Many times you may notice that the terms , “cold emails” and , “marketing emails” are used interchangeably, which is a mistake, as they actually define two completely different types of messages. It’s worth knowing the difference if you decide to use cold mailing, because constructing cold emails that will actually sound like a typical marketing email can not only fail to translate high conversions into leads, but can also cause problems from a legal perspective in terms of sending unsolicited commercial information. So what are the differences?
Target Group
The first is primarily the group of recipients of the message. In the case of marketing emails, these are subscribers who have consented in various ways to having such messages sent to them – signing up for a newsletter, downloading a presentation/e-book in exchange for consenting marketing contact.
The sender of these emails does not have full control over who subscribes to its content; it can only rely on contacts it has obtained through sign-ups. . Cold mailing, on the other hand, differs in that you must first determine the target audience yourself, using various tools that offer databases. Here it is necessary to take into account the fact that its recipients can expect to be contacted only if their data have been published on the Internet as being used to contact the company in question, and primarily expect messages from people interested in their company’s services, not necessarily a proposal to make contact for any other purpose.
Form
There is also a difference in form. Marketing mailings often include html templates as well as graphics and buttons that redirect to a link of your choice. The link may include, for example, a blog or website post, a podcast or pdf content. At this point, it is worth noting that any newsletters also count as marketing emails.
Cold emails, on the other hand, should be as simple as possible and contain a maximum of a few sentences of text (3 to 5). Such messages should end with a specific inquiry or request, so that the recipient is in no doubt as to how they should respond.
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Personalization
Another aspect is the difference in personalization of such emails. Since, as mentioned earlier, recipients of marketing e-mails have given their free and informed consent to receive them, this means that they expect to be contacted and (perhaps) look forward to it. The subject lines of such emails, therefore, do not have to be particularly creative, they can start with a simple , “Hello/Good morning X”, because the most important thing here is the content. Personalization here is limited to the data left by the subscriber. As a rule, the path of action looks like this:
- We place a “lead magnet” on the web, i.e. content or materials that will attract the recipients: an article, e-book, video, etc.
- For the recipient to want to leave data, the scope of the data must be minimal: name + email
- To get more valuable data, the lead magnet must be very attractive to the recipient, then you can count on business email + first name
- We personalize based on the acquired data, which is usually the first name alone.
The level of personalization is therefore low or non-existent. The marketing message, is also definitely longer than cold-mail.
In the case of a cold-mail, the beginning is what will draw attention in a recipient who is not looking forward to the communication; it must be short and interesting enough not to drown among other messages.
It is the first words that will be important, as they will determine whether the person decides to read further content. Therefore, it is worth referring to the recipient himself in these words, that is, personalizing the e-mail as precisely as possible. Thus, the first sentence will be crucial in the case of a cold email, especially since many mailboxes allow you to preview it. So, if it doesn’t sound interesting, the message may end up in the trash.
Personalization itself is also greatly expanded. The sender, when building the database, decides for himself how far he can individualize his message. In addition to the standard set of:
- name
- position
- company name
Can be tempted to:
- variation of names by cases
- matching examples of cooperation with current customers with the industry of potential leads
- using word variation by gender (Mr./Ms.)
- using content captured from publications and blogposts of specific companies
Purpose
The difference is also in the purpose, and the purpose of a cold email is simple – it is to set up a business conversation, which only in the future can translate into a transaction. The content, therefore, should sound inviting enough to the recipient to not only read it, but to respond in the first place. It must also sound neutral enough not to be unsolicited commercial information.
As for marketing emails – the main goal is to move the recipient to the next step in the sales process, in the funnel planned by the Marketing Manager, such as clicking on the item under the link or attachment sent. Such messages should be sent on a regular basis to maintain the brand’s customer relationship, but they should be dosed appropriately. It is best to follow the “trigger”-> mail principle. This means sending mailings to those recipients who triggered the so-called trigger (literally: trigger), i.e. performed a specific behavior in response to coming into contact with the sender’s content, e.g. participate in a Webinar, liked a new post on social media, etc.
Message volume and frequency
The number of messages sent will also differ between the two. A marketing campaign means sending messages most often to all subscribers, so there may be thousands of them. In this case, messages will also be sent to everyone at the same time, but this is something we should avoid by using marketing automation tools and following the campaign trigger rules. We can, for example, use applications that identify the recipients of b2b content and, with just one automation, trigger mailing only to those companies in our funnel that respond to our newly posted content Follow up of such messages depends on the capabilities of marketing automation tools and the behavior of the recipient, e.g. read the message and clicked on the link -> follow up.
The groups targeted by cold mailing communications should generally be smaller for the sake of accuracy in personalizing such emails, 300 people is a safe number to both maintain quality in communications and make conclusions about optimizing subsequent campaigns, as the audience is then large enough to do so. Building a database for such campaigns is also more time-consuming, as it requires researching the profiles to which they will be sent. This will help prevent problems related to dissatisfaction of campaign recipients. The target group of cold mailing communications, does not expect contact from their sender, so the nature and frequency here should be selected personally. No more than 1 message per week, and the number of follow-ups should not exceed 3-4 messages.
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