In this guide, you’re going to learn 5 things to check before you send your cold email campaign.
Whether you’re sending emails manually or using software, this 5 point checklist will save you time, money and boost your campaign’s results.
Table of Contents
5-Point Cold Email Checklist
Tip #1: Proofread Your Email
Make sure you proofread your email before you send it out.
Sure, this sounds really obvious:
But you’d be surprised how many people rush to hit send on their campaign, before properly checking for errors.
And there’s nothing worse than sending 1,000 cold emails and seeing a mistake in the first line.
So make sure you spell and grammar check your email before you click send.
And get someone with a fresh pair of eyes to have a look through and make sure there’s no mistakes.
…Because this is easier than you think to miss.
Tip #2: Include An Unsubscribe Button
Make sure you include an unsubscribe button in your email campaign.
Even though this is a cold email, you should still include an unsubscribe button that people can easily opt-out with, if they don’t want to hear from you again.
Why?
Because having no opt-out button can annoy you recipients!
Plus if they report you as spam, your overall deliverability is going to drop too.
And from an ethical point of view, it’s just good practice.
Also once someone has unsubscribed, put them on a blacklist so that you don’t contact them again.
See Also: For more tips, check out this 5-point cold email checklist video for more information!
Tip #3: Optimize Your Sending Schedule
Double check your sending schedule and settings before you fire out your campaign.
If you’re using software like Lemlist or Mailchimp, this is easy to do:
Why should you optimize your sending schedule?
If you just blast out 1000 emails at once, you’ll trigger spam filters.
And eventually, you’ll get your email account blocked.
It’s better to space your emails out over a week or so, so that your sending pattern looks natural.
You see, if you send too many emails out at once, your sending activity looks suspicious.
And if it looks suspicious, your deliverability is going to take a hit.
USEFUL: Here’s our link building checklist for SEO.
What’s the best sending schedule?
I usually start with 10-15 emails per day and then gradually scale up from there to around 50-100.
I’ll increase the limits by 5 emails per day.
When’s the best time to send?
Try to send your emails during the week, between 9am-5pm.
Why?
Because if you’re sending cold emails over the weekend, people are less responsive VS weekdays.
Also, space out your emails so that you send them gradually throughout the day.
Don’t just blast out all your emails at once, because that looks unnatural.
Tip #4: Verify Your Email Addresses
Validate your emails before you send them:
You should verify they actually work before you submit any emails to them.
Because you may not realize this, but a lot of the email addresses you see online aren’t valid – which means that when you send them, they’ll bounce.
And when you get bouncebacks, you get lower deliverability scores.
So aim to reduce your bounce rates by validating them first.
How can you verify email addresses?
You can actually check if an email address works or not by using software like NeverBounce or ClearOut as well.
These are both useful tools for checking if the email is deliverable.
But why are so many email addresses invalid?
- Fake email addresses can be designed as spam traps
- Employees move often – meaning personal email addresses quickly become invalid
- Typos and spelling errors lead to invalid email addresses
Just remember:
The higher your bounce rate is, the worse your deliverability is going to be overall.
Tip #5: Optimize For Deliverability
Focus on optimizing deliverability before you send out your campaign.
Because the higher your deliverability is, the more results you are going to see with cold email.
How can you optimize cold email deliverability?
Well, you could check SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records on your server.
And if you don’t know what these are, you should definitely look into them.
Also, warm up your email account gradually, especially if you’ve just created it and you’ve never sent an email from it before.
Why?
Because with a new email account, you have no sending reputation/trust.
