The Power Of "Warm Email"

Email marketing. Google it and you’ll find lots of opposing thoughts, lots of tips on how often to send, what to send, whether it’s an HTML email or a “handwritten” email, open rates, click-through rates… whether or not it’s too saturated, or whether or not “the list is King.”

The mistake people make is that before you can really get into ANY of those topics, you need to first discern what type of email marketing you’re doing.

It simply doesn’t get a lot of attention because it’s more fun to dive into the weeds and find a real argument and look at the real numbers. And all that is important. However, if you don’t differentiate what type of email marketing journey you’re embarking on first, you might find yourself stranded on a lone island, with numbers that drastically miss the mark. So let’s dive in…

Not All Email Marketing Is The Same

From a 9,000 foot overview, there are two general categories of email marketing and they serve different purposes and strategies with the same end goal in mind.

Mass Email Marketing

This is what most entrepreneurs and marketers think of when discussing “email marketing.”

The kind of marketing where you are sending emails out to thousands of people at a time. It could be to promote a webinar, a new offer, content blog posts, etc.

An important distinction here is the everyone you are emailing has “opted-in” or “subscribed” to get the emails. It can take years to build a list of thousands of contacts for this kind of marketing and it’s most often done through paid advertising or cross-promotion with Joint Venture partners through offering content that requires the prospect to enter an email for access.

And because they have to subscribe for you to legally email them using this kind of marketing, tools like Infusionsoft, Activecampaign, Hubspot, Constant Contact, etc. force you to include clear instructions on how to opt-out from the emails.

They can control this because the emails are technically being sent from the email tool and not your actual email address. Email service providers like Google, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. notice this as well and often times deliver the emails into your promotions or spam folders.

That is not to say that mass email marketing is not effective. If you have a large email list, it’s the best way to email them all at once. You just have to take the negatives with the positives.

Great for:Emailing thousands (or even millions) of people or prospects at once.

Not great for: Sending personal follow up or outreach emails to priority targets

Priority Email Marketing

The other type is when you want to connect with or get the attention of a specific person, or of a smaller group of very targeted people.

The best part is that you don’t have to have a marketing machine bringing in 1,000s of leads every month to get started. That being said, there are plenty of ways for businesses in all stages and with email lists of all sizes to use priority email marketing.

This includes emails for...

Get the idea?These lists are usually much smaller, extremely targeted and are sent with the aim of actually connecting on a person to person level. These emails are much different than mass email marketing emails.

Great for:personal outreach & follow up for priority targets to maximize deliverability.

Not great for:sending emails to 10s of thousands of contacts at once.

Now, why does it make sense to differentiate between the two?

Frankly, because your strategy and even the type of software you use makes a difference in the results you get.

For example…

I’ve written before about how a good open rate these days for emails is 15%. (Actually… I think a lot of industry experts would agree with me… 15% open rate is not good. It’s excellent.)

*note: this email was sent to over 80k people and 0% Clicked really means < than 1% clicked

Looking at the flip side though, that means 85% of the people you send mass emails to don’t bother opening it at all. In other words, your prospects are ignoring them, or in many cases, not seeing them at all.

That is the cost of doing business with mass marketing. It’s all about how many people you need to email at one time.

With priority email, you can see your open rates improve by 2x - 4x. Since ESPs register them as personal emails they get priority inbox placement. Meaning fewer emails getting caught in the promotions tab or spam folder.

So… what should you do about this?

Over the last few years, the traditional way of doing mass email is seeing diminishing returns - because people know it’s a marketing email. Unless they are particularly interested in a new offer or they really enjoy your emails… they really don’t have a reason to open them.

Unfortunately, that same attitude often extends to the second category of emails as well. People aren’t very trusting.

I can show you how to change that. We lay out how to send sales outreach campaigns, long term nurture campaigns, and how to connect with industry leaders for events, podcast interviews, guest posting and more.

Having a personal task list when it comes to sending these types of emails will help you stay organized.

Earlier I mentioned that the type of software you use makes a difference for different types of emails.

And speaking of, unless you want to personally reach out to each person for a personal connection - which is great... that’s the best way, but it can take time - you will want to incorporate some type of automation technology.

And when it comes to automation technology, there is absolutely a right and wrong way to get clients. When you do it the wrong way, you destroy your brand and get terrible results.

Connect 365 Email is a unique way of sending emails to prospects that gets nearly 100% primary inbox placement and regularly achieves 50%+ open rates.

The beauty of approaching these types of emails differently, both in strategy and with different tools is that you get:

It's worth it to evaluate what kind of emails you are sending so that you can optimize your strategy and find the tools that give the best results.