Here’s one of the biggest conundrums in marketing. You start a new business, and by definition, you don’t have new prospects banging down your door. Your new website doesn’t have people coming to it because, well, it’s new, and at this point, it doesn’t exactly rank in search. So, how do you let potential customers know you exist? 

At this point, a lot of businesses turn to cold emails: They identify and buy lists of potential customers (typically this is B2B but it also happens extensively in B2C too). On the upside, the business can get its value proposition, content, and products/services in front of potential customers. On the downside, cold emails can potentially harm your email sender reputation, upset potential customers who didn’t opt-in to your lists, and even affect the emails that can come from your established email marketing automation system (the one for opt-in emails).

Are Cold Emails Worth the Risk?

Over the years, we’ve worked with many clients that have wanted to send cold emails. Some of them bring existing lists that they’ve culled from various sources, some have asked us to procure them. But beyond that, the question is: Are sending these emails worth the risk in terms of what the potential rewards are?

That’s a hard question to answer. From what we’ve seen, and our thinking has evolved on this as we’ve helped companies do more of it, the answer is generally no, it’s not worth it.

Why?

Here are a few reasons.

No. 1: Cold Email List Quality Has to Be Really Good

Remember, cold emails by definition are those individuals who have not opted in to receive emails from you. Individuals give you this permission to send emails out either because they filled in a form, signed up for your newsletter, downloaded a whitepaper, attended a webinar, etc. The people that you’re sending cold emails to, by contrast, don’t know you and haven’t shown any interest in what you’re selling. That doesn’t mean they won’t potentially be interested, it just means your first hurdle is to identify the right people and get them to know you. Getting the wrong list of people can significantly harm not just your campaign effectiveness, but also cause the negative downstream issues we outlined earlier.

No. 2: You Have to Use a Cold Email Platform

One thing you should not do, generally, is to upload purchased lists and send cold emails from the same email marketing automation system that you use for those who opt-in to your email marketing. First, your email platform can stop your service if they find out you’ve done so as they don’t want to host spam providers – something that can also ruin their reputation as well. Second, as mentioned earlier, you can do great harm to your email sender reputation and domain when you send emails to people who don’t know you, especially because your email open rates tend to be depressed. That’s often a big red flag of spam providers.  

If you must send cold emails, a cold email platform (such as Woodpecker) is preferred because it allows you to mimic sending individual emails (from your personal business account) and limits the number of sends daily. That said, cold email platforms have drawbacks to in that you probably can’t track the performance well (given these aren’t technically marketing emails) and if you do decide to track them, you may not get the deliverability you want.

No. 3: Cold Emails Often Require a Specific Strategy and Huge Volume to Have Any Impact

One of the mistakes we see many businesses make with cold emails is that they treat these email recipients the same as they would those who have opted in to receive emails. But they’re two very different audiences. With cold emails, they’re literally strangers to you. If you think about it, sending an email to a stranger that says: “Buy this now” or even “Let’s have a discussion” before you’ve introduced yourself is probably not the best way to get any engagement. Why should they react the way you want them to, after all, as the recipients first question is: “Who are you?”

The one way we’ve seen that cold emails can at least be somewhat effective is when clients use content that addresses a challenge or need the audience has. Maybe it’s a blog on the website (that helps to introduce you and your expertise) or maybe it’s a download of a whitepaper or a webinar registration that allows you to both discern topic interest and get opt-ins for your true email list.

Finally, the other way to do it: Send huge volumes of emails from multiple accounts, where you can get one hit out of tens of thousands of emails. But again, that’s very risky and often too expensive for the average small business in that you’d have to buy lists and set up multiple cold email accounts. Neither of which we recommend you do unless you have very special circumstances.

What Alternative Do You Have to Cold Emails?

We get it. Cold emails can seem like the fastest route to get in front of potential target audiences. And for businesses that need customers now (many small businesses are in this boat), it can seem like the only alternative.

But sometimes the fastest isn’t the best way to do things. We think a better and more long-term approach is to use content – and develop a lot of it.

Why?

Because over time, that will help you both boost SEO and raise your visibility as an expert in your particular industry. The more content you develop and the more you distribute it to your network, the more you’ll get inquiries from the people you know or from those who are connected to your network.

It certainly takes work. But there’s a lot less risk and a lot more long-term upside.

Conclusion

We hope this has helped. As always, feel free to contact us if you’d like help working through your small business strategy, whether it’s email or any other topic. Our mission is to help you excel in digital marketing.