Outreach
The Perfect Formula for How Many Cold Emails to Send Per Day
Rafael Schulz
7 min read time.
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Cold emailing, a critical element of many marketing campaigns, often leaves marketers grappling with one essential question: "How many cold emails should one send per day?"
While there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this query, understanding factors such as the recipient's inbox capacity, sending limits set by email providers, and your sender's reputation can guide this decision.
In this article, we dive deeper into these factors, providing insights to help you determine the optimal number of cold emails to send per day in your next cold email marketing campaign.
Cold emailing revolves around sending unsolicited emails to potential customers or clients. The objective is to spark interest, engage them, and ideally convert them into clients.
A successful cold email campaign requires a deep understanding of the target audience, the right to cold emailing platforms and tools, and adherence to daily sending limits.
Quantity Over Quality:
One common misconception is that sending a higher quantity of cold emails will inherently lead to more responses and conversions. While it's true that a larger outreach can potentially connect with more prospects, the quality of your message is ultimately what will drive engagement and conversions. Focusing on personalization and relevance in your emails is crucial.
Cold Emails Always Land in the Spam Folder:
Another misconception is that these emails are immediately classified as spam. While it's true that poorly composed, irrelevant, or excessively frequent emails might end up in the spam folder, a well-crafted, valuable, and professionally presented cold email can reach the recipient's inbox and even trigger engagement.
Immediate Results are Guaranteed:
Perhaps one of the most misleading misconceptions is the expectation of immediate results. Cold emailing is a numbers game that can take time.
It requires patience, persistence, and continuous improvement based on feedback and response rates.
It's important to understand that not every recipient will reply immediately – or even at all – and adjustments may need to be made based on the responses (or lack thereof) received.
The success rate of cold emails can vary greatly depending on various factors such as the quality of the email, the target audience, and the industry. According to reports, the average cold email reply rate is just 8.5%, translating to 8 responses for every 100 cold emails sent, with an open rate of 23,9%.
Sender reputation plays a pivotal role in the success of a cold email campaign. It's a score assigned by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) based on the quality of your email outreach. If you consistently send valuable, engaging content to a receptive audience, your sender reputation will be high, increasing the likelihood of your emails reaching the inboxes of your desired audience.
Conversely, frequent emails to unresponsive recipients or those who mark your emails as spam can lower your sender score and trigger scrutiny from mail servers.
Maintaining a solid sender reputation is vital for ensuring your emails reach the inboxes of your desired audience. A poor sender score can lead to your emails being filtered into the spam folder, significantly reducing your email open rates and overall campaign effectiveness.
To protect yourself from a low sender reputation score, it's essential to warm up new email accounts before launching a full-scale campaign. Gradually increasing the volume of your email sends allows ISPs to recognize your new domain as a legitimate sender and not a potential spam account.
Additionally, it's advisable to continually monitor your sender reputation score and adjust your cold email platform and sending practices accordingly, to achieve the best results with your cold email outreach and maintain a positive relationship with mail servers.
The daily sending limit is a crucial factor to consider when planning your cold email campaign. Sending too many emails in a short span can trigger spam filters, leading to a drop in your sender reputation and not being seen as a trustworthy sender.
Conversely, sending too few can fail to reach a substantial audience and reduce the effectiveness of your campaign.
As a rule of thumb, starting with a lower number such as:
20-50 emails per day during the initial 'warm-up' period is advisable.
This allows ISPs to recognize and trust your email-sending habits. Gradually, you can increase this number up to 200 daily, provided your bounce rate remains low and your engagement is high. It
is essential to monitor your sender score and engagement metrics closely, and adjust your sending patterns accordingly.
Sending a high volume of cold emails in a short time can result in overloading the server. Email servers have allotted daily sending limits and exceeding these can cause your emails to bounce back.
This negatively impacts your sender's reputation and increases the chances of your emails being marked as spam in the future.
Bulk sending of cold emails can also trigger spam filters, causing your emails to land in the recipient's spam folder. Spam filters use complex algorithms to detect spammy behavior, and a sudden surge in email volume is a red flag for these systems.
A high frequency of cold emailing can also lead to lower engagement rates. Recipients are more likely to ignore or delete your emails if they receive too many from the same sender in a short period.
This can reduce the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign.
Lastly, sending too many cold emails can damage your brand image. It can come off as intrusive and desperate, which can turn potential customers away. It's vital to strike a balance between reaching out to potential leads and respecting their inbox.
While sending a substantial number of cold emails can help reach a wider audience, it's crucial to consider the potential negative impacts.
Just like an athlete needs to warm up before a race, your email account needs a warm-up before launching a cold email campaign.
Warming up your email account is a process of gradually increasing the number of emails you send per day, starting with a small number and incrementally raising this amount over time.
This warm-up period allows email servers to recognize your account as a legitimate sender with a positive sender reputation and not end up in spam folders.
During this phase, it's important to monitor your email bounce rate and response rate, as these metrics can provide insights into the health of your email account and the effectiveness of your campaign.
Keep in mind, that a well-executed warm-up phase can significantly reduce the likelihood of your emails landing in the spam folder and increase the overall deliverability of your cold email campaign.
A recommended warm-up schedule could look something like this:
Day 1-2: Send 20 emails per day
Day 3-4: Send 40 emails per day
Day 5-6: Send 60 emails per day
Day 7-8: Send 80 emails per day
Continue this pattern, gradually increasing your daily email volume until you reach your desired number.
However, it's crucial to keep in mind that the specifics of your warm-up schedule may vary depending on factors like your email service provider used, your target audience, and the quality of your email content.
When determining your own daily and sending address and limits, consider the following guidelines:
Quality Over Quantity:
It's better to send fewer emails with personalized, high-quality content than to send a large volume of generic, low-quality emails. This will likely increase your response rate and improve the overall effectiveness of your campaign.
Email Provider Restrictions:
Different email service providers may have different sending limits. It's imperative to be aware of your email provider's restrictions to avoid having your account flagged or suspended for sending too many emails.
Target Audience:
Consider the size and characteristics of your target audience. If your target audience is small or niche, you might not need to send a large number of cold emails each day.
Time and Resources:
Managing a cold email campaign requires time and resources. Make sure you have the capacity to manage the number of emails you plan to send each day. This includes time for writing and personalizing emails, as well as monitoring and responding to any replies.
Tracking and Adjusting:
Monitor your campaign metrics, such as open rate and response rate. If you're not seeing the results you want, don't be afraid to adjust the number of emails you're sending each day. It's a process of trial and error to find the optimal number.
Multiple email accounts:
Consider using multiple email addresses to send cold emails. This can help spread out the volume of emails being sent from one address, reducing the risk of being flagged by email providers and potentially getting your account banned.
Your Warm-Up Schedule:
Your warm-up schedule, as mentioned earlier, will also dictate a daily limit on the number of cold emails you can send per day. Make sure to adhere to this schedule to avoid being flagged as a spammer in a prospect's inbox.
Utilizing automation and tracking software is a highly effective way to manage your cold email outreach. These tools can automate the process of sending emails, freeing up your time and resources. They also provide valuable insights through tracking metrics like open, click-through, and response rates.
Monitoring these metrics regularly can give you a clear understanding of how your emails are performing and help determine the ideal number of cold emails to send per day. If your open and response rates are low, you may be sending too many emails and overwhelming your target audience. Conversely, if these rates are high, you may have the capacity to send more emails.
However, it's important to note that automation should not replace the personalization aspect of cold emailing. Instead, use these cold emailing tools as a supplement to your own efforts and personalization.
Some popular automation and tracking software for cold emailing include:
Conclusion
In conclusion, the question of "how many cold emails to send per day" is not about a fixed number, but more about maintaining a good reputation, respecting the daily sending limits, and targeting the right audience with a carefully crafted message in your cold email campaigns.
It's not just about quantity, but also about quality and consistency.