What is a Cold Email?
In the age of texting and social media, email remains one of the most popular forms of communication. According to data, internet users sent and received approximately 306 billion emails every day in 2020.
When it comes to B2B outreach, cold emails make up a very small yet crucial part of this number.
If you’re unfamiliar with cold emails, they are unsolicited emails sent to potential customers about a company’s products or services.
Similar to cold calling, cold emailing is a key facilitator of B2B sales engagement.
Popular misconception portrays both as invasive and pushy. In reality, a well-crafted cold email campaign (or cold call campaign) offers valuable, relevant content to prospects who are likely to benefit.
To scale their sales outreach and increase response rates, companies rely on cold email software.
If you’re in the market for cold email tools, we’ll be exploring essential features to watch out for. We’ll explore the best cold email software today’s sales tech has to offer.
Essential Features for Cold Email Software
The core goal of any cold email software is to distribute emails to quality leads. Matched with a finely-crafted email campaign, cold email software can boast a high ROI and improve conversion rates.
To maximize outreach and secure positive results, teams must choose a cold email tool with features that suit their needs.
Must-have features include:
- Automation for optimal functionality: Cold email tools offer plenty of automation features, but as with any platform, they’re not all created equal.
Your chosen tool should allow you to proactively scale your campaign. Features like customizable email steps and flexible scheduling are basic but critical to optimizing your campaign.
- Personalization options: Emails with advanced personalization have an average response rate of 17%. Compared to a 7% average for emails without advanced personalization, cold email software should offer both flexible and dynamic personalization options.
At the bare minimum, users should be able to customize subject lines, templates, and other basic attributes.
- Collaboration features for larger teams: Like many sales tools, cold email software can support team collaboration.
Features to look out for include shared dashboards, inbox rotation, audit logs, and email tracking. Cold email software should also provide basic real-time tracking and metrics reply rates, bounce rates, open rates, and so on.
- Email deliverability features: For cold emails to be received, software must safeguard against spam folders and ensure that campaigns are hitting the right accounts.
Built-in features such as email validation, email finders, email verification, and A/B testing can help here.
Top Cold Email Software for Sales Teams
Quality cold email software offers more than just automated follow-up.
They provide the tools, workflows, and integrations needed to effectively scale your campaign and reach out to best-fit prospects.
To help you choose the right platform, we’ve put together a list of top recommendations for cold emailing.
Koncert
Koncert is a multichannel sales engagement platform used by B2B sales teams. Two of its key products support cold email outreach: Koncert Cadence and Koncert Coverage.
Thanks to Cadence’s carefully tailored email steps, sales reps can manage, maintain, and facilitate a high-quality cold email campaign.
Here’s a rundown of key features that support cold emailing:
- Capitalize on engagement: Cadence scores prospects based on email engagement. It monitors metrics such as email opens, replies, and click-throughs to better prioritize prospects across your contact list.
- Sales automation: Leverage a multichannel workflow, build email sequences, and automate outreach with tested, outbound cadences to discover your best approach. To stay on point, use templates or AI assistance to guide cold emailing.
- Flexible CRM integration: Cadence acts within CRMs such as Salesforce and Hubspot to help you reach out to the right prospect, at the right time. Koncert also integrates with stand-alone CRM platforms and their connected email systems, such as Gmail and Outlook, for flexible sales outreach.
Salesforce
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As the CRM of choice for many businesses, Salesforce’s Email Studio offers both basic and sophisticated tools for cold email marketing.
Let’s review some features:
- Develop email lists: Drag-and-drop segmentation allows users to craft and customize their contact lists. In doing so, outreach can stay relevant and consistent.
- Maximize engagement: Aided by other toolsets, Email Studio helps users find the right prospects to engage with. Follow your most active prospects and reduce contact with unlikely leads.
- Craft the right approach: Use customizable templates and email design tools to find the right branding for your business. Integrate with other software such as Yesware, Smartreach, Snov.io, and any of the tools we’ve listed here to optimize your cold outreach strategy.
HubSpot
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Hubspot is another popular CRM platform that offers email marketing software and automation tools for cold emails, drip campaigns, lead generation, and more.
We’ve shortlisted some key features, including:
- Free email tools: In addition to pricing plans for more advanced features, Hubspot offers free email marketing tools for teams developing their outreach strategy.
- Powered by Hubspot CRM: Email campaigns on Hubspot are supported by the same customer data centralized on their CRM software. Users can utilize lead data to build their campaigns and target best-fit prospects.
- Personalization: Hubspot also offers email templates and personalization options for reps and marketers. Choose from several free templates or craft your own with their drag-and-drop editor.
Woodpecker
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Woodpecker is a cold email software that caters to B2B companies. It offers products to increase outreach, automate workflows, and improve lead generation, amongst other functions.
Here’s what we discovered about their platform:
- Integration: To develop and refine email sequences, Woodpecker integrates with top CRMs like Salesforce, plus additional tools such as Zapier.
- Versatile features: Track campaign metrics and use software-generated insights to adjust course. Share lists of contacts and blacklist domains. Utilize their email warm-up and verification features to maintain sender reputation.
- Improved deliverability: Craft and streamline personalized outreach with predictable deliverability. Woodpecker also offers easy onboarding so businesses can get to work quickly.
Reply.io
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Reply.io is another popular cold email software. Its services couple automated outreach with multichannel workflows, LinkedIn prospecting, and cold email automation.
These features allow users to:
- Analyze progress: Reply’s tracking and reporting system provides information about your campaign’s impact. Dashboards also monitor individual and holistic team performance for reps to assess.
- Build unique campaigns: Reply offers user personalization through easy-to-learn tools, automatable tasks, email and sequence templates, and more.
- Work with LinkedIn: Reply’s most notable feature is its LinkedIn outreach tool. The Reply Chrome extension finds verified email addresses on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, or LinkedIn Recruiter to accelerate prospecting. Users may then set up personalized cold emails to reach out to new leads.
Zapier
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Zapier allows users to seamlessly integrate new tools into their tech stack. One of them, Email by Zapier, is a staple for many companies.
Let’s quickly review some features:
- Automate your entire process: Through “zaps,” Zapier bridges workflows between multiple apps so users can automate tasks they'd ordinarily carry out manually.
- Set up new workflows: After integrating their key apps, users can trigger inbound emails when a message is forwarded to their custom Zapier email address. They can also set up actions for outbound emails based on user-defined events.
- User-friendly: Zapier is fairly easy to use and easier to incorporate into other cold email tools. Since the focus is on integration, teams don’t have to worry about compatibility or onboarding. They can work with their email account, CRM, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and more.
Mailshake
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Mailshake is a sales engagement platform that offers management tools to help boost email responses and conversion rates.
Here’s an overview of their email solutions:
- Optimize outreach campaigns: Built-in tools for deliverability, mail merge, and automated follow-up ensure sales emails land where they should: the prospect’s inbox.
- Work with your tech stack: Mailshake provides native integration with Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Teams can also run their campaigns out of their preferred email service providers, such as Gmail, Outlook, or SMTP.
- AI-support and templates: Mailshake also offers an AI email writer and cold email templates to kickstart outreach campaigns.
Respona
Respona is an all-in-one platform for PR and link-building outreach. It's designed to help sales and marketing teams automate and personalize their email campaigns for increased engagement and conversion rates.
Here’s our take on what Respona brings to the table:
- Smart Automation: Respona offers dynamic email sequences that react to the actions of recipients. It can integrate with a variety of CRMs and seamlessly pull in contact details to personalize each message.
- Collaborative Tools: Teams can coordinate their outreach efforts with shared campaigns and real-time analytics. There's also an option for leaving internal notes and assigning tasks to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
- Outreach Efficiency: With a built-in search engine for finding contact information and AI-driven email personalization, Respona enhances your ability to connect with the right people. They emphasize a high deliverability rate to make sure your cold emails hit the mark every time.
Hunter
Hunter is an all-in-one cold email software that supports you in every step of successful email campaigns – from prospecting to automating email sequences.
Here are the most interesting features their platform offers:
- Integrations: It has native integrations with Hubspot and Pipedrive but also offers an integration with Zapier that allows you to connect Hunter with hundreds of tools.
- Data quality: Hunter is most popular for its data features that help you to find and verify email addresses to enhance deliverability and protect the sender's reputation. It is a must-feature for everyone doing cold email seriously.
- Campaigns: Sending personalized cold emails on the scale is easy. You can track the performance of your campaigns, manage all the inboxes from one dashboard, rotate email accounts, and segment leads by engagement.
- Chrome extension: You can find email addresses from websites directly as you visit them.
- Bulk tasks:You can use each Hunter’s feature in Bulks to scale email finding and list cleaning processes.
Optimize Your Cold Email Delivery with Koncert
Cold emails are an important component of many B2B sales processes. Cold email tools such as Koncert’s Cadence platform provide outreach and email engagement, with the right message getting to those leads who are entering your sales funnel. Koncert offers dynamic sales tools to optimize and automate sales outreach strategies.
With the support of Koncert Cadence teams gain the flexibility needed to personalize, scale, and test the effectiveness of their cold email campaigns. Users can integrate with CRM and leverage AI assistance to further enhance engagement.
To learn more, contact our team and get started with your demo today.