How to Send Cold Emails Without Getting Blocked in 2023
Onur Genes
PublishedatCold emailing has proven to be an effective marketing strategy, but it’s not without its challenges. Sending cold emails without getting blocked or landing in the spam folder requires a strategic approach. In this blog post, we’ll share invaluable insights on “how to send cold emails without getting blocked”, ensuring your cold emails reach the right audience and make the desired impact.
Key Takeaways
Adopt best practices and understand challenges associated with cold emails to ensure successful campaigns.
Implement email authentication protocols, gradually increase the number of sent messages, craft engaging content and manage your lists properly.
Leverage tools & platforms for automation, adhere to legal regulations such as CAN-SPAM Act & GDPR for a positive sender reputation.
Understanding Cold Emails and Their Challenges
Cold emails are unsolicited messages sent to potential customers or clients without prior contact, aiming to generate engagement, leads, or sales. While a cold email campaign can be a powerful marketing tool, it comes with risks. If not executed properly, your messages may be flagged as spam or trigger spam filters, which can lead to account blockage and damage your sender reputation. Some factors that contribute to email blocking include recipients marking emails as spam, changes in sending patterns, and certain email attributes that resemble spamming behavior. To avoid ending up in the spam folder, it’s crucial to follow best practices for cold email campaigns.
Adopting recommended approaches is a key step in overcoming these challenges and achieving success in your cold email campaigns. These include:
Selecting a reliable email service provider
Implementing email authentication protocols
Incrementally increasing the number of cold emails sent
Crafting engaging and personalized content
Prioritizing quality over quantity when sending cold emails
Grasping the challenges involved in cold emailing empowers you to make informed decisions and devise strategies that greatly enhance your email deliverability and campaign performance.
Essential Email Authentication Protocols
Setting up essential email authentication protocols like SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) can significantly improve your email deliverability and prevent your messages from being marked as spam by email providers.
SPF enables domains to specify the email servers authorized to send messages from the domain, allowing recipient email servers to validate incoming emails with the domain name. DKIM, on the other hand, uses cryptographic authentication to confirm an email’s origin from the domain, impacting domain reputation. Setting up DKIM records for an email account involves adding them to the admin console and enabling them in the settings.
DMARC provides instructions to recipient servers upon receiving emails that have failed SPF and DKIM authentication, offering courses of action like accepting, quarantining, or rejecting these emails. Implementing spf dkim and dmarc protocols equips you with a proactive approach to enhance email deliverability and safeguard a positive sender reputation.
Warming Up Your Email Account
Warming up your email account is a critical step in ensuring successful cold email campaigns. This process involves gradually increasing the number of messages sent over a certain period of time to establish a positive sender reputation and avoid account blockage. Nureply's warm-up services are available to assist in this process.
Keeping a low sending volume for cold emails is key to achieving optimal email deliverability. It’s recommended to send between 50 and 200 well-crafted emails daily, as sending fewer may not optimize your email list utilization, while sending more can risk being blacklisted as a spammer. Keeping track of your open and click-through rates is vital to ensure successful email delivery. This helps you ensure that your emails are being sent successfully..
The warming-up process typically takes 8-12 weeks to develop a positive reputation. Warming up your email account and minimizing the risk of being flagged as spam or account blockage can be achieved through gradual increase in email volume and close monitoring of engagement metrics.
Crafting High-Quality Content
The content of your cold emails plays a significant role in determining their success. Crafting high-quality, engaging, and personalized content can improve engagement rates and prevent your emails from being marked as spam or blocked. To maintain a professional tone, avoid using spammy words such as:
“free”
“sale”
“deal”
“promise”
“click here”
Personalization is key to enhancing the effectiveness of your cold emails. Addressing recipients by their name, referencing specific details related to their interests or industry, and conveying your sincerity in helping them with any problems they may be facing can significantly improve engagement. Using generic email templates to send bulk cold emails can result in low engagement metrics, high spam complaints, a plummeting sender reputation, and potential account blockage.
Tools like Nureply can help you craft effective cold emails by offering features like merge tags for personalization, AI-powered email writing assistants, and custom tracking domains. By leveraging these tools and focusing on crafting high-quality content, you can increase the chances of your cold emails making an impact and generating the desired results.
Managing Your Email Lists
Successful cold email campaigns hinge on proper management of your email lists. This involves verifying contacts, segmenting lists, and maintaining low bounce rates. Hard bounces, which occur when an email is returned as undeliverable due to an incorrect, out-of-date, or inactive email address, can adversely affect your sender reputation and reduce email delivery rates.
To ensure the accuracy of your prospect list, use tools like Neverbounce to validate email addresses. Frequent updating of your email lists is vital in order to:
Circumvent spam filters
Eradicate spam traps, invalid, and disposable email IDs
Avoid sending emails to the wrong or inactive prospects, which can lead to account blockage
Keeping up-to-date email lists can help you achieve these goals.
Keeping an eye on email bounce rates is vital since a high bounce rate could signal potential spamming or poor list management. If your email bounce rate exceeds 2%, it’s recommended to verify the email addresses of your prospect list before sending out another email. By properly managing your email lists, you can improve email deliverability and avoid account blockage.
Utilizing Multiple Email Accounts and Custom Domains
Using multiple email accounts and custom domains can help distribute the volume of sent emails, reducing the risk of account blockage and improving deliverability. Setting up custom domains can be done using tools like Mailstand, which can also help you configure them for your sending account.
Leveraging tools like Nureply can help you automate and optimize your cold email campaigns, ensuring maximum deliverability and minimal account blockage. These platforms offer features like sender rotation, delivery windows, custom domain tracking, and personalized email templates to enhance your cold email campaigns.
Effectively distributing your cold email volume and minimizing the risk of account blockage or emails being labeled as spam can be achieved by using multiple email accounts, custom domains, and making full use of available tools.
Including an Unsubscribe Option
Including an unsubscribe option in your cold emails is essential to comply with legal regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act and avoid being marked as spam by recipients. Placing the unsubscribe link in either the header or footer of your email ensures that recipients can easily locate it and opt-out of future messages.
Offering alternative unsubscribe options, such as receiving only specific types of emails or receiving fewer emails overall, can also help reduce spam complaints and maintain a positive sender reputation. Obtaining feedback from unsubscription requests can further improve your response rate and reinforce your reputation for sending bulk emails without being perceived as spam.
Inclusion of an unsubscribe option in your cold emails and provision of alternative choices enables you to comply with legal regulations and cultivate a positive rapport with your recipients.
Monitoring Metrics and Adjusting Strategies
Regularly monitoring metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates can help you adjust your cold email strategies and improve overall campaign performance. If you observe a decrease in open rates, focus on refining the subject line, email content, and your sender’s reputation to improve these metrics.
If your email bounce rate is higher than 2%, take the following steps:
Verify the email addresses of your prospect list before sending out another email.
Monitor additional metrics like reply rates and spam complaints to gain insights into the effectiveness of your cold email campaigns.
Use the data to identify areas for improvement.
Regular monitoring of your campaign metrics and adjusting your strategies accordingly facilitates the optimization of your cold email performance and ensures your messages reach the intended audience.
Leveraging Cold Email Tools and Platforms
Leveraging cold email tools and platforms like Nureply can help automate and optimize your cold email campaigns, ensuring maximum deliverability and minimal account blockage. These platforms offer features that can enhance your cold email campaigns, such as sender rotation, delivery windows, custom domain tracking, and personalized email templates.
Nureply, for example, provides a comprehensive cold email outreach solution with features like a unified inbox, fine tuned AI for personalization, and an AI powered email writing assistant. Nureply also is a sales engagement platform, enables users to automate outreach, track engagement, and measure performance.
Leveraging these cold email tools and platforms allows for streamlined cold email campaigns and maximum deliverability.
Legal Considerations and Best Practices
Adhering to legal considerations and best practices like the CAN-SPAM Act, GDPR, and DPA 2018 can help you send cold emails without violating any regulations and maintain a positive sender reputation. The CAN-SPAM Act outlines the regulations for all commercial B2B and B2C marketing emails in the US.
GDPR protects the data privacy of EU citizens, while DPA 2018 serves as the UK’s legislation in conjunction with GDPR. Email service providers (ESPs) typically consider bulk emails as compliant with ethical and legal requirements, provided they adhere to data privacy regulations like CAN-SPAM and GDPR.
Adherence to these regulations and best practices aids in maintaining a positive sender reputation and ensures your cold emails reach their intended audience, free of any legal complications.
Summary
In conclusion, sending cold emails without getting blocked or landing in the spam folder is achievable with the right strategies. By understanding the challenges, setting up essential email authentication protocols, warming up your email account, crafting high-quality content, managing email lists, utilizing multiple email accounts and custom domains, including an unsubscribe option, monitoring metrics, leveraging cold email tools and platforms, and adhering to legal considerations and best practices, you can optimize your cold email campaigns and make a lasting impact on your target audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I send a mass email without being blocked?
To send a mass email without being blocked, use a trustworthy IP address, set up SPF records, employ double opt-in, optimize your email content, include an unsubscribe link in every email, and secure your server.
How do I send a cold email legally?
To send a cold email legally, make sure to only send emails to recipients who have an interest in your offering and include an opt-out method, strict data security measures, and avoid deceptive subject lines. Additionally, include your company’s address in the email and be sure to honor opt-outs within 10 days.
Is it OK to send cold emails?
Cold emailing can be a valid outreach strategy when done right and in accordance with the CAN-SPAM Act. However, it should be executed properly and hyper-personalized to ensure success. Respectfully reaching out is always acceptable unless explicitly requested not to.
What factors can contribute to email blocking?
Email blocking can be caused by recipients marking emails as spam, changes in sending patterns, and email attributes that mimic spam behavior.
How long does it typically take to establish a positive reputation through warming up an email account?
It typically takes 8-12 weeks to establish a positive reputation through warming up an email account.