So, you’ve found your prospects & their email addresses and feel like they might be the right fit to do business with. What next? You have to start communicating with them, but how do you break the ice?
Well, fear not: this blog will guide you on how to send the ideal outreach email to your prospects and outline all the dos and don’ts.
First off: What is an outreach email?
An outreach email is typically an email or campaign sent to an individual or prospect to initiate a positive relationship with the individual.
An outreach email can be used for all sorts of purposes: to initiate new relationships, lead generation, expanding networks, and a lot more.
When done right, outreach email marketing projects a positive image of your business and establishes a rapport with your prospect by demonstrating that you understand their specific needs.
Factors to look out for
Identifying audience
Knowing your audience is the first and most important step in writing the ideal outreach email. Now, this does not necessarily mean you will have to know the person inside and out, but you should do your research to understand your prospect’s needs, challenges, opportunities and expectations. This helps you to tailor messages specifically to them.
Identify the point, and tone, of maximum possibility
Upon identifying your audience, you now have to categorize your prospects based on their schedule. Some prospects can be super busy, some can have more of a leisure schedule, and the way you approach them both is different. Try to be straightforward and to-the-point with what you have to say to the super-busy people, and take a more casual route with someone who has a less busy schedule.
Identify the prospect’s interests
This is probably the most important aspect to look for in this initial stage. Look for prospects who share the same interests and niche as you. If you target an individual out of your niche, it isn’t helping you or the prospect. If your interests and domains match, you can then build empathy and create a mutually beneficial relationship from the get-go.
Key points for sending an outreach email
Now you’ve done your research, it’s time to drill down and start prepping your message. Here are some key points to know before you send.
Compile a list of targets
Now that you’ve found prospects for your outreach emails, you must send the right stuff to the right individuals. Planning your content before you send it out is key: Compile a spreadsheet, write down your targets, and set goals and methods of approach for all of them. This makes your process easier.
Get verified email addresses
After you’ve found your targets, you have to obtain their contact details like email addresses to contact them directly. Now getting email addresses manually is time-consuming, and we don’t want that. Using an efficient email finding tool can simplify this process to its best. Some of the best email finding tools in the market are SalesQl, Snov.io and VoilaNorbert. You can go for the free versions first to see what fits your business outreach email template.
Use An Outreach Email Template
Using templates will come in handy when trying to scale and reach a larger audience. When creating your template, you should seek out a blend of the universal and the personal: Get inspiration from other people, but add your own flavor and touch. Your template has to stand out from the general crowd to catch the eyes of your prospects. You can even try to add in a little humor if you are confident. The best outreach email templates are creative, clear, and authentic.
Customize your outreach email
Customization is what separates the spammer from the confidante, so be sure to add elements to show that your email is genuine and personalized. In other words, you aren’t just taking a ‘spray and pray’ approach to your emails; this prospect is on your list for a reason. It could be details like adding the prospect’s name, mentioning a piece of work, and complimenting it. This will show the recipient that you have genuinly followed their work and they’re not just anyone to you.
Get straight to the core
The average person now receives over 100 emails per day, so you’ll only cut through the noise if you get to the point. Structure your message like a news story, with the most important bits first. And if the story-telling part of the email isn’t absolutely necessary, take it out. By keeping it concise, you’re showing the recipient that you understand the stresses they face.
Mention mutual contacts
Mentioning a mutual contact can add credibility to your message, establish common ground and earn a form of trust. It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone close, but it does have to be relevant to the person you’re writing to.
Be clear about your ideas
Not giving a clear picture about your idea is a mistake we see all the time in outreach emails. You have to give clarity about the ideas you are presenting and what you want from the prospect, and you have to let the prospect acknowledge how he/she can be of any help to you. Again, make sure it’s short & neat.
Add gripping sign-off
Once you’ve got your prospect’s attention, you’ve got to close out. Keep in mind that this is your last chance to impress and get the most out of it. Again try to be creative, go with multiple closing lines with different prospects, and see what works best for you.
Use an email outreach tool
Using email outreach tools can help you scale faster and save a lot of time spent sending outreach emails. These tools can help you with your outreach campaigns and can even target SEO and link-building outreach.
12 Best Email Outreach Tools
1. Saleshandy
Widely regarded as one of the best tools for email outreach, Saleshandy has helped many companies increase their email productivity and become a go-to software solution for marketers, sales representatives, bloggers, recruiters, and many other professionals. It is compatible with Outlook, Gmail, G Suite, and other email providers.
Features
- Saleshandy offers a number of valuable features like automated follow-ups, mail merge, email personalization, outreach email templates and email tracking.
- It also provides advanced analytics that are essential for email statistics like open rates, response rates and bounce rates.
Price
It has a free plan and an enterprise plan at $59 with advanced features.
2.Outreach.io
Touted as one of the best outreach tools in the market, Outreach.io is widely used by people to grow a particular sales pipeline and to engage with different prospects like bloggers, influencers and executives.
Features
- Some of the key features of outreach.io include smart follow-up, sales integrations and the global outreach sidebar.
Price
Outreach.io has customized pricing plans for users, which are available on request.
3. SmartReach
A perfect tool for cold email outreach purposes, SmartReach makes sure that your emails are sent to your recipient’s inbox instead of hitting the spam folders.
Features
- Prospect feed, one of SmartReach’s most notable features, can track and manage the user activity as well as confirm and produce the reply and open rates of your campaign.
Price
The basic plan starts at $24, while the highest plan is priced at $59 with advanced features.
4. Pitchbox
Pitchbox is another of those popular outreach tools that bloggers use to build a positive relationship with the blogging community and influencers in general.
Features
- PitchBox is integrated with some of the best SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs and Moz. It allows users to create a strong pipeline for bloggers, executives, and influencers in an instant. Not only does it support email campaigns, it helps you with link building too.
- Other added features of Pitchbox include scheduling outreach and personalization of emails.
Price
Pitchbox has a customized pricing plan for its users, available on request.
5. Ninjaoutreach
Ninjaoutreach is a smart and intelligent analytics platform and is a popular choice for influencer marketing.
Features
- An inbuilt database of contacts helps you find the email addresses of the perfect prospect of your niche.
- In addition, it has an in-built email finder and an in-application inbox that allows you to communicate with people.
Price
The basic plan starts at $120, while the highest plan is priced at $399.
6. Lemlist
Lemlist comes with a number of basic features like automation, scheduling and follow-up, but really differentiates this tool from others is its lemwarm feature. This feature allows users to automate their email warmup for newly drafted emails.
Features
- Apart from the basic features, Lemlist can help you set up a custom domain in seconds.
- .Lemlist also offers CRM integrations with brands like Salesforce, Pipedrive and Bouncer.
Price
The starting plan is $29, and the highest plan is $99.
7. Mixmax
Mixmax has an efficient piece of email tracking software that allows users to get notified as soon as the recipient opens their message with real-time alerts. You can even get notified about the individuals who have viewed your message if it’s a group chat. This allows acute follow-up after contacting people.
Features
- Precise email tracking is easily one of their best features. You can also view the performance of your attachments by individual recipient, and your links.
- Tracking opened emails enables you to chart increased engagement and replies from your recipients. Users can create adjustable alerts according to their engagement through Slack, texts or emails.
Price
Mixmax provides a free plan and their highest plan is $49. They also provide custom price plans.
8. Woodpecker
Woodpecker is an email outreach tool designed to reach out to a large audience through email campaigns and follow-ups. Woodpecker allows integrations with Gmail, IMAP and Outlook.
Features
- Woodpecker has a unique feature that allows tyou to split your agency and personal work.
- To integrate large amounts of data, Woodpecker integrates with CRMs and simplifies your work.
- It also offers smart sending, reply detection and email sequencing, which is pretty cool.
Price
The basic plan starts at $40 and the pro plan at $50. Woodpecker also allows custom pricing plans.
9. Snov.io
Snov.io is a compact email outreach tool for recruiters, executives and marketers for reaching a large audience. It comes with an in-built domain search that allows users to search for emails based upon the company’s name or domain.
Features
- Some of the special features that make snov.io stand out from other outreach tools are that it is an email finder, a verifier to check extracted emails, and a tech checker that establishes the specific type of technology prospects are using.
Price
The basic plan starts at $39, and the highest plan is priced at $199.
10. Yesware
Yesware is a modern tool to schedule meetings with prospects, follow up and build relationships, turning your inbox into a command center.
Features
- Yesware provides several key features like email tracking, prospecting campaigns, meeting scheduling, attachment tracking and integrations.
- Other features include activity tracking, campaign reporting, outreach email template reporting, and more.
Price
The basic plan starts at $15, while the enterprise plan is priced at $65.
11. Klenty
Klenty is an efficient tool that allows users to send customized email campaigns based upon the user’s schedule. Follow-up stages can also be added to the email campaign to make it productive.
Features
- Apart from the basic features, Klenty possesses a prospect management system to track and record an individual prospect’s activities.
- Klenty also has different integrations which assure the tool’s effectiveness.
Price
While the basic plan starts at $30, the premium plan is priced at $100.
12. Mailshake
One of the top-rated email outreach tools in the market, Mailshake is widely used by marketers, bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs and more. This is an excellent tool to build relationships, expand the network and create brand awareness.
Features
- Mailshake allows users to find prospects and set up cold email outreach campaigns.
- It a complete insight into your campaign from email tracking, showing campaign bounce rate, clicks and even replies.
- The product comes with several external integrations, it has a mobile application and it allows split testing to test out and compare two different campaigns.
Price
While the basic plan starts at $39, the premium plan is $99.
What to avoid while sending an outreach mail?
Mentioning the wrong name
Seems like a pretty obvious thing to miss, right? Well, don’t be surprised. When you are scaling large and communicating with a large group of prospects, you can face this issue, and it rarely ends well. Always proofread your composition of emails and give the name a last check before you send it.Don’t spam with information
Be clear about your ideas and what you are trying to say. Space out your content within the email for better visibility (short paragraphs are better than long ones) and make your composition as presentable as possible. It’s a skill, but you’ll master it.Making it about them, not you
This is probably the most common mistake made by marketers in general. Yes, you have to mention what you’re selling, but your prospect has to know how your offer can benefit them. Once the recipient finds they can benefit from your product, service or proposal, you’ve got their attention and can talk about yourself in more detail.Don’t nag
Once you have reached out to an individual, it’s okay to follow up once, but don’t keep nagging a prospect. Maybe, they don’t think you can help them or your model doesn’t seem to offer great synergy. That’s ok. Don’t try and make a bad fit good; the only thing this will achieve is to compel your prospect to badmouth you online, and drain your focus from mor productive avenues.
How will SalesQl help you with your email outreach?
SalesQl is an automated email finder and it helps you extract contact details like email addresses and phone numbers needed to perform email outreach. Whether they be personal numbers, work numbers or email addresses, SalesQL can help you extract the verified contacts to ease and speed up your email outreach process, thus helping you to scale faster.
Conclusion
When you try to begin with email outreach, learn to practice the basic skills from composing the email in the best way possible, presenting and spacing it well enough, and getting on point with your content. Then, try using email finders to get email addresses instantly, and try using free plans & trial versions of outreach tools to see what best fits your module.
Now that you have a blueprint, you are all set to begin with your email outreach. Good luck!
