“Your emails should not land in people’s junk or spam folder. They have to land in the primary folder.” – Sean Safavi in today’s Tip 1683
How do you make sure that your emails are landing in the primary folder?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Sean Safavi. Sean is a Co-Founder & CEO of GoSell.ca. With 10+ years of experience in B2B Sales, Sean knows how to generate qualified and meeting-ready leads for his clients. Here he is:
Sean Safavi: If you are in sales, and if one of the ways you’re generating your leads and booking more meetings is through cold emails, then you have to make sure that you know about email deliverability. What I mean by email deliverability is that your emails should not land in people’s junk or spam folder or even primary, sorry, the secondary folder, I mean. They have to land in the primary folder.
How do you make sure that your emails are landing in the primary folder? There’s five things I would like to talk about today.
Number one, you have to make sure, and it’s not directly related to email deliverability, but I’ll tell you how in a second that why it is related. Number one, it’s reaching out to the right person. If you are selling, for example, I don’t know, a marketing software, but you are messaging HR, chances are they will not find your emails relevant and they will mark it spam. As soon as people start marking your email to spam, it’s really going to hurt. It’s really going to damage your email reputation, which will obviously eventually lead to a bad email deliverability. So please make sure you’re reaching out to the right person.
Number two, you have to make sure that you’re validating the emails. There’s tons of tools out there: neverbounce.com, Proofy, or there’s so many other tools out there. Just google email validation tools and you’ll find that they’re fairly cheap. I would only recommend sending emails to the ones that are valid. There’s absolutely no point gambling. There’s absolutely no point sending emails without knowing if they’re even valid or no. Because if your bounce rate is high, even the ones that are not bouncing, they’re going to end up in the spam folder. You don’t want to risk that. You have to make sure that you’re validating the emails. By the way, the tools that I mentioned, I’m definitely not affiliated with them or anything. It’s not a sponsored post. I’m not from those companies, so just Google and find the right tools for yourself.
Number three, which I think is really important, and a lot of people don’t really follow this because it’s really difficult, it’s writing personalized emails. Now, personalized emails, it doesn’t mean that you start talking about their personal stuff. Obviously not. Maybe they’re a company. What I personally do, and I’ve had great successes with it, is what I mean by personalized or a custom email is I talk about their company or their business. Please try to do that.
Two things. One, when you personalize, it’s going to benefit the user, the person who’s going to read it, he or she would know that it’s actually written for them. It’s not another random, cold email. That’s the great advantage. The other, the Googles of the world, the Outlooks of the world, the ESPs, the Email Service Providers, they would know that, Hey, this particular email sends out a lot of email, sure, but majority of the emails are different. Maybe they’re not cold emails. What’s going to happen? It’s going to help your email deliverability. Please make sure that you’re writing personalized emails if possible. If not, and I get it, sometimes it’s just not possible, if you’re targeting one of those niches where it’s just not possible, you don’t have enough data and you’re not sure, then I would suggest using a tool called Spintax.
I would actually suggest using Spintax actually across the board, even if you’re personalizing an email. Why does Spintax? It basically used different words or different sentences within an email. Technically, you can write one version of a copy, like one email, and send it to 100 people, and it’s actually going to look different for those 100 people. For example, instead of saying, Hi, John, one email is going to be, Hi, John. The second email is going to be, Hey, John. The third email is going to be, Hello, John. It’s going to use those synonyms pretty much. It’s called Spintax. Google it. I would say use it on every single email. When I say email, please also use it in the follow-up emails as well. Across the board, use as much Spintax as possible.
Point number four, please only use secondary domains, and please make sure you’re not touching your primary domain. If your business is abc.com, do not send email from abc.com. Get secondary domains like abc.net, abc.co, like secondary marketing domains. It would really help you a lot because if you’re just sending from one domain, it’s going to go to spam for sure. It will actually be, and I’ve been through it, and I’ve seen this tons of times in my career that if you’re using your primary domain and a lot of people are marking you as spam, and if it starts going to the spam folder, the email deliverability just tanks, what’s going to happen? Even if you send your actual invoices to your customers, it’s going to end up in the spam folder. Even within your organization, if you’re sending an email to a colleague, it’s going to go to the spam folder. I’ve seen it. Trust me. Do not use your primary domain. Keep it separate. Purchase secondary domains. They’re fairly cheap. Use them to send out cold emails.
Last thing, you have to make sure that you’re warming up the emails. Think about it this way. Just put yourself in a ESP shoe, like Google. Let’s say if you’re Google. If you have registered an email today, like you’ve purchased a secondary domain, abc.com, for example, and you got an email out of it, [email protected], for example, and you start sending out emails from tomorrow, and you’re sending 2,000 emails a month, guess what? Google is not stupid. Outlook, Microsoft, Zoho, all these ESPs, they’re not stupid. They would know what you’re doing. They know that you’re cold emailing people. You have to make sure that your email is warmed up enough before you send out emails. What is email warmup? Just Google. Again, I’m not going to name any tools. I’m not affiliated with any of them. Just Google email warmup tools. There are tons of tools out there. Again, not super expensive. Email warmup basically mimics conversations. It’s going to send out emails on your behalf. They own a bunch of emails. They’re going to reply to those emails. They have a conversation. They will mimic a conversation, so that when you’re actually sending out cold emails, it’s going to look like it’s just another email. And do not turn off email warmup even when you start cold emails.
A lot of people make this mistake that they warm up an email, but they stop it as soon as they start sending out actual cold emails thinking that, Hey, I’m just sending the actual emails now. Why do I need the warm-up for? Guess what? What if you reach out to 100 people, like actual people and they don’t respond? Guess what it’s going to do? It’s going to hurt your email deliverability. Please make sure that your emails are always warmed up. Just always leave that on. That’s it. These are the five points. I hope it helped you, and I wish you all the best.
Scott Ingram: For a link to connect with Sean, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1683. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!