Cold email is a great way to help generate leads and expand marketable contacts, but, there is more to it than just finding prospect lists and sending emails. This SOP will cover all of the necessary steps in setting up a cold email campaign from technical set-up to implementation and A/B testing.
Technical Setup
Create multiple domains to avoid Google blacklisting your domain
Setup DMARC/SPF
Create emails through your service provider with the new domains
email warming
Setting up email account and signatures
In your email host (Gmail/Microsoft, etc.)
And in HubSpot or your automation tool
Create Audience Segments and Write Sequences
Segment Audiences
Write Sequences
Create Sequences in HubSpot
Maintain email Health and Sequences
Cold email sequences, when done correctly, help generate new business and expand your list of marketable contacts. Before starting one of these campaigns, it is extremely important to establish multiple email sending domains. This prevents you from affecting your main domain and potentially getting it banned. Here are the basic steps for setting up new email sending domains
Figure out where you're currently hosting your website and buy a new domain that is similar to your current domain. Example: If your current domain is peddling.io maybe you'd like to buy peddling.com or getpeddling.io or peddlingsales.com. Any variation that keeps your branding.
Once you've set up your new domain you'll need to set up DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance). This is an email security protocol that verifies your email senders are legitimate.
Setting up DMARC involves a few key steps:
Understand DMARC Policies: DMARC allows you to set policies for how your emails should be handled if they fail authentication checks. There are three main policies:
None: Monitor mode. You receive reports about emails that fail authentication but don't take any action.
Quarantine: Emails that fail authentication are delivered to the spam or junk folder.
Reject: Emails that fail authentication are rejected outright.
Publish a DMARC Record: To set up DMARC, you need to publish a DMARC record in your domain's DNS (Domain Name System) settings. The record contains your DMARC policy and instructions for handling failed authentication.
Set up SPF and DKIM: DMARC relies on Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to authenticate emails. Make sure you have SPF and DKIM set up correctly for your domain.
Monitor and Analyze Reports: DMARC generates reports that provide insights into email authentication failures. Use these reports to monitor the effectiveness of your DMARC policy and make adjustments as needed.
Gradual Implementation: It's a good idea to start with a "None" policy to monitor how your emails are authenticated and gradually move to a "Quarantine" or "Reject" policy once you're confident in your setup.
Setting up DMARC can be complex, especially if you're not familiar with email authentication protocols. It's often a good idea to seek assistance from an IT professional or service provider to ensure it's set up correctly for your domain.
Here are instructions on how to do this from both Google and Microsoft.
If you need more info or want more info on how this relates to emails in Hubspot checkout the Hubspot Guide here.
Now that you've established new domains and you've set up DMARC, you need to create your new emails to be used in all of your cold email campaigns. Typically, we recommend that you have +2 emails set up for each team member. There are two major reasons for this:
You will be able to increase the number of daily email sends from each team member. Cold emails/one-to-one emails are not like marketing emails. You can't send 1,000 emails from each account in 1 day without causing problems. You can usually send between 50-150 depending on your sender score. So if we want to send 200 emails per day from each rep to our members of a prospect list, we will need to send from 2 different email accounts. It's important to remember sequences contain multiple emails.
Ex: Day 1 - email send
Day 5 - email send
Day 14 - email send
Due to this, we only send 100-150 per account to allow for follow-up emails from previous sequences. HubSpot can help you keep track of this when sending through their tool.
You will have spare email accounts in case any of them run into sending issues and need to be remediated after a certain amount of time sending. Once your deliverability score gets below 90s (only getting to inbox 9/10 times) you would want to keep an eye on it to switch it out with an account with higher deliverability.
Once you've established all of your new email addresses you need to start the email warming process. This involves using a service to simulate email sends and responses to increase your overall domain reputation and increase the percent of emails that land in the inbox. Here are the basic steps for email warming:
Choose an Email Warming Service: Select a reputable email warming service that fits your needs. Some popular options include Mailshake, Mailreach, Warmup Inbox, InboxWarmer, and Mailwarm. They vary in price but we typically recommend Mailshake especially if you also want to use that platform for email sending.
Sign Up and Set Up Your Account: Create an account with the email warming service and follow their instructions to set up your account and verify your domain. You will need to connect your email sending domain to the service. This varies based on the service. We are happy to help with this process as we are very familiar with connecting email sending domains to these services. ***We will need admin permissions to help with this step***
Configure Warming Settings: Work with the email warming service to configure your warming settings. This includes specifying the duration of the warming process and the volume of emails to send each day.
Start the Warming Process: Once everything is set up, the email warming service will begin sending emails on your behalf. They will gradually increase the volume of emails sent over time to warm up your sending reputation.
Monitor Progress: Keep an eye on the progress of your warming campaign. Most email warming services provide analytics and reports that show your deliverability rates and engagement metrics.
Adjust as Needed: Based on the results of your warming campaign, you may need to adjust your settings. For example, if you notice a decrease in deliverability, you may need to slow down the warming process.
Complete the Warming Process: Once the warming process is complete, your sending reputation should be established, and you can begin sending regular email campaigns at full volume.
Maintain Good Sending Practices: Even after completing the warming process, it's important to continue following best practices for email marketing to maintain a positive sending reputation.
Consider Ongoing Monitoring: Some email warming services offer ongoing monitoring and maintenance to help you maintain a healthy sending reputation over time.
Having an email signature adds a layer of personalization to your profile that helps build trust with the recipient and overall improves the deliverability score of your email. You can create custom signatures using custom code of follow basic steps for each email service. If you are using Hubspot, we recommend you set up a basic email signature and also one within Hubspot. Here are some basics for setting up email signatures in common mailing systems:
Open Gmail:
Go to gmail.com and sign in to your account.
Access Settings:
Click on the gear icon in the top-right corner, then select "See all settings."
Find the Signature Section:
Scroll down to the "Signature" section.
Create Your Signature:
Click on the radio button next to "Create new" to enter your signature text.
You can format your signature using the formatting toolbar.
Add Links and Images:
To add a link, highlight the text you want to link and click the link icon in the toolbar.
To add an image, click on the image icon in the toolbar and upload your image from your computer.
Save Your Changes:
Scroll down and click "Save Changes" to save your new signature.
Open Outlook:
Open Microsoft Outlook and go to the "File" menu.
Access Options:
Click on "Options" and then select "Mail."
Find the Signature Section:
Under the "Compose messages" section, click on "Signatures."
Create Your Signature:
Click on "New" to create a new signature.
Enter a name for your signature and click "OK."
Edit Your Signature:
In the "Edit signature" box, enter your signature text.
Use the formatting toolbar to format your signature.
Add Links and Images:
To add a link, highlight the text you want to link and click the link icon in the toolbar.
To add an image, click on the image icon in the toolbar and upload your image from your computer.
Set Your Default Signature:
Under "Choose default signature," select the email account to which you want to assign the signature.
Set the signature for new emails and replies/forwards if desired.
Save Your Changes:
Click "OK" to save your signature settings.
Open HubSpot:
Log in to your HubSpot account.
Access Email Signature Settings:
In the top right, click your account name, then click "Profile & Preferences."
In the left sidebar menu, navigate to "Email Signatures."
Create Your Signature:
Click "Create signature" and enter a name for your signature.
Enter your signature text in the editor.
Use the formatting options to format your signature.
Add Links and Images:
To add a link, highlight the text you want to link and click the link icon in the toolbar.
To add an image, click on the image icon in the toolbar and upload your image from your computer.
Set Your Signature Default:
Choose the email address you want to associate with the signature from the dropdown menu.
Set the signature as the default for new emails and replies/forwards if desired.
Save Your Changes:
Click "Save" to save your signature.
To get to the email signature go to settings -> general -> email and then navigate to email signature. You can select "simple" to enter plain text and insert images and links or click "html" to insert custom code.
Here are some images on how to navigate to email signature in Hubspot and what it looks like when you try and set it up.
Congratulations!
Your email domains are set-up, you've let your emails warm until their deliverability rates are above 90% and you have all of your email signatures set up. What next? It's time to identify your target audiences and write email sequences for each of them.
There are a couple key steps here:
Identify all of your target audiences. Say you work in healthcare consulting but work with multiple types of practices. You wouldn't send the same type of emails to each type of practice. So you'll need to identify all of the different audiences and create lists of each.
Write email sequences for each audience. You will also want to write A and B versions of the emails for each audience in order to ensure you are always working towards the best possible result with your cold emails. Clone this template and use the examples of email sequences to guide you through writing your email copy and AB testing them out.
Now that you've identified your target audiences and written emails sequences as well as A/B versions of each email in the sequence, it's time to put them into Hubspot.
Hubspot has a "Sequences" section built into the sales hub that you can access if you have "Sales Professional" and a Sales Seat (Note: you are usually limited to 5 sales seats with sales pro):
Here are Step-by-Step instructions on how to create a sequence:
Create HubSpot automated email sequencesIf you need more context on Hubspot email sequences we recommend checking out Hubspot's Guide on how to create and edit sequences here.
Once your sequences have started, you'll need to check them on a regular basis and maintain each sequence. We recommend sending between 50 and 150 emails per day per email account per sequence. For Microsoft you can not exceed 350 emails/day/account, Gmail is 250/day/account. If you exceed this you may get a warning and your email may be frozen for a few days until you log into your admin account to accept the warning, but don't worry this doesn't mean you are shut down. You will get several warnings before you are turned off, this is just a temporary pause to flag you are sending too many daily emails. To maintain your emails sequences daily you will need to:
Check responses in HubSpot > Sequences > Analyze > Replies to see if any of these replies say "Unsubscribe" or "STOP", then unsubscribe them in HubSpot by marking their contact record as unsubscribed and updating their marketing contact status to "Non-Marketing Contact". This will prevent them from being enrolled in future sequences.
Make sure you are replying to candidates that need a response.
Check if meetings have been booked and follow-up with reminders to make sure they show up or create a separate reminder email in the meeting link.
Enroll more contacts daily but be sure to check the overall sends so you don't go over.
Check the reports at the end of the week to total sends, delivered, opened, replied, meetings booked, deals created, and revenue produced by each sequences.
Check to see which A/B test did the best and use this information to write better sequences for the next test. Emails are a quick feedback loop, much like social media. Use the numbers to help you make decision on how to best connect with your audience. Remember the Subject line is just to get them to open, the first line or "hook" makes them read the second, the second line makes them read the third and by the third line they are more likely to finish the email and respond since they are already bought in.
It's important to keep your eye on the analytics of each sequence in a campaign for the entirety of a campaign or until a sequence is paused. For more on sequence analytics please check Hubspot's Guide here.