's email platforms.

To fix this, Always double-check your emails and work on the tone to sound natural and human to reduce the chances of your outreach emails ending up in spam folders.

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Choose a reliable and powerful outreach software to manage and improve your cold email conversion. Sloovi Outreach is an example of such software, with all advanced features to optimize and improve your email campaigns.

Set up DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) - to authenticate your email, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) - to specify your authorized email servers, and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance) - to improve and monitor the protection of your domain from fraudulent emails.

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Use email checking software to check your emails for spam triggers before sending them to your recipients. Based on the result, you can tweak your email words to avoid spam triggers.

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Track your email engagement metrics - open rate, delivery rate, reply rate, and spam complaints to develop the right strategies to improve your email performance.

Work on your email with the right information - name, company, position, links to your website. Use text editing software like Grammarly to proofread your email and correct any grammatical errors.

Also, refrain from adding too many images, capital letters, and spammy words to increase your email performance. Check out this example below;

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The above examples highlight some of the spam triggers to avoid.

Consider using our tools - Sloovi Outreach for your email personalization and automation, and Sloovi Email Signature to create customized email signatures.

As emphasized in Course #1 and Course #2, Personalization offers you a great way to improve the quality of your cold email subject lines, opening lines, and body copy.

Here are some statistics from various sources showing the significance of personalized emails:

Slideshare found that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience.

According to a report by Salesforce, 70% of consumers say that how well a company understands their individual needs impacts their loyalty.

SmarterHQ discovered that 72% of customers will only engage with personalized messaging.

We have shed more light on email personalization in the subsequent paragraphs;

Personalization is key to the success of your cold email outreach, however, to achieve your desired result, you have to apply personalization in a smart and savvy way.

Here are effective ways to personalize your cold email correctly:

Relevant and customized emails can increase your open rate by 45%

Personalization goes beyond just adding the “FNAME” to your subject line, opening lines, and email body. Customize and tailor your messages to connect with your recipients. Check out the example below;

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According to Accenture, 67% of consumers think it’s important for brands to automatically adjust their content to reflect the current context.

Connect with your prospects on social media - LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Blog, and website to keep track of their recent achievements, activities, and projects to include this in your email to them. Check out the example below;

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According to HubSpot, personalized calls to action convert 202% better than default calls to action

Dynamic content allows you to send different customized emails to different segments or lists in your buyer persona. With this, you can create multiple versions of the same email but with a differently customized email body and call to action.

An example of this is illustrated by Campaign Monitor,

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Be different with your email personalization by including customized demos or landing pages that have been tailored to the specific needs/interests/goals of your prospects.

For example,

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Include your information in your “From” line to tell your prospects who you are and how they can find out more about you. Consider lines like:

From: Zee from Sloovi Outreach

rather than

For example,

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Campaign Monitor reports that marketers who use segment email campaigns noted as much as a 760% increase in revenue than those who don't

According to HubSpot, segmentation refers to the process of grouping or classifying prospects or customers into different segments. By segmenting your cold email prospects, you can send them honest, tailored, and valuable emails that speak to their interests/needs/goals/pain points.

Segment your cold emails by:

1. Content: What types of content have they engaged in? What media format have they chosen?
2. Product: Which of your products have they demonstrated interest in? What products have they purchased in the past? What pricing page do they visit on your website?
3. Persona: What are their goals, interests, pain points, and challenges…
4. Geography: Where are they based?
5. Website Activity: How do they interact with your business website? How often do you visit your website? And what’s their preferred page?

To get your email segmentation right, you need to choose the best tool. With Sloovi Outreach, you can add thousands of leads to your sales dashboard and automate your personalized emails.

Update your email tool with the right contacts to help you segment properly. An email tool like Sloovi Outreach, allows you to quickly and easily update your leads and sales data to target the right contacts.

For optimum results, update your email list regularly and label your new contacts from the onset to create and send them personalized emails based on their stage in the lifecycle.

The key to the success of your email segmentation lies in your ability to find and understand your prospects' email preferences to give them exactly what they want and need.

With the possibility of making errors when you manually fill and update your sales data, email automation tools like Sloovi Outreach offers you many advanced features to find leads in seconds, prioritize leads with dynamic Smart Views and segment your leads.

You can only improve what you measure. Monitor your segments’ performance on a regular basis to identify your top-performing and least performing segments. If a segment is underperforming or has a high bounce/open rate, there’s a possibility that something’s wrong with the segment.

Check your information through and restrategize for the best results.

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According to a global report by Campaign Monitor, Fridays see the highest emails open rate with nearly 19% while Saturdays record an open rate of 17%.

Getting a positive response from a cold email campaign requires you to consider two different aspects - time of the day and day of the week - when deciding when to send it.

Time of day - Based on a study of over a billion email addresses, it has been discovered that the best time to send your emails is just after 10 a.m. Emails are open at that time anyway, so you have more chances of being opened then.

Don't send your email before this hour unless there is a good reason for doing so. It is never a good idea to send emails to prospects at 3 or 4 AM, as they will look weird in their inboxes.

Day of week - Generally, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to reach business executives if you're trying to get to business leaders. B2B email marketing is at its best these days.