Free Tools

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Finding Email Adresses
Finding email addresses is easily the most time consuming part of the process, but with the following tools, you can make life a lot easier. Here our are recommendations for finding anyone’s email address online.

Rapportive – Free (Link) – Rapportive is one of the oldest and best known tools for finding someone’s email address online. It works best when you already know the format a company is using for their emails (firstname@domain.com or firstname.lastname@domain.com for example) and the name of the person you are trying to reach. It works directly in your gmail inbox, whenever you type someones email address into a “Compose” window, it will check for a match. They have recently been bought by LinkedIn and now Known as Linkedin sales Navigator, which does cause some limitations, but it’s definitely still one of the best free tools available.

MailTester – Free (Link) – When you can’t find what you need on Rapportive, Mailtester is a great option as well. Sometimes LinkedIn’s limits will get in the way, or your prospect’s email will be valid, but they won’t display any information in Rapportive. Mailtester will ping the prospect’s inbox without sending them an email, to see if the address is valid, and will return back the results as to whether or not the email is valid. Together with Rapportive, these two are a great, completely free option.

Email Hunter – Paid (Link) – Email Hunter does have a monthly cost, but it can be very useful for finding otherwise difficult to locate email addresses. With Email Hunter, all you need to do is enter the domain name, and it will return back ALL of the email addresses it can find from that domain in a matter of seconds. This works best for more established companies, rather than smaller organizations. They will also give you an accuracy score for each email address. You can also validate your email addresses with Email Hunter, but there are better and cheaper tools to do that with (more on that below).

Email Permutator – Free (Link) -Use this to create the most common combinations of email addresses. Just enter in your desired prospect’s name and domain name, and copy the first 5-7 results and test them in Rapportive and mailtester as required.

WRITING YOUR EMAIL TEMPLATE
When it comes to writing your email template, there is so much we can say on this topic. For our clients, we always start with our main template, that we will tweak as needed to match our client’s own natural type of language used in their industry. This template is a winner for us in 95% of cases, and we recommend highly that you follow it too. We’re sharing this template with you now, so you can follow it and customize it to match your own company’s values. Make sure not to make things longer than they are laid out in the template, as the best cold emails are ones that are brief and straight to the point. We’ve also added comments to each part of the template, so you can get a better understanding for why certain things are included.
Download the PDF of our top performing email template here(link)

This part might look a bit complicated, but it’s actually just a couple of codes in a spreadsheet used in a mail merge style.

Personalization Spreadsheet – link – Click on File > Make a Copy to play around with the codes on your own, and practice creating your own personalized sentences.

VERIFYING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSES

It’s VERY important to make sure the emails you are sending to are actually reaching the intended inboxes. Not just because there’s no point in sending an email that will just bounce, but for every bounced email you send, your sender reputation will go down slightly. If your sender reputation drops too low, all your emails will just start going to the spam folder, and all your efforts will be for nothing. Here are our best tools for verifying email addresses:

Bulk Email Checker – Paid(Link) – This is a paid tool, but it’s very cheap. You can verify 1,000 email addresses for less than $3, and it gets cheaper as you order larger verification packages. You can upload a spreadsheet and have them verify all your email addresses at once, or if you are comfortable with API’s you can integrate it directly into your lead sheets. This is the tool that we use to verify email addresses for our clients.

Free Bulk Email Verifier – Free(Link) – We wanted to include a free option here as well, but we really don’t recommend this over Bulk Email Checker. While it is free, Bulk Email Checker will do a much better job, and the cost is very minimal. Still, if you need something for free, you can start here.

BEST PRACTICES

DO NOT send from your own domain – Set up the .co, .net, .tk or .ml etc version of your own domain using a free domain registrar like Dot TK. Especially when starting out, you might make some mistakes, and you don’t want that to come back and affect your ability to send emails from your company’s main domain. If you do manage to get your secondary domain flagged as spam or blacklisted, it’s not the end of the world. Set up another new domain name and don’t make the same mistakes again.

Use Google Apps – All of these tactics will work best when sent from an account that can use Gmail. Once you have your new domain, set up a Google Apps account. The first 14 days is free, and $5/month after that. The first month will have lower sending limits, but we recommend taking things slow in the first month anyways, so you get the hang of things properly.

Set up SPF and DKIM records – This is how your email address will be authenticated, so recipient email servers know it can be trusted. Without this, your emails could go to spam without you doing anything else wrong. If you have a paid Google Apps account, you can actually call Google directly and talk to a real person for support, and they can help walk you through these steps. Or if you’re technically inclined, you can do it yourself following these directions from Google for setting up SPF and DKIM records.

Comply with CAN-SPAM – This one is very important. While it is unlikely you will be reported if your break the rules of CAN-SPAM, you can be fined up to $16,000 for every complaint. The rules are very easy to follow, so make sure you comply. Here they are:

  • Don’t use false or misleading header information – This is different from misrepresenting your subject line. This means don’t put “re:” or “fwd:” in the subject line to trick the recipient into thinking the message is from an ongoing conversation.
  • Don’t use deceptive subject lines – Basically, don’t use the subject line “You’ve won a new car!” if you’d like to get your prospect on the phone to discuss your marketing services. Not only is this illegal, but this type of bait and switch would never work anyways.
  • Identify the message as an ad – The law is a bit loose here, but the main point is that you need to clear about what your intent is. You don’t have to come right out and say, “I want you to become my client and pay me money”, but you should definitely say you’d like to have a quick intro call to see if there’s a mutual fit.
  • Tell recipients where you’re located – This is best accomplished by using your business address in your signature.
  • Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you – We recommend against actual unsubscribe links. They are difficult to set up, and can cause things to go to Promotions tab in Gmail, or even worse, the spam folder. It’s enough to include a small line in your signature that says something like “Don’t want to receive emails from me? Just reply back and let me know.”
  • Honor opt-out requests promptly – When someone asks to be removed from your list, don’t even email them again. Very simple.
  • Monitor what others are doing on your behalf – If you’re working with a third party to send emails on your behalf, make sure they also compliant with CAN-SPAM, as you’ll both be liable for any infractions. When working with clients (and for our our own campaigns), we are always 100% CAN-SPAM compliant.

EMAIL SOFTWARE TO SEND YOUR EMAILS

There are lots of different options out there now for sending cold emails. Many cheap options can run right within your lead sheets. These ones are a bit more complicated though, and best for people who have been doing this for a long time. If you’re just starting out, there’s really only one tool we recommend, and that is QuickMail.io. The founder, Jeremy, is great about adding new features and implementing feedback form his customers. If you become a power user, there are cheaper options, but when getting started QuickMail is definitely the best option.

Note: DO NOT use services like Mailchimp, Aweber or ActiveCampaign to send cold emails. This is against their terms of service and you’ll quickly get your account closed down. It’s also very likely that you’re emails will just go to Promotions tab in Gmail when using these services.

ALL THIS INFO STILL MAKING YOUR HEAD SPIN?

Don’t worry, doing everything properly takes time and lots of testing to get it right. If you don’t have time and don’t want to learn the intricate ins and outs of the system, we have a couple ways we can help you.

Our “Multichannel Lead Management” System – This is best for our clients who want to speak to only Sales Qualified Leads. It starts with a strategy call with me personally, to find the best angle for your campaigns. Then we supply you with a trained list builder who will build your lists and manage the whole process of validating and sending emails.Our SDR will start connecting your target audience to generate leads and appointement.We will also connect prospect thhrough Social media and We will also write your email template for you and set up all your email software. Only thing you need to do is provide feedback to your Account Manager about the quality of the leads, and get on the phone with prospects and sell.

Apply to work with us for our managed service – If you don’t want to manage any of the process yourself, and just want to have interested leads show up in your inbox ready to talk to you, then you might be a good fit for our end-to-end managed service. We take on a small number of clients each month, but if you’re interested, you can fill out an application and if your business looks like a good fit for our services, we’ll be in touch to set up a time to talk.

Thanks for taking the time to review our resources for how we do cold emails.

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to send an email to gangesh@saletancy.com. Good look and happy prospecting.