Email Redux
Keeping out of the spam folder
Even this substack newsletter ends up in spam until most specifically tell flag it as not spam. Turns out a couple of other things needed to be done that were not mentioned in this post.
DMARC
DMARC needed to be set up, which was discovered by using one of these free tools:
Now, how to fix it? This website describes what it is and the basic steps:
But I did not use their tool to set it up because I felt it was a little underhanded to add their email onto the reporting, as that enables them to keep tabs on your email reports. So, I used this tool that doesn’t endeavor to add any backhanded stuff.
They also have a nice write-up on what the DMARC is and why it’s useful.
Mail Warm-up
Essentially, the idea is train the big guys, aka Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. to treat your mail not as spam. I miss the old days of email when we didn’t have spam folders, and most of the messages were from real people. There are several companies that offer this kind of service, and prices vary as well as quality, as with everything.
I am using GMASS as it’s free and seems to make a lot of sense to ramp up emails sent out and responded to instead of starting out with 40 or 50 per day.
Cold Email Campaign Software
The list of software or now mostly software as a service (SAAS) companies offering cold email campaigns is enormous. Starting with recommendations from Searchfunder, I boiled down the list of software that I was considering to the following:
There are many other choices, from installed software to CRM generated emails. About two weeks ago, I received an email from someone using ZOHO CRM. The problem was that it went straight into my spam folder and I did not see it for nearly two weeks. Luckily, I checked that folder, as it was a useful email to see an example of a searcher broker outreach email.
Each of these offer email tracking, templates, scheduling, mail merge, sequencing, and automated follow-up. Some of them require a higher package to get all of these features, and all offer additional features.
If I was planning to stay without a CRM, then GMASS would be a great choice. It’s free to try up to 50 emails a day, or moving up to $30/month to get rid of the limit. Unfortunately, it’s integration with CRM is minimal, and basically requires you to use a BCC which uses up half your send limits, so down to 25 per day for free.
Mixmax basically requires the $24/month plan to get all the above-mentioned features. It also comes highly recommended, but it’s only native CRM integration is with Salesforce. Salesforce is too expensive for my purposes, and thus I would be in the same boat as GMASS having to use BCC.
That leaves Lemlist which is the most expensive of the three at $60/month. It integrates with several CRM systems, including the one that I am going with, Pipedrive. If I pay for a year, I can get it for $50/month. Most likely, I will be using Lemlist. But, before I do, I am going to attempt to use Pipedrive native system as explained in this YouTube video:
CRM
I have decided to use Pipedrive after doing a cursory review as described in this previous post. If I can stick with only Pipedrive at the $25/month package level, I will have everything in one place. Which seems like a huge value when the numbers of contacts start creeping up.
For the Southeastern US I have imported ~2200 brokers with email addresses into Pipedrive. This down from ~2900 because ~700 of the emails that I had scraped were bad, and were removed. Now only roughly 1100 have verified email addresses, and the others have unknown status. Not sure yet if I should send to the unknowns, as it might get my email blacklisted as SPAM. But then again, all of Transworld Business Advisors are listed as unknown, and surely most of them are good emails. The BulkeMailchecker.com labels them as unknown with the following status “Is a Catchall mx server config.”
According to this article, it pays to be cautious with catchall email addresses. https://verifalia.com/blog/what-is-a-catch-all-email-server. The strategy they suggest is to sprinkle them in with caution and watch them closely. I may do this and if the bounce rate is too high, reduce their numbers relative to verified email addresses.