8 Myths About Email Outreach That is Preventing Your Growth
If you are in the content creating or content marketing business, I am sure you must have wondered on some days: how did you ever get your SEO done in the first place? Because there are so many things to keep in mind, and each month, no, each week there is a new way of implementing it.
The statement turns more true and bitter when it comes to digital PR or outreach ideas or simply link building.
For every business, email is the best-used sales method, but there is a lot of noise regarding email outreach. Many opinions and many myths. So today we would like to clear the myths out for you.
1. You Don’t Have to Personalize Every Email
Yes, customers like personal emails. But if you have to write every email for every customer from scratch, it will take up a lot of your time. And frankly, that level of personalization is not required. Instead you should just invest the time in your business. So what should you do?
You should have a template. It’s less time consuming, and more efficient in giving a wide number of customers a personal touch. Always remember to make it 100% about the recipient.
2. There is no Ideal Time for Everybody to Send Emails
‘Don’t send emails on Monday morning, people hate it’ or ‘2 pm is the best time to send an email’.
Seriously? There are no written rules about the time of sending an email.
However, just because it works for someone does not guarantee that it will work for you. People who have been sending various types of emails for years and yet have to see a clear correlation between the best time to send and its impact on results. So instead of squandering time by reading someone else's email, go ahead and experiment to see what works best for you.
3. You Don’t Need to Send Numerous Emails to get the Best Email Response
Another berserk myth is that you will get better results if you send more emails. That is absolutely not true. Of course, you want to contact the highest number of prospects possible. That is completely understandable. But what you need to remember is that the number of people whose inboxes you'll get into isn't as important as determining the quality of your outreach ideas and prospects.
Every client cannot be a good fit for you. First, determine who your target audience is. Separate them. Determine what they require before crafting your pitch. We all work with email lists ranging from 500 to 5,000 people. And frankly, we don't oppose long lists either. We are opposed to sending out the same email to everyone.
We’ll explain with an example.
Suppose you send out 40 emails and only 10 get replies. If you would have sent 100 emails , you might have got more emails , might have not. But if we assume that the 40 people opened your emails, it means that 30 of them weren’t interested in them.
It might happen that 10 of them might not need you. Another 8 might be working with your competitors. But there always be an x amount of people who are still your prospects and can become a client or consumer if you try a different approach. If your clients haven’t unsubscribed to your emails, you are still in the game.
You just need to develop your outreach ideas first and then give importance to the size of your email list.
4. Customers Want Visuals, but not Always
It's all too convenient to become engrossed in creating stunning parallaxes, tools, visuals, and microsites. And besides, they are a desirable asset to show. Creating visuals for the sake of creating them is, on the other hand, a waste of time. Some of the best results we've achieved for clients have come from the data provided, rather than the visuals.
The source of competitive advantage is data. Visuals are not always required to tell a tale. Some people don't even use external images. So research your target audience before investing time and money in creating beautiful imagery that may go unnoticed.
5. You Need to Monitor Both Your Past and Present Campaigns
Many of us keep a weekly, if not daily, eye on our current campaign. So, why don't we also check on how our previous ones are doing? After all, the same if not less, amount of effort has gone into its creation. While there is no right tool to rule them all, a quick backlink check using tools like Majestic, Buzzsumo, Moz, and Ahrefs will quickly show how much traction your previous campaign is receiving.
Are you guilty of abandoning a campaign after its promotion has ended? If you answered yes, you are not alone. However, if you promote the campaign when it becomes newsworthy again, you may receive a second, if not a third, wave of coverage.
Have faith in your campaigns. Return to them when they become worthy of attention again and still have value after “active outreach” has ended. If you notice it receiving more coverage than you expected, it may be beneficial to re-outreach it.
6. Shorter Emails Don’t Necessarily Work Better
There is no evidence that short emails produce better results than long emails. And that people do not scroll down to read the longer ones. There simply isn't any proof of that. Furthermore, people examine a wide range of emails in order to defend both sides. Shorter copy works better for some people, while longer copy works better for others.
It's all historical data, and who knows what emails they were looking at in the first place. Or, for that matter, if any were analysed.
The truth is straightforward. Good copy is always effective. You will definitely win if you say exactly what your prospects want to hear. It makes no difference whether you said it in two sentences or two paragraphs. Avoid making superficial statements, being monotonous, and trying to bait people. Concentrate on the content and disregard the rest.
But we will say this. Relationship selling has become popular in recent years. You'll need some breathing room to write copies that tell stories. It's the narrative that binds everything together. And if it requires a few paragraphs, it might not be a bad idea to concentrate on that more.
7. There’s Nothing Called Spam Words, it's Just Spam Emails
We've all been caught in this trap before. We have read blogs that advised us to avoid using so-called "spam words," as if our lives were dependent on them.
It's nonsense!
It's not the word that will send your email to the spam folder. It's your complaint rate, misleading your audience as well by using invalid emails, and failure to authenticate your email and domain. Everything else has an impact on your engagement. That's the end of the storey. There really is nothing like spam words. There are simply spam emails.
8. Don’t Just be a Blog Reader
It is critical to be a practitioner rather than a blog reader. Go ahead and experiment with different strategies to see how they perform. Discover what works best for you. But just because someone says long subject lines don't work does not really mean they don't, regardless of the statistics that person provides. I'll take my own error over someone else's statistics any day of the year.
Being a practitioner entails experimenting to learn what works and what doesn't. Keeping an open mind and putting everything to the test. Accepting failure and using it as a learning experience in order to win the game. Listening to people who have seen actual results in something is always a good idea, but testing is even better. That is, smart testing!
We hope you found the aforementioned information useful for debunking your email outreach myths.