In a world where unsolicited emails face their endgame, discover how shifting sales strategies and embracing smarter communication can be your key to success.
The Coming Apocalypse of Cold Outreach
As I have continued to write here about the abusive email strategies some sales organizations use, we are now reaching what I recently described as the Coming Apocalypse of Cold Outreach.
Opt-In Email Versus Unsolicited Email
It’s one thing to send mass emails to people who opted into a newsletter, and quite something else when one acquires email addresses and sends emails. In an opt-in email, you always have the right and ability to unsubscribe.
New Email Regulations
Both Google and Yahoo are going to prevent emails from email domains that send 5,000 emails a day if they have a 0.3% abuse (spam) rate. This is a sort of death penalty, especially for those who use automated prospecting sequences. We may all have quite a bit less spam in 2024.
Impact on Sales Strategies
Many of the youngest salespeople who prefer not to make phone calls to acquire a first meeting may choose to find another profession, as they will no longer be able to hide behind a screen. Let’s assume three salespeople call their dream client, each one trying to reach that contact, causing the decision maker to complain and grumble.
The Preference for Phone Calls Over Emails
Let’s assume fifteen companies all trying to get a meeting and new potential client. All fifteen send a single email on one day. Most of us prefer to take the phone call than to have the email start to push down the important and relevant emails they need to read and respond to during their day.
The Overwhelming Volume of Emails
We estimate 347 billion emails are sent every day on Earth, with around 45% of these being spam. On average, every knowledge worker receives 140 emails. On Gmail, I can see around 50 email messages at a time, meaning anything that finds its way into my inbox often gets pushed below the fold, making it virtually invisible to me.
I can’t process 140 emails each day. The following day, the remainder that I didn’t process are now pushing down the prior days’ emails even further. This is why crafting effective cold email variations is crucial; otherwise, over a week, the digital envelope icons are so far down that there is no reason to even try.
Calculating Email Time Consumption
140 emails a day multiplied by 5 days equals 700 emails a week. Let’s say the average email takes three minutes to read and respond. 700 emails times 3 minutes would take you 35 hours. Those 35 hours of email leave you with 5 hours to reach your 40-hour work week.
But wait, the average knowledge worker sends 40 emails a day. Let’s double the time it takes to process an email. Forty emails times 6 minutes, making that’s 4 more hours, so you have one hour to do whatever it is you should be doing.
Anticipating Changes in 2024
The experts believe 2024 will find the number of emails reaching 361B emails a day. The decision Google and Yahoo made may start reducing the number of emails we receive each day, bringing some semblance of balance.
Personal Experiences with Spam
I can personally do without all the spammers who have stolen my email and pitch me on why I need someone to schedule meetings for me, edit my short form videos, SEO services, guest posts, recruiters, or a chance to own a franchise. Most of these time wasters send a follow-up email to ensure I saw their first email. I did, as it passed by so fast that it had no chance of capturing my attention.
The Future of Email Communication
The good news is that it may be more difficult for the worst of the offenders to send spam to our email boxes. The better news, when you send a single email that proves you took the time and attention to send something valuable to your client, we will have a better shot of it getting read.
Re-embracing Traditional Sales Techniques
Those of us who continued to implore salespeople to make a phone call, have been waiting for something to change. The phone, for those who would rather not call a stranger to find their confidence and their ability to ask for a meeting, need to know that the phone is the only synchronous medium available. Wait! That is not true, as some of us walked in through the front or back door and asked to speak to the decision maker.
Best Practices for Crafting Cold Emails
When you sit down to write to your prospective client, the most important thing you must get right is that it creates value for them. This means carefully considering cold email variations to ensure your message is relevant and focused on their needs. The more you make an email about you and your own interests, the more self-oriented it becomes—something that often causes your contact to avoid agreeing to a meeting.
Legislation Impacting Cold Outreach
There are already politicians working on making laws that prevent sharing personal information. At some point, it will not be allowed. But in the meantime, there is someone training AI to mask the fact it is sending more than 5,000 emails in a single day, often as part of cold outreach campaigns. Just as you are not allowed to mass text without allowing the person to opt out of your text, these practices are coming under scrutiny as well.
The Role of Personalization in Cold Outreach
If your idea is that using the person and their role is personalization, know it does nothing to show you know the person and their concerns. This approach, often seen in cold outreach, fails to address the deeper understanding needed about what your client needs to know, their challenges, and their opportunities.
