Increase your open rate: The secrets of cold emailing
A good open rate is the first step in an effective cold mailing campaign. Without openness, there is no reading. We share with you our secret recipe to have an opening rate of more than 80%.
After hours of preparation, ultra-precise targeting, the writing of an effective message, you launch your prospecting sequence, and there... Noise of crickets 🦗.
A common mistake of prospecting by email, is to put a significant effort into all the preparation of a campaign... and end up putting a stupid object into it, which will not attract any attention.
Result? Those great emails will never be opened.
Not opened, not read...
No arms, no chocolate. 🤷 ♂️🍫
The good news is that having a good open rate in cold emailing is like chocolate: just follow the recipe.
Get ready to discover The secret recipe for a record opening rate:
- An irreproachable technical setup
- DNS zone configured (SPF, DMARC, DKIM)
- A warmer on your e-mails
- Good email data (valid emails)
- Present well in the inbox (sender name, overview)
- An optimized email subject: short, clear, that arouses curiosity, in connection with the content, personalized, and that avoids anti-spam filters.
- All without excessive tracking
✍️ In need of ideas for effective objects? Don't miss the end of the article, I've prepared a list of templates for you to reuse to boost your opening rate.
It is time to get to the heart of the matter.
Increasing my opening rate: The different steps
First of all, let's put the items into context. Because the success of cold emailing will never be linked to only one element. Rather, it is a delicate balance between a set of points, and these have a hierarchy.
Opening your emails is indeed the second stage of 4 key steps in outbound:
Step 1 - Deliverability
Before looking at your emails, it is essential to go through your “technical setup”. Because your e-mails, just like a vehicle on the highway, will pass through different email servers. And on these servers, there are rules, and necessary identifications.
Here are the 3 key points to ensure optimal deliverability:
1. The DNS Setup
The DNS zone is an information area linked to your domain name (and therefore to your professional e-mails linked to this domain) on which you will be able to identify yourself to the email servers.
To have an optimal setup, you will need to configure your SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) records on your prospecting domain.
If you have not already done so, I invite you to start by discovering How to configure the SPF, DKIM and DMARC of your emails.
Once you have a well-configured technical setup, you can switch to the warmer 👇
2. A Warmer for your emails
A warmer is a tool that will allow you to Stop falling into SPAM when doing outbound. When prospecting by email, it is important to create a dedicated domain that is different from your main domain (ex: company.co vs company.com).
An email used for prospecting may sometimes be put in SPAM by its recipients. If this happens too often, your email address will have worse and worse deliverability. If this happens on a recurring basis, the entire domain will end up “Blacklisted” by the email servers. You don't want that to happen to your main domain. Using a secondary domain is therefore a bit like putting on a helmet on a motorcycle: Much smarter to stay alive.
However, by creating an email address on a new domain, you will start from a “New” address, which has no activity yet. If you go from 0 emails per week to 85 per day too quickly, this will send information to the email server that you are automating (or mass-mailing), and it will quickly block your deliverability.
To avoid this, we use a warmer that will allow you to gradually increase your sending and receiving volume, while ensuring that your messages arrive in the main box.
Here are some warmers you can use to warm up your email address: Lemwarm, Mailreach, Mailwarm, or Warmup Inbox.
3. Good data (valid email/catch all/bounce)
When you find the email of one of your target prospects, his email can belong to 3 categories:
- A Bounce
- A Catch All
- A valid email
In the case of a bounce, the email found is unfortunately not the correct one, and does not exist. So, if you send an email to this address, it will never be received and will be sent back by the email server (hence the name “Bounce” which means bounce in English).
In the case of a Catch All, the email is indeed “received” by the server, but the server does not indicate whether the exact structure of the email is valid, and whether the final recipient will actually receive the email in question. The email server therefore indicates that it will accept the email, that it is not going to “bounce”, but does not ensure the final destination.
In the case of a valid email, now you are finally assured that your email will arrive in the target person's inbox.
To know which category the emails found for your prospects belong to, you can use tools like Bouncer, Clearout or No2bounce.
If you want to ensure deliverability and an optimal opening rate, don't use Only valid emails. If you want to reach as many people as possible, aims to use no more than 20-30% catch-all emails in total. Exceeding this proportion could lead to too much bounce, which will affect your deliverability,... and ultimately your opening rate.
Step 2 - Opening
Now that you have taken care of the technical side, we are finally coming to the elements specific to your email, which will make it open. There are 3:
1. The name you use in your emails
The first element you see when you receive an email is the name of the sender. To be effective in outbound avoid putting the name of your company as LEADIX or”Morgann de Leadix”, this will directly give an overly commercial tone to your email. The most effective is still your first and last name.
2. Your email subject
The second thing you notice when you don't know the sender's name is the object. This is where the question “am I going to open this email?” comes in.
To write an effective object, I invite you to continue the article, I am detailing the complete method just below.
3. The overview of your first sentence
When your recipient is not directly convinced by the subject, it is very likely that they will look at the preview at the beginning of the message to finalize their decision to open or not.
Don't overlook your first sentence, or the personalization of it.
Step 3 - Reading
Yes! Your prospect has finally opened your message. That's great news, but it doesn't end there. You will have 2 elements that will take him to the next step:
1. First sentence “catch”
Your first sentence should be able to “Hook” your reader to make them want to continue reading the rest of the message. It is key to quickly identify the reason for your contact and the problem on which you can add value. If he is not interested in the subject, he may not continue reading.
2. Rest of the message
Once the beginning of the message has passed, to make sure you keep your reader, keep it short, effective and in simple language. If you want to put all the odds in your favor, of course, find out. The structure of a cold email that convertedT.
Step 4 - The Call to Action
The final stage is the Holy Grail. The Call to Action, namely the action you want your prospect to take. An appointment, fill out a document, come to an event, or even simply answer you. The whole objective of a good opening rate is to bring more prospects to this stage.
What is a good open rate?
The open rate you can aim for will depend on the type of email sent. If you send newsletters, an open rate of 20 to 30% is already a very good rate. This rate is linked to newsletter tools (such as Mailchimp) that send emails via shared email servers, which is a horror for deliverability.
In cold emailing, we aim much higher. Because each prospect you target can potentially become a customer. Every unread email is a potential lost deal.
Here are the numbers to remember for your opening rate in Cold emailing:
< 30% - The technical setup of your email address may be in question. There is a high probability that some of your emails will end up in SPAM
[30 - 40%] - Consider improving the subject of your email. You will like the rest of the article.
[40% - 60%] - It's a good open rate, but it can be improved.
> 60% - It's very good.
> 75% - You're on top!
What is a good email subject?
Perfect, now that we know what rate we should aim for, to write an ultra-effective email subject, you will have to aim for:
1. A short object
Aim for 2 to 4 words for maximum effectiveness. More than that will take a long time to read and will not be displayed correctly on all screen sizes. Keep in mind that a majority of emails are opened on mobile. Shorter, better.
example:
⛔️ “Have you already analyzed your marketing results for 2024?”
✅ “marketing results 2024”
2. A clear object
The subject of your email should not be a riddle. Be simple and effective. If the subject line is clear, you are more likely to have someone interested in the subject open your email.
example:
⛔️ “Proven secret approach to double your turnover”
✅ “+38% in turnover for {{companyName}}”
3. An object that stirs curiosity
Like a good book title or a good ad, the purpose of the subject of your email is to encourage people to learn more. Thus an effective object will make you want to click to discover the rest.
Example:
⛔️ “We invite you to the movie cabaret on March 23 in Nice”
✅ “Your personal invitation {{FirstName}}”
4. An object related to the content
Above all, do not make the mistake of seeking to maximize openness at the expense of your final result. A “clickbait” or stressful object will always work well to open. But if the link to the content of the email is non-existent, it won't convert.
example:
⛔️ “Appointment cancelled” when you don't have an appointment
⛔️ “RE: “while this is your first message
⛔️ PROBLEM for {{companyName}}
⛔️ “Fundraising {{companyName}}” to end up talking about a chatbot for a site.
5. A personalized object
The must, to put all the chances on your side, is to think about personalizing your objects so that your interlocutor feels directly concerned. Let there be no doubt that the message was intended for him/her, and no one else. It is also good to refer to names/places/topics that will show that the message is not generic and well related to the person, his activity, or his situation.
Example:
⛔️ “coffee?”
✅ “coffee {{FirstName}}?”
⛔️ “Solution for your customer management
✅ “The ideal CRM for {{Core business}}”
6. An object that avoids spam filters
And yes, not all words are allowed. Indeed, email providers have anti-spam filters, which may block your email if it contains certain terms or ways of writing.
To make sure you don't “trigger” spam filters, avoid writing objects:
- Containing too many uppercase letters or punctuations!!!!! ¡¡¡¡¡¡
- With exaggerated promises
- ex: 100% free, special offer, big gift,...
- Indicating suspicious behavior
- ex: you won, 100% sure, Bravo! ,...
- Using the lexical field of money
- ex: profits, salary, million euros, profit, full repayment, debt,...
- Using emergency or pressure
- ex: Act quickly, urgently! , limited offer, limited time, only one left,...
- Vocabulary that is too sales-oriented
- ex: Sales, Click here, more sales, increase, turnover,...
example:
⛔️ “Discover OUR 100% free & profitable call OFFER!!!”
✅ “marketing proposal for {{companyName}}”
Deactivate tracking to go further?
By this point, you should already have a good understanding of how to boost your open rate. This part was written for experts, those who want to know everything and leave nothing on the table.
Because yes, there is one more element that can affect your deliverability: Your tracking as such.
Wait what? Is tracking my opening bad for my opening?!
Yes, email tracking can affect your opening scores. And that's for a simple reason: it adds links to your email.
To track the opening rate and the click rate of your emails, Your cold emailing tool (like Lemlist or Lagrowthmachine) will add a tracking link to send information back to the server that a link has been clicked, or that an invisible pixel (often as a signature) has been loaded, and therefore that your email has been opened.
However, an email containing an HTML code that is too heavy (too large a layout), or a large number of outgoing links will be considered SPAM by email providers much more quickly.
If you want to be a purist, the best solution will therefore be to launch your prospecting campaign. As soon as it runs properly and you are satisfied with the average results, you cut off the tracking. This can only affect your deliverability rate in a positive way.
Deactivate opening rate tracking
In most marketing automation tools, you should be able to manage your tracking.
Here, for example, in Lemlist, you can see that it is possible to deactivate tracking in the settings of a campaign.
Is the open rate a reliable measure?
In summary: No.
(What all this article to get there?)
Of course, measuring your opening rate is a good performance indicator, and I recommend that you follow it. However, one should be aware that these rates may be skewed:
- By some cold emailing software that did not adapt their tracking to Google or Yahoo updates.
- By some mailboxes/inboxes that “pre-load” the email, which can count as an opening.
- Through mailboxes that block the sending of tracking or acknowledgement of receipt.
So, analyzing your opening rate is good. But focusing on the response and interest rate is even better.
[Templates] Cold emailing objects to reuse for your prospecting
Now that you have become an ace theorist, it's time to move on to practice.
And since it's not our type to let you go empty-handed, we've concocted ultra-effective object templates for everyday situations in the development of your company.
It's happening over here, if you want to:
👉 Pre-book appointments at events/fairs:
✉️ {{Event name}} {{event date}}
👉 Relaunch following an event:
✉️ {{FirstName}}, we missed out on the {{room name}}
or
Follow-up {{room name}}
👉 Suggest an appointment
✉️ Coffee {{FirstName}} ?
✉️ Morgann <> {{FirstName}}
✉️ 15min the {{Date}} ?
👉 Introduce yourself via a joint contact person:
✉️ introduction via {{Contact}}
✉️ {{Contact}} advised me to contact you
👉 On a current topic in your sector:
✉️ change in {{Sector}}
✉️ {{FirstName}}, have you seen {{News}} ?
👉 Highlight concrete benefits:
✉️ How {{Competitor}} succeeded in {{Challenge}}
✉️ A few ideas for {{companyName}}
👉 Suggest a partnership:
✉️ Leadix X {{companyName}}
👉 When looking for the right contact person:
✉️ Are you the right person?
Get off the beaten path
Of course, marketing is not an exact science, and what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. So never hesitate to think outside the box and differentiate yourself in your approach, for example:
- By playing on the technologies that your prospect uses (example for Calendly)
✉️ New event: Morgann Dawance - 16:00 Thu, Feb 22 2025
- By playing with humor (example with OSS)
✉️ How is your blanket... um marketing?
- By arousing curiosity
✉️ More {{Result}} with less {{Investment}}?
✉️ Counter-intuitive method for {{Objective}}
- By offering references to the hobbies of your interlocutor
✉️ Pool meeting? 🏊 ♂️
The (A/B) test at the end
Whatever approach or genius object you find, remember that it should not please you, but your target. And beyond being nice, it has to be effective.
And to make sure you find the most effective one, the best way is always to test several versions to identify the object that will give you the best opening rate.
And remember, it's not LevioSAR, it's LevioSA
