Google is dead (for cold email)
In 2021, I discovered cold email as an acquisition channel and it worked beautifully. It was cheap, easy to pick up and had a fantastic ROI. What a time!
Since then, things have gotten a bit more complicated. Email provider Zoho Mail (at the time also my preferred vendor) took a hard stance on cold email and banned it outright. Farewell to dozens of my warmed up email accounts.
Afterwards, everybody collectively decided to move over to Google Workspace. Google noticed and banned warmup techniques. Bad sign.
Now, Google has really increased their efforts. As a result, I have been kicked out of all of my email accounts. I first noticed in my cold email tool.
This is what Smartlead (my cold email tool of choice) looked like for all of my Google Workspace accounts 👇
This goes hand in hand with their newest announcement on their blog, fighting spam with stricter requirements for bulk senders.
I had also tried out privateemail (from namecheap) as an email host. Complete disaster. Even before sending a single email, I noticed that the email's IP addresses were on two separate blacklists.
It was no surprise to see that in the warmup process, a crazy amount of emails landed in spam.
48% landing in spam - without messaging a single prospect! Crazy!
I am currently warming up a few email accounts from Microsoft to see if they are more accommodating to sending out cold email campaigns for VCbacked.
All things considered, cold emailing has become a lot more difficult than it has been only a few years ago. Time to adapt.
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I've been using a tool called ScriptMail.co to run cold email campaigns on my own VPS servers and t works well. But yeah cold email is getting more and more strict because of spammers. This whole space needs to change significantly. Before people get out of the mindset of "quantity" and get into the mindset of "quality", rules will keep getting tougher.
Thanks for sharing!
I think one thing people need to understand is there are a few ways big companies do cold email. The most common is borderline spam. They send the same templated email to everyone making it look like it is personalized. But it actually isn't.
Those people are looking to get response rates between 1% and 3%, and get a fraction of those people to buy. Because of those low numbers, they are sending 1k's of emails per day, across not only multiple email accounts, but multiple domains.
This is what Google is cracking down on, and I couldn't be more stoked!
What still works in cold email (and likely always will) is a more targeted approach. I have used this to grow my UX design freelancing business to be my #1 source of income.
Find someone you REALLY think would buy from you. Send them 4 very targeted, highly personalized emails explaining what you do and asking for a meeting.
I've gotten 90% open rates, 20%+ response rates, and closed 1% of people I reach out to. It takes me some time, way more than sending out 1k's of emails. But the results are better and much more rewarding.
This style of cold email is still not dead. At least it isn't for me!
Yes. I follow the same approach. Works quite well, tbh.
Is there a resource you'd refer to (or happy to get guidance from you directly) that educates about this strategy? I believe it'd be helpful to know what your process is for identifying the people to send to, and how you plan the 4 emails.
I usually only go as far as 2 emails – maybe over-cautious.
Interesting. Definitely something I'll miss. Been very helpful in building initial traction for previous projects.
I'm curious, though, how many cold emails are you talking about? Bulk might be an issue, but my approach is usually quite personalized, even when cold.
All emails were personalized. I sent between 40-50 emails per day after a two week warmup period. Bounce rate < .5%...
Oh, interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Looking into Smartlead and Lemlist now. Never used these, actually – are you saying they won't be as effective now with the new policies?
Also, great work with VC-backed.. just checked it out. Looks super impressive and something I'd probably use in the very near future :)
Regarding cold email tools, I think they basically all do the same. I chose smartlead because they are relatively cheap and offer an all-in-one solution. But you really cannot go wrong, they are all very similar.
In terms of policies, I believe that setting up emails on Microsoft 365 is the best option for now. I have yet to run longer tests - so I'll have to report back.
And thanks for the kind words! Let me know if you give it a try or if you have any questions. :)
I reach out to my prospects via cold emailing. And talking about the email warm-up tool, I use only SendFlock both for email warm up amd cold emailing. I get great results as I get report of my email list. The best I find is the CRM.
I've never used cold emailing. Too stressful for me. But I did notice that it's not just emailing that's getting hammered. It's everything else. Anywhere on social media (reddit, twitter, facebook etc.), it's getting harder and harder to get anywhere. Or is it just my imagination? Though I remember 15 years ago advertising on google. It was cheap and lots of genuine clicks. These days you can spend $2000 on a storm of click farms and go nowhere real fast.
I cannot speak on most other channels to the same degree, but I feel ya. It feels like every space in digital marketing has become pretty crowded and it is tough to stand out / get great performance anymore with the same ease. But there are always new channels popping up. :)
Couple of days ago my friend told me that they use AI based warming tool which is quite good
instantly ai
I've also used Instantly before, it is very similar in features to Smartlead. Maybe I'll give it another shot. Thanks!
Cold emailing is challenging, especially with Google's algorithms. What alternatives are you considering?
I've set up email accounts on Microsoft now - I'll report back how that's going.
What type of warmup technique were you using for Gmail?
I haven't seen this type of ban unless you went from 0->150+ emails daily
I was using Smartlead's warmup. It uses the "app password" function in Google Workspace.
I also limited my warmup and later warmup + outreach to max. 50 emails / day.
FYI your regular, everyday Gmail account also has this function. I also use a sender alias from Gmail to send from my own domain and it works quite well
In theory you could do all of this on a new Gmail account without paying for workspace (but now that you're banned maybe they'll come after you)
Um.. for those not immersed in the cold email world.
What's the def of "cold email"
At the same time, is this the same as paying someone like "sendmail" to be able to send out "cold" emails?
thanks for shoring your knowledge with us.
Cold email = email sent to a prospect without prior contact
I use a service called Smartlead for it, but there are many other out there (Woodpecker, Lemlist, Instantly etc. etc.)
Cold email is emailing a person who is looking for your service or product. But the person doesn't know about you. So you have to reach out to them and let them know you exist and how you can help them solve your problem using email marketing.
I tried other tactics like social media marketing, video marketing, review sites, launching site etc. But the best worked for me is cold email marketing using https://sendflock.com
Btw, I'm the cofounder of RetargetKit and founder of SaaSWriters.io.
Thanks for sharing, @theboringfounder!