Bulk cold emails are often type casted as spam due to some negligence and silly reasons. These emails being identified as spam are big red flags behind the entire cold email campaign’s failure to meet its objective. But what do you do when you face this too often?
To efficiently send bulk cold emails, utilizing email automation tools like Instantly.ai would streamline the process. Additionally, you will need to purchase several secondary domains and create multiple email accounts. These email accounts must be configured correctly, and you should refrain from sending more than 30 emails from each account per day. Furthermore, avoid using spam and promotional words in the email copy. Employing Spintext will ensure that each cold email is uniquely crafted, reducing the risk of being blacklisted.
We’ll discuss all these and cover how you should optimize and send bulk cold emails without being flagged as spam. Therefore, let us begin!
How Do Email Providers Differentiate Between Cold Emails and Spam?
Email providers differentiate between cold emails and spam in many ways. Some noticeable traits always differentiate cold emails from spam. The wrong approaches in crafting and executing the cold email campaign result in genuine campaigns getting flagged as spam by email providers. Below here are some differentiating factors that will help you to understand better that how email providers differentiate:
Less Personalization
Cold emails are well crafted, matching the ICP of the target audience. It addresses the needs of the targeted recipients and aims to provide a solution to their pain points. The cold emails mainly focus on customer centricity through personalization.
On the other hand, spam isn’t tailor-made for the specific recipient. These emails are highly product- and service-centric, with little attention to the recipient’s needs.
Too Many Links
One of the most common cold email mistakes that turn it into spam is using links more than required in the messaging. You can spot such links as they come in the form of offers or specific tutorials to redirect you to their websites.
In addition, some spam jargon is used, such as 75% Off, Try out now, Limited time, Earn big bucks, etc. However, a traditional cold email has a message that starts a conversation with you.
The words and tonality will empathize with your core needs and intrigue you to read the email body and know about the offerings.
Option For Unsubscribing
The cold emails that adhere to the guidelines of the CAN-SPAM Act must have a provision for unsubscribing. It makes the email legally friendly and free from any penalties.
However, spam emails never have the option to unsubscribe. Since these emails are in bulk, the sender doesn’t care about your consent to receive those emails.
Lengthy Messaging
Spam emails are sent in bulk and have the same lengthy messaging full of repetitive wordings. The average word count in such bulk goes above 200 words at times. A well-crafted, cold email with a personified tone should never exceed 75 words.
9 Strategies To Send Bulk Cold Emails Without Getting Blacklisted
Making money from sending bulk cold emails to people is tricky and challenging. But the process will be smooth when you follow the right strategies. Here, we have come up with some of the tactical aspects that won’t let you be blacklisted while sending bulk emails:
1. Don’t Mislead Audience
Avoid the subject lines that entice the readers with something untrue. It is a very shady practice, and recipients may likely flag that email as spam.
Mainly, make the subject line personalized rather than make it look very lucrative. Avoid using words like “100% Discount”, “Free Offer”, “Instant Offer,” and so on. Using such words makes the cold email look dodgy and can trigger a spam filter.
Since the subject line is the first thing anyone would notice, keep it simple, precise, and to the point. Anything otherwise would hamper your brand image in the first place and won’t help a bit in building trust.
Moreover, craft a subject line that resonates with the emotions and aspirations of your target audience. Make sure that you test the subject line before sending bulk emails.
2. Update SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Records
You must update the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Key Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) records to ensure your authenticity as a sender. Various email providers use these records to authenticate the senders and the type of emails they are sending.
By updating these records mainly, you are letting the email provider know that cold emails are sent by you, not by any bots. Also, upgrading these technical aspects gives you a secure path to messaging your audience and safeguarding you from phishing.
3. Warm Up Your Email
For a new email account, sending emails in bulk is useless, as almost all of them would end up in spam. ESPs get red flags when a new email account suddenly sends many emails.
In this regard, the best tactic is to warm up your email account for a few days. You can start by initially sending emails in small numbers and gradually increasing the volume over time.
The approach should be sending cold emails to the contacts you are already in touch. Once you seem legitimate to the ESPs, you can proceed with a bulk cold email outreach campaign.
4. Use Spintax
One common mistake is sending the recipients the same message with similar tonality following a single template. This is a very bad practice for a cold email campaign. It would be best to use Spintax in this regard, which helps to randomize the phrases you use to craft your cold email message.
The randomized message using Spintax bears the same meaning but reads differently to different recipients. It helps in giving every reader the vibe the message is specially crafted and personalized for them.
5. Use Email Automation Software
To simplify processes, you better adopt cold email automation software. Such automation tools pave the way for solving all deliverability issues and offer solutions based on your cold email campaign needs. Some of these tools also work in the way of tracking the individual links and also schedule follow-up straetgy.
You can try out some prominent automation software – SalesHandy, Woodpecker, Lemlist, SalesBlink, Reply.io, Folderly, etc.
6. Segment Your Audience
Your bulk messaging should be relevant to all the recipients who are a part of your cold email campaign. Sending emails to a generic list of prospects won’t be helpful. Most recipients won’t be able to relate whatever words you craft for them.
That is why you should segment your recipients based on age, location, purchase history, interest points, online shopping behavior, etc. It would enable you to identify and create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for your bulk cold email campaign.
Overall, there are several scopes for segmentation. It’s entirely on you and the goal of your bulk cold email campaign, which will require different approaches to segmenting the audience.
7. Avoid Including Too Many Links
Subtle usage of links is crucial while crafting cold email messaging. However, overusing anything gives a bad reputation, so you should include the links that benefit your campaign.
Improper link usage signals the ESPs of fraudulent behavior, eventually flagging you. Prospects often find it annoying and may move your email to spam or trash even if your messaging has no issues. It would hamper the sender’s reputation and lower the deliverability.
FURTHER READING- How to Avoid Emails Going to Spam
8. Include Unsubscribe Option
Despite being very sure about the ICP of your targeted audience, there always remains a vague area about the actual behavior of the recipient. The best approach should include an unsubscribe option so the recipients don’t feel you are pushing them.
It would give them a choice to stay with you and let them control whether they want to hear more from you. That said, building a good rapport with the recipient rather than getting your mail dumped in the trash is better.
9. Keep Time And Frequency In Check
It would be best to have a proper framework to maintain the frequency of emails you send at appropriate intervals. Remember, consistency is always the key in this regard.
The proper strategy is to start sending your emails lower in bulk initially. Afterward, you should increase the volume and monitor the recipients’ engagement. It will help you understand when to send those emails and optimize your campaign for higher open rates.
Plus, setting up the secondary domain is crucial, which shouldn’t have more than three emails registered. That said, you shouldn’t send more than 30 emails per day under each of these three emails.
FURTHER READING– How Many Cold Emails To Get One Client
Final Words
Good content in your bulk email campaign may not save you from getting flagged as spam. There needs to be a strategy, which should be a holistic approach. You should adhere to specific guidelines that will help you reach the inboxes of your targeted audience.
We hope we cleared up all your confusion and addressed the problem correctly. Let us know in the comments if anything needs to be clarified.
