If you are researching or are curious to know how to warm up a cold email list , it is because you have probably already been, are going through or are afraid of going through the following scenario…
You invest time and energy creating a rich quality material, an ebook, for example…
Create landing pages fully optimized for conversion , to make this ebook available in exchange for contacting potential customers…
Invest in Google and Facebook ads to attract more people to your landing pages…
Finally you can build an email list to call your own.
But then the “nightmare†begins, because, after a while, you send emails, but these people don’t even open it, much less read what you have to say.
The click-through rate , when you send an offer or even content from your blog, is down there.
Of course, you still have a group of people who open, read and click on your emails, but it’s getting smaller and smaller.
If you recognize these signs, it’s because you have cold list symptoms.
A condition that affects entrepreneurs of different sizes and can compromise the results of their email marketing strategy.
But, relax, because I have the solution to solve this problem.
So, if you are an entrepreneur who doesn’t know what else to do to warm up your leads…
Or is it the business person responsible for the email marketing strategy and needs to improve results…
Or do you want to take the necessary precautions so that your list doesn’t become a big freezer…
You’ve come to the right place, because in the next few lines I’ll show you:
what are cold leads;
why do they cool down;
how to warm up an email list;
and email types to warm up cold leads.
Let’s go?!
What are cold leads?
Cold leads are potential customers who are part of your contact list, but who haven’t opened or interacted with your messages in a while.
This is not good for either your sales strategy or your email marketing strategy .
It’s bad for your sales strategy because you might consider these cold leads as potential customers when setting your goals.
But they are unlikely to become customers without first going through an effective rewarming sequence.
Regarding your email marketing strategy, cold leads can decrease your deliverability and the reputation of your domain (@iamitmm.com) with providers.
And that can hamper the delivery of your emails in the inboxes of your hot leads (which are the potential customers who are engaged with your messages).
Why do leads get cold?
Before you get down to business to reheat your cold leads, you need to understand why they got cold in the first place.
The three main reasons are:
you haven’t sent emails for a long time and the relationship with your list has cooled;
leads were interested in the reward you were offering in exchange for their email contact, but then they were no longer interested in your other content ;
either you bought or borrowed a list .
If your case fits in reasons 1 and 2, it is possible to reheat your list with some techniques that I will show you in the next few lines.
However, if you bought or borrowed a list I recommend that you stop messaging these people now.
Because this can be considered spam and damage your business reputation.
The best thing in this case is to create an email list from scratch and start your email marketing strategy right, following best practices .
8 tips on how to warm up a cold email list
Warming up an email list isn’t a simple process, but that doesn’t mean it’s extremely difficult to do.
With the step-by-step guide I’ve put together for you, it will be easy to put into practice all the steps that are necessary to turn your cold leads into potential customers interested in your business.
And here’s the warning: don’t skip any steps and try to go straight to the part of sending the rewarming emails.
Because the previous steps are essential for the process to have more chances of success.
Come on?
- Analyze your email list
Start by analyzing your list, how are the open and click rates in general, the total number of leads you have, how many emails are flagged with hard bounce (permanent delivery errors) or soft bounce (temporary delivery errors)…
But mainly, look at the amount of leads you have that are under engaged.
If you have a Klicksend account , right on the tool’s homepage it shows you what the average temperature of your leads is and how much engagement is good.
With this data you can get an initial idea of ​​what the general situation of your list is.
If you don’t have a Klicksend account yet and want to know more about how our tool can help your business, just click on the button:
- Segment your audience
If your list doesn’t already have tags that make it possible to segment it , it’s important to organize this.
The most basic level of division is: active customers, canceled customers and potential customers.
Because the way you talk to each of these groups must be different.
Also, warm-up emails are not the same for canceled customers, active customers and people who haven’t bought from you yet.
And you don’t have to stop there.
If you have more data, you can also segment your list by interest to establish more personalized communication.
- Identify which leads you want to reheat
Now that you know your list and it’s minimally organized, it’s time to identify which leads you want to reheat.
For example, you can define characteristics like “I will work with customers who canceled my service in the last year and haven’t opened any emails in the last six monthsâ€.
Or “I will re-warm potential customers who joined my list in the last year and haven’t opened any emails in the last four monthsâ€.
Who will define these characteristics is you together with your sales and/or marketing team (if you already have one), according to the group you want to reach and that you believe can bring a return to your business.
And that doesn’t mean that you should reheat just one group, you can create different segments and work out specific email sequences for each of them.
The important thing is that the individuals in the group have characteristics in common so that you can communicate with them in a personalized way and offer something that will capture their attention.
- Define re-engagement metrics
The next step is to define which metrics will be used to consider a lead reheated or not.
This will depend on what you expect from each of the groups defined in the previous step.
For some entrepreneurs, the simple fact that the potential customer starts to open the emails already counts.
For others, it might be to reactivate a service that had been canceled.
The important thing is that you define what metrics will be and what values ​​will be used to verify the success of the re-engagement action.
- Create a rewarm sequence
Probably a single email won’t be enough to get you out of the freezer the leads that have been there for a while.
You’ll need a follow-up with a few emails (the amount will depend on what you have to offer of value) to re-engage your contacts.
Later on I will give you ideas for some content that you can use in this sequence.
Either way, you should focus on offering something that will really generate value and solve a problem for your audience.
The content should also align with the type of relationship leads have with your business (are you a customer, former customer or potential customer?).
Oh, and you can automate your warm-up sequence by using an autoresponder tool to send messages at a certain frequency, without having to worry about doing it manually.
- Respond to rewarmed leads
It is quite possible that some leads who are going through this rewarming process will respond to your email marketing campaigns.
If that happens, it’s great for your business, especially if it’s some positive feedback.
But even if it’s something negative, like a contact saying they’re no longer interested in your product or service, be sure to respond to these people.
Take this time to listen and collect feedback that will help you improve your content, product or service and, consequently, your business.
- Evaluate the results
Once you’ve finished sending all the emails in the warm-up sequence, it’s time to evaluate the results and see how many leads you’ve managed to improve engagement and how many are still in the freezer.
This is the time to use the metrics you defined in step 4 to measure the success of your strategy.
- Remove leads that remained cold
Finally, the best thing to do with leads that remain cold is to remove them from your list.
Continuing to communicate with these people will most likely not bring results to your business and may harm your deliverability.
If you want, you can make a backup, a copy of them, and save them somewhere before deleting them from your list.
6 types of email to warm up cold leads
Now that you know how to create a lead rewarming strategy, I’m going to give you some suggestions for the types of emails you can send.
But one thing is true for all of them: avoid saying that you haven’t been in touch for a long time .
Go straight to the point and generate value for your customers or potential customers.
And, as much as possible, use and abuse mental triggers to make your message more attractive, especially in the subject field so that your lead is interested in opening it and continuing reading.
The main types of emails to warm up leads are:
- Event Email
One of the best ways to deliver valuable content to your leads is through an event.
And it doesn’t have to be anything logistically complicated like a face-to-face lecture.
You can prepare a class to be streamed live online at a certain time or a week-long mini-course, a workshop, a webinar …
The important thing is that it has a defined date and time and that the content solves a pain or problem for your potential customer.
After creating your event, just send an email to your list letting them know when and how it will take place and, above all, the benefits of participating in it.
This type of email is very good because if the lead still fits the profile of your ideal customer, in addition to the content going straight to her needs, it also generates clicks, which increases the level of engagement.
That’s because you can ask people to click a link or button to reserve their spot at your event.
In addition, the person who registers will probably look forward to the next emails to learn more about the event or receive the access link.
Which tends to increase the open and click-through rate as well.
- Promotional email
If your goal is to win back old customers and sell to them again , this type of email might work.
His idea is to create a special offer for people who have already had contact with your business, with exclusive conditions to stimulate a new relationship.
For this type of email to work, you must know well the reasons that made customers abandon or change your product or service, so you can offer conditions that precisely solve this.
- Owner’s email
This email is a message written in the voice of the business owner, which applies the mental trigger of authority.
It’s a chance to bring data about how your business has already helped several people and take the opportunity to say that you want to reach an even bigger audience, doing something new.
This something new can be an exclusive offer, an event or even the weekly/bi-weekly/monthly delivery of content that will help solve the potential customer’s pain or problem.
It is a good email to warm up a cold list because in addition to generating expectation, it also uses the mental triggers of authority and event.
- Feedback Email
Another email option to warm up a cold list is to ask your leads for feedback.
Ask what kind of content they would like to receive, what questions they have about the niche market you are in, how your business can help them…
In addition to this type of email helping to increase engagement, as people need to click on a link or reply to a message to give feedback, it will also help you to know your potential customer’s main objections and come up with ideas for new content. .
One strategy you can use to encourage people to give their answers is to offer something of value in return.
For example, those who participate in the survey will receive an ebook or access to a mini-course.
Always remembering that valuable content is content that helps the person solve a pain or problem.
- Preference Update Email
This email gives the lead the opportunity to choose which messages she wants to receive.
It’s especially interesting for customers who want to receive notifications about payments and other important information, but don’t want to read your newsletter , for example.
That way, with updated preferences, you can communicate with your contacts as often as they want.
Which in turn tends to increase your overall open rate, because you’ll stop sending emails to people who won’t open.
- Deadline email
The idea of ​​this type of email is to give a last chance to cold contacts who still want to stay on your list to speak up.
The message sets a deadline and that if the person doesn’t click the button or link to keep the subscription by then, they will be automatically removed and will no longer receive emails from you.
With this type of email, it’s easy to know which leads you can remove from your list and which ones you should keep.
Now it’s up to you…
Once you’ve seen exactly what you need to do to warm up a cold email list, it’s time to get your hands dirty.
Don’t forget to perform each of the steps: from analyzing your email list, segmenting your audience, identifying leads that will be reheated, defining metrics, creating an email sequence, responding to whoever contacts you, evaluating the results, to removing the leads that remain cold.
And if you need ideas for writing warm-up emails, just go back to this article and read again the topic “Types of emails to warm up leads†or check out the article How to write an email: 17 essential tips for your campaigns .
Did you like this article? Be sure to tell me here in the comments. 😉
