Cold emailing can be a tricky game. Will your message end up in the inbox or spam folder? Can it engage the recipient or meet a swift delete?

The key to mastering this art is keeping a cold email checklist.

In this post, I'll simplify the complexities of successful cold emails. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or a beginner, this checklist is your path to success. From word count to domain choices, I've got you covered.

I've collected data from the world's best cold emailers and extracted what cold email rules they follow. I’ve simplified what the best cold emailing campaigns have in common into a checklist.

So, get ready to improve your cold email skills as I unveil the secrets to crafting compelling and deliverable messages.

For your convenience, I’ve divided this blogpost into 2 sections, copywriting and technical. With that being said, lets dive in.

Cold Email Copywriting Checklist

1. Don’t Include Images

‍Try not to include images in your first email. The first email should have <150 words, so the low word-to-image ratio will trigger spam filters.
In addition, if images are self-hosted, they may trickle spam filters from poor-rated domains.

Adding images in follow-ups to grab attention works better as the leading inbox is already adjusted to your email address from before.

2. Include Only One Link

‍Spam filters are not friends with links, even if the link is wrapped in a redirect, try avoid adding many links and stick to just one link (yours).

In addition, adding multiple links dilutes the CTA effect, remember the cold email rules, i.e. each email’s job is to do one thing, by adding multiple links, you’re confusing the reader and removing the focus from the singular CTA.

3. Keep emails < 150 words

‍No one likes reading walls of texts; keep the copy simple, short and to the point. In that copy, introduce yourself, provide relevant social proof, and mention how quickly users can achieve an outcome if they chat with you.

Spread the words and don’t keep a paragraph more than 2 sentences long.

4. Don’t repeat the same email in a follow-up

‍Chances are if they didn’t care about the first time you sent them the message, they wouldn’t care about it the second time.
Rephrase what you’re trying to pitch to the user. In addition, this also will improve your deliverability as you’re not spam-triggering email service providers with the same copy multiple times.

5. Pass it through Hemingway to keep it grade 5 reading

‍Keep it simple, avoid complex phrases, and remove jargon. 6/10 users disengage after reading 1 word that they don’t understand. You can do this on Smartlead.ai as you type out your email, without having to switch between tabs or apps.

6. Avoid spam trigger keywords

‍Don’t start a cold email with SALE! Or have your subject line in all caps. Don’t overtly sell, Google has moved from lexical to semantic NLP, meaning they can pick up intention in your emails.

This doesn’t mean sell, of course you sell, thats the point of cold email, just don’t sound like the Nigerian Prince.

7. Don’t ask for a sale on first email (goal is meeting)

‍Common mistake beginners make is ask people to make a purchase and present them with a link to buy. This doesn’t work. The first email’s job is to drive a conversation or a demo.

The demo’s job is to drive a deal. This is why cold emails aren’t the best for low <$100 ticket items, as jumping on demos is not scalable unless you’ve got staff.‍

Cold emails should read as conversations, not sales pitches.

‍Treat cold emails as an in-person conversation. Read out the email out loud, would this be something you’d tell someone random on a street or in a networking event? If no, change the copy; if yes, click send.

8. Don’t send out HTML-heavy emails

‍The game of cold emails is to make each email look like you wrote a personalised email just for them, while smartwriter.ai exists to help you personalise your emails at scale, make sure you don’t send a templatised cold email with images and pretty buttons.

No one wants to be sold to, let alone mass sold to. HTML templates are for subscriptions and newsletters, not cold outreach.

Cold Email Technical Checklist

1. Use complementary domains

‍Never use your primary domain. If your company email is vaibhav@smartlead.ai (for example), don’t send emails from james@smartlead.ai. Buy additional domain names to protect your email sending reputation.

By nature of cold emails they have low reply rates, and sometimes can have bounces, which then affect your email reputation. If you end up using your primary email, you’ll risk all your company emails landing in spam.

So what's the fix? Buy domains that are complimentary to your primary account, such as getsmartlead.com, usesmartlead.com, etc. and make sure in your DNS (GoDaddy, Namecheap) you’ve redirected these domains to your primary domain, in this case, smartlead.ai. This is for the case when someone tries visiting your “complimentary” domains.

2. Don’t use alias’ accounts

‍Alias accounts don’t act as separate email accounts, but they’re just masked addresses of your main account, and they don’t maintain separate reputation.

3. Use spintax to improve cold email deliverability

‍If any email software sees someone sending 1000s of emails with the exact copy, it’ll most likely flag it.

The fix for this is to send emails that are slightly different from each other. One way to do this is through personalisation which we spoke of above, another way is to use spintax.

Spintax is the concept of changing your copy with synonyms to make each email read differently and improve your deliverability.

In Smartlead, you can achieve this very easily by writing your copy as such:

{Hi|Hello|Hey|What’s up}

What this does is spin up 4 different emails; each email will have a slightly different copy, boosting your deliverability as well as giving you the opportunity to see which verbiage leads to better results.

4. Test different copies for deliverability & experimentation

‍Similar to spintax, but with A/B testing, you can change entire chunks of your copy to send different emails; that’ll do 2 things for you:

1) Improve your deliverability through the variance of copy
2) Give you the chance to see if different messaging leads to better ROI

5. Setup DKIM, DMARC, SPF

‍These are security protocols to help email accounts verify that you are the actual sending and there isn’t someone spoofing your account.
Checkout this article on how to set these up for your account in an effort to boost your email deliverability and stay out of spam.

6. Warm up your domains‍

Warm-up engines protect your emails from landing in spam and build your sender reputation.

Smartlead’s warm up algorithm is built to emulate a humanized sending behaviour that ensures your reputation consistently improves - therefore landing more of your emails in your leads inbox, not spam.

7. Don’t send more than 50 emails per account daily

‍Regardless of Gmail’s 1k limits or Zoho’s 800 limit per day, no human sends that many emails.

After reviewing 1000s of email accounts, you should try keep your daily sending to <50 emails to protect your emails reputation and ensure it’s longevity in deliverability. This number will gradually increase as your domain ages, but if your domain is <1 year old, you shouldn’t send more than 50 emails.

8. Ensure there is randomisation when sending emails

‍In whatever software you’re using or if you’re sending emails manually, don’t send them out in bursts. Ensure there are natural gaps and randomisation when sending emails out. This “humanises” the behaviour and helps you avoid any spam filters.

9. Ramp up your warmup emails

‍When starting your warmup, don’t start with 40 emails on the first day; let the email get comfortable to the IP network as well as get used to sending emails. You don’t want to take a fresh domain and send 100 emails straight away on day one, similarly with warming up, you want it to ramp up slowly, perhaps 5 emails per day till it reaches 40 emails in volume per day.

10. Use unsubscribe texts, not links

‍While it’s necessary to have the unsubscribe link for GDPR compliance reasons based on the locations you’re reaching out to, an alternate and healthier way is to ask your leads to respond with a text if they’re not interested.

At the bottom of the email you can type “Please respond with “not interested” if this isn’t for you”

This way, you’re boosting up your reply percentage for free and improving your deliverability and secondly, you can easily stop sending subsequent messages to them using rules in any cold emailing tool.

11. Set up custom domain tracking‍

Tracking clicks and open rates depends on a small snippet of html being injected into your email body. This is industry standard. Whilst it makes for good analytics sometimes people may see drops in their campaigns deliverability.

This is due to the same “tracking” domain being used across 1000s of campaigns set up by all the users of the cold emailing software. ESPs (email service providers) are smart to understand that there are millions of emails being opened, and they’re all sending “requests” to the same “tracking url”. This may* cause a slight drop in your deliverability.

So what’s the fix? Simple.
You trick the ESP by “masking” the tracking URL with your own.

Find the full guide here

12. Keep the time gap between emails at least 20 minutes

‍Configure the gap between sending emails to at least 20 emails. This helps maintain your email reputation and prevents and automation flags.

13. Setup a DNC list to boost cold email deliverability

‍With a Do Not Contact list, you’ve got peace of mind that you’re not going to be sending messages to people who’ve previously asked you not to message them or emails that have bounced.

Both actions protect your email reputation and reduce the chance of any future emails landing in spam due to high bounce of spam-flag rate.

14. Avoid personal emails to prevent spam traps

‍Send emails to business emails, such as kelly@companyname.com, instead of imcoolkelly@gmail.com, personal Gmail accounts have more aggressive spam filters, and the promotional folder is stricter.

By sending to company accounts, you improve your chance of landing in the lead's primary inbox.

15. Inbox rotation

‍Since you’re sending 50 emails per account, if you’re trying to reach out to 1000 leads, it’ll take you 20 days; this isn’t sustainable. You can add multiple domains and split your leads across your email accounts.

If you’ve got 20 email accounts sending 50 emails each, you can reach 1000 leads in just one day without hiring your reputation.
Instead of manually managing these campaigns which would be an absolute pain, Smartlead will help automate the inbox rotation without any extra work.

In addition, it’ll collect all your emails in one unibox so you don’t need to maintain 20 different logins.

Conclusion

If you're struggling with cold emailing, trust me, success is just a checklist away. This checklist simplifies the complexity of what kind of content works in cold emails, ensuring your messages hit the right mark boosting your cold email open rates.

But if there's one rule you must never forget, it's this:

Cold emails should read as conversations, not sales pitches.

So, whether you're mastering the art of copywriting or navigating technical intricacies, remember, a well-crafted checklist is your ally.  It transforms your emails into compelling, deliverable messages. So keep this email checklist template handy. With this arsenal in hand, you're ready to conquer inboxes and elevate your cold email game to new heights. Happy emailing!

FAQs

1. Why Do I Need a Cold Email Checklist?

A cold email checklist is your roadmap to success. It ensures your emails are concise, engaging, and deliverable, increasing your chances of getting a response instead of being marked as spam.

2. What Should I Include in My Cold Email Checklist?

Your cold email checklist should cover essentials like avoiding images, limiting links, keeping emails short (under 150 words), avoiding repetition, using clear language, and steering clear of spam-triggering words. So make sure to keep a cold email checklist template handy.

3. What's the Best Time to Send Cold Emails?

Timing matters in cold emailing. To boost cold email open rates aim for weekdays, preferably Tuesday to Thursday, between 9 AM and 11 AM or 3 PM and 4 PM. However, it's vital to consider your target audience's time zone.

4. How long should Cold Emails be?

Cold emails should be concise, typically under 150 words. The length may vary based on your purpose, but brevity is key to maintaining the reader's interest.

5. How many cold emails should I send?

The number of cold emails depends on your capacity and target audience. Start with a manageable volume, like 50 emails per day per account, and gradually increase as your domain reputation improves. It's about quality over quantity.

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