If you’re struggling with outreach (and it’s never not a struggle), these four stories about cold emails will help kickstart your campaign.

Smart use of cold emailing is one of the most powerful ways to gain people’s interest. The internet is brimming with stories about using email to generate leads, get published, or raise funds.

Reading them sometimes works like a much needed kick in the money-maker, which is why I’ve collected some of my favorite stories for this article. Hopefully they’ll inspire you and help you ignite your own email campaign!

Optimized emails generate millions in campaign funds

With companies around the world using emails to generate business leads, it’s no wonder that people from outside the world of entrepreneurship have picked up on this strategy.

The team behind Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign had decided to raise funds this way – with quite stunning results. Overall, they raised $690 million and, as it turned out, most of it came from emails.

What was their secret sauce?

The first part of it was copywriting – it was sweet and to the point. Now, writing subject lines and messages that effortlessly drive your point is something that we put first in our article about cold email templates. And I wasn’t surprised at all to see that Gabrielle Hughes has done the same in her in-depth cold email guide here at the Reply.io blog.

In fact, if you browse more guides like these, I bet that a lot of them start with advice to write short and sweet emails. The authors of the reelection fundraising campaign understood the importance of this, so they got rid of bureaucratic terms and official terminology and resorted to a more conversational approach with subject lines like “Hey” or – one of their biggest earners – “I will be outspent”.

Cold emails…
People ignore them.
People don’t see what’s in it for them.
People stop reading halfway through, not willing to waste more time.

Sigh.
Getting people to become interested and reply can be quite the endeavour.
Some emails have a response rate as low as 1%!
Think about all the time and effort lost.
But.

There’s this myth that once you have an inbound lead, you don’t have to do anything and they’ll magically convert all by themselves. The truth is you still have to nurture those leads. Even when people sign up for a trial of your service, a significant percentage won’t even bother to log in and try it out. Others will give it a quick glance then move onto the next item on their to-do list.

That’s why an inbound sales sequence is so important. When someone hands you their email, whether it’s in exchange for a demo, a webinar, or something else, that’s a sign of trust. It’s your job to not abuse that trust but, instead, use it to coach your prospects from marginally aware to raving super-fans.

For the first time ever, we’re going to give you a sneak peek at 5 of the sequences we’ve used ourselves over the years to help our trial users become happy paid customers.

Hey Reply users!

Wherever you are this summer, and no matter how hot it is outside, your email campaigns will continue to bring you new leads, while you hit your sales quotas.

To make things even better, we’re releasing a refreshing batch of summer Reply improvements, check them out!

Crafting a great email is hard work.

You need to know your prospect, grab their attention with a snappy subject line and then write a message that convinces them to take some kind of action. So when you’ve spent hours/days/eons working on an award-winning email, it’s a real kick in the conversions when the results are meh.

Low open rates, low CTR, and low responses. It sucks. But while there are plenty of reasons why your email might not be generating a response, one big reason is not sending a follow-up.

Cold recruitment emails (and calls) can be tough. The kind of people your company wants to recruit is already being bombarded with hundreds of emails from other organizations and agencies.

How are you meant to stand out and grab your dream candidates’ attention?

Your recruitment email needs to stand out for all the right reasons, without giving the recipient any reason to ignore it.

Easier said than done, right? That’s why we’ve put together an updated post with 10 essential tips on creating outstanding cold emails for recruiting. As I’m feeling particularly generous today, I’ve also included templates (normally only available to Reply users) you can customize and use in your next campaign.

You know you’ve got a great product or service, one that can change the world (or at the very least make it a little easier for your customers). Yet when you email your prospects, you hear nothing. What gives? How come some people get crazy high reply rates while all you’re getting is digital tumbleweed?

I’m an SDR at Reply, helping fill our sales funnel with qualified leads and booking meetings. We see great results from our cold emails, with reply rates of over 25%. If you’d like to reach more clients and boost your response rate, check out these 9 reasons your emails might be failing.

The robots are taking over.

You can’t read the news without seeing some article about how automation is going to destroy the workforce or AI is going to soon realise it doesn’t need us anymore.

Whether you think advances in automation are fantastic news or the beginning of the end, there’s no denying they’re having a real effect on businesses today. What do these developments mean for businesses like yours? How can you take full advantage, whether you’re a new business or a well-established company?

Every company would love to have more inbound sales.

They represent a steady stream of prospects coming directly to you, signing up and entering your sales funnel, all with the goal of them ultimately becoming loyal, happy customers.

Beyond just sales, they are also a good indicator of a company’s performance and serve as an effective forecast for the health of your business. By checking on the inbound leads coming in, you get a picture of how many deals you can expect to close, what companies you’re attracting, and the revenue you can expect to make in any given month.

But how can you make the most of those leads? I’m going to share with you some of the inbound sales strategies that bring in over 1,000 inbound leads every month to Reply, along with the mistakes you need to avoid.

At Reply.io, we take your security and privacy seriously.

To comply with the upcoming GDPR, we’re committed to ensuring that we and our customers adjust to the scope of the changes by being transparent about our practices and how we protect data and privacy.

To improve security safeguards and support needed processes, we have already implemented (or will complete implementation by May 25, 2018) multiple changes to our services.