Executive Summary
- Email is the most often used channel of lead generation specialists
- Know the difference between Spamming and well-orchestrated Outbound Email Campaigns
- Not every email has to be personalized but it does have to be targeted
- Separate domains safeguard against any single domain being compromised
- By ramping up sending volume, starting slow, and getting ideal open rates, domain reputations stay in the green
- Understanding how to protect your domains, staying out of the spam box, and increasing deliverability score will support lead generation in 2020
If lead generation channels can be referenced as Pipelines, then email is certainly the flowing water in those lines.
This channel is by far the most preferred method of communication between B2B companies. It's fast, it's easy, and high volumes of prospects can be reached simultaneously.
As the business world continues to orient itself from the invasive effects of Covid-19, the common practice of contact-less communication is going to become even more appealing. Email usage rises highest among the most preferred outreach channels of lead generation agencies as outbound email campaigns become ever-increasingly useful given this new climate.
As more businesses are ramping up usage to foster their B2B Lead generation, you must know how to maximize yours.
Understanding Domains, Spam, and Deliverability are the concepts of outbound email campaigns that will make or break successful lead generation in 2020.
Spamming vs Outbound Email Campaigns
Every company interested in B2B appointment setting via email channels must first understand and identify the difference between spamming and well-orchestrated, outbound email campaigns.
Spamming is sending the same generic message to thousands of people with no clear goal other than to wear them down and force communication.
Same email. Same campaign. To everyone.
On its face that sounds like bad practice, but B2B lead generators often do it. Pipelines can fill up quickly for SDR's working for good lead generation agencies. The natural inclination is to clear the inbox as fast as possible, and indiscriminately blasting out messages to every contact in the ledger seems like a good way to alleviate the burden of email volume. Unfortunately, it will get nothing more than unsubscribes and having your contact shoved into their spam box.
One size does not fit all. Not in shoes. Not in tires. And certainly not in outbound email campaigning.
Not every email has to be personalized, but it does have to be targeted.
I'm not suggesting you artfully tailor every word of copy you ever send to the recipient specifically, knowing their favorite sports team, where they went to school, and which lunch they just posted on Instagram that day, but with care, practice, and intent-driven thought, you can still disseminate your message to large groups at once.
Group by industry. Group by position. Group by company size. Not every email has to be personalized, but it does have to be targeted.
What Triggers Email Spam Filters?
Spam filters are like that bad girlfriend you had in college. Yeah, she was a looker, but how many times did she keep you home watching the Bachelor with her, restricting you from hanging out with your guys.
Just like she killed your social outreach, email spam filters kill sales outreach.
But there is a way you can circumvent the throttling vice of the Spam Filter. You too can efficiently get your message out to your TAM, just like we do for our clients here at SalesHive, the best B2B lead generation company.
Spam Keywords
Powerful systems monitor the copy of every email that passes through them. Spam keywords and spam phrases that pass through these identifiers can trigger the spam filters that are set up to protect users.
A Spam keyword is a word or phrase that spam filters look for when deciding to send an email to the inbox or the spam box. Keywords such as "Viagra", have been so heavily used in email spamming that if you send an email with that word in it, spam filters will likely send your email to spam.
There really is no list compiling every word that triggers Spam, nor what these systems search for, but words of solicitation are certainly to be counted among them. "Call", "Money", "Sales", and "Marketing" are all examples of identified spam keywords.
The more your outbound email campaign comes across as dry, robotic, and full of solicitations, the more likely it is that these spam warnings are going to flag your emails. Avoid using them in your B2B outbound email campaigns.
Email Reply Tracking
Yes, personalized campaigns tailored for recipients help keep you out of spam, but emails must be carefully monitored for negative engagement. Negative engagement on outreach can have just as bad an impact on domain reputation as anything else.
Open rates, response rates, click rates, and whether your emails are categorized as spam are all tracked modes of engagement and are the most common email engagement metrics to know whether your outreach is being received well.
Reply tracking is a keystone in modern sales development and it allows sales development reps to automatically remove people that require them to respond to their campaigns from receiving future emails. It is a great metric for understanding and optimizing the effectiveness of your email copy.
Email engagements, both positive and negative, can have a huge impact on your deliverability score. Well-targeted outbound email campaigns with positive engagements help your ratings, but conversely, the more emails you send out to every B2B lead you can copy an address for, the more likely you are to get flagged as spam.
Getting Flagged
Okay, so let's say you sent out five thousand identical emails, for all contact categories, inter-company domains, and across all industries. A huge majority of those emails won't be remotely relevant to the owners of the inboxes you've just flooded.
Click. You get moved to Spam five thousand times, and it's over. Too much negative engagement.
You've been flagged, your domain is compromised, and your deliverability score now sits as low as the Knicks PPG. Utter defeat and it came so quickly.
If your outbound email campaigns are frequently identified as spam, it severely hurts your domain, and if you are sending out a high volume of emails, you better have full confidence in what you're sending out. Frequently being marked as spam could damage your entire domain so much it results in EVERYONE'S emails going to spam, regardless of whether it's the most well-personalized email ever written, or just one of those copy and paste atrocities that got you there in the first place.
It's a fine line to walk, but it can be done right with the right precautions.
Using Separate Email Domains
While personalizing email copy and using reply tracking are effective strategies to keep domains healthy, nothing is certain nor is it guaranteed. It's a constant tug of war between lead developers trying to get more emails to inboxes and email server techs revamping what triggers spam filters. That's why having several domains across which outbound email campaigns can be sent is vital.
If a company uses only one domain for outreach, even if precautions are taken, and it somehow becomes compromised, invalidated, or shut down, then lead development outreach stops completely.
Separate domains safeguard against any one domain being compromised, but by throttling volume, you can protect all your domains.
Throttling Sending
Everything in moderation. You can have too much of a good thing. Less is more. Tropes, I know, but when it comes to your email volume, all of these phrases ring truer than true.
Email Throttling is the process of improving the deliverability of an email domain by sending and engaging with said sent emails via an email seed list. Domain warming is necessary for new email domains to effectively avoid being marked as spam. It is also important when domain warming to throttle volume over a period of time. For example, on day 1 you might send 10 emails, on day 2 you'll send 20 emails, and on day 3 send 30, etc.
The danger of sending out too many emails at once isn't just that your outreach might end up in the spam folder, but that all your domains might be at risk. At SalesHive, we temper our outbound email outreach so as not to compromise our domains.
By gradually ramping up our sending volume, starting slow, getting ideal open rates on the initial waves, then ramping more and more in progressive days, our domains' reputations stay in the green.
A company with a perfect email domain rep and perfect IP rep will be able to hit the inbox no matter what.
By being patient and gaining gradual momentum on our domains -Domain warming- we earn trust within the monitoring systems and can end up reaching every lead on our list.
SalesHive Email Services
In the vast world of globalized business, contact-less communication is the standard.
That standard is going to become even more overwhelming as both technology and Covid-19 drive our world that way. outbound email campaigning is still the most preferred contactless outreach channel of lead generation agencies and will continue to be the favored choice for the predictable and foreseeable future.
Understanding how to protect your domains, staying out of the spam box, and increasing deliverability scores will make or break successful lead generation in 2020.
Enter your information below to see how SalesHive can help you maximize the reliability and effectiveness of your outbound email campaigns, and dramatically increase the flow of your pipelines.
After all...
If lead generation B2B channels can be referenced as Pipelines, then email is certainly the flowing water in those lines.
