5 Reasons Your Email Outreach Campaign is Failing You (+ Tips to Improve)

Email outreach is a tried-and-true tactic for contacting potential leads and increasing business revenue.

While it can be time-consuming, many businesses employ email outreach as a core part of their marketing campaigns. When done right, it often yields the highest ROI compared to other channels.

While it may seem pretty straightforward, email outreach can be very nuanced and not without its pitfalls.

I’ve seen businesses with open rates of 30 percent or more while others barely hit seven percent. So, what exactly sets these businesses apart?

If you've dismissed cold outreach in the past or aren’t seeing the results you want from your email campaigns, here are five common mistakes you could be making and tips you can take to see improvements in your outreach efforts immediately.

Looking for a free, AI-based cold email generator tool to enhance your email outreach? Look no further! Check out our tool here.

1. You’re Not Being Personal

Many people don’t take the time to customize messages for their prospects, use boilerplate content in every email they send, or neglect to include any personalization at all.

To put it simply, if you don’t personalize your emails, they will just be another cold email that gets lost in someone’s inbox forever.

Let’s take a look at two email examples.

Number 1...

And number 2...

I think it’s pretty apparent which email you’d rather engage with.

By sending personalized messages instead of generic ones, you can increase open rates by up to 15 percent.

It’s been repeatedly proven that hyper-personalized emails work; however, like the one from our example above, they take time.

That doesn’t mean starting from scratch every time. You can still adopt effective email templates - make sure you personalize each one.

So whether it's something as simple as including a personalized question in your subject line or a customized signature, by taking the time to make it relevant for each recipient, you should see an immediate improvement in your email campaigns.

Combine that with email and marketing automation solutions, and you’ll effectively reach more people with increased response rates.

Here are some other tips on how to personalize cold emails:

• Use the recipient's first name.
• Ask a question in your subject line that is customized to them and their company (e.g., "I saw on LinkedIn that you're looking for more clients--how's it going?")
• Look towards their social media pages for common interests that you can use to capture their attention.
• Put into Google: site: {Domain Name} + “{Name of recipient}” and see if you can find any articles they’ve written. You can then read their articles and draw some points in your email.

If you are still struggling to craft a B2B cold email template, worry not! Our article provides 12 well-crafted cold email templates.

2. Your Subject Lines aren't Creative or Direct Enough

The main goal of the subject line is to capture your recipient's attention and get them to open the email. It’s a vital part of any email, yet it is still often overlooked as a tactic to improve response and open rates.

In general, you'll want to use clear and direct language when writing subject lines so prospects don't get confused about what type of email they’re receiving.

And remember, these people are likely very busy.

Avoid generic headlines such as "Check out our product" or any other vague CTA phrase that lacks soul.

Instead, try something more direct such as: "Hey there! We think we can help with X", "X problem solved!" or even just asking them if they'd like to see what you have for them.

It's essential to come up with subject lines that are clever, descriptive, and enticing so they stand out against the rest of your cold emails in their inbox. The subject line doesn't have to be long; it just has to be relevant enough so they see that what you're emailing them about is of interest and will entice them to open up their inbox to find out more.

You’ll find the following tips handy for improving your subject lines:

• Don't make your subject lines too wordy. Be as concise and direct as possible.
• You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Check out the subject lines that work best for other cold outreach emails and try emulating them to see what aspects make these headlines successful.
• Ensure that your subject line is relevant to your email. You’ll likely irritate someone if the email subject line is, as they call it, a “click-bait.”
• Consider a small cliffhanger to arouse curiosity. A sure way to increase open rates is to pique your recipient's interest. One way to do this is by adding “...” to the end of your subject lines.

While subject lines are not an exact science, the above tips give me the most open rates. Ensure you also do your A/B testing and see which version gets the most responses.

To effortlessly improve your subject lines and supercharge your cold email success, try using Close's Email Subject Line Generator. This innovative tool harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to craft engaging and impactful subject lines that significantly enhance open rates.

3. You Don't Have the Right Person or the Correct Email

Another widespread mistake I see with cold email outreach is sending messages to the wrong person or group.

This can often lead to the emails being completely ignored—and rightfully so. How can a salesperson answer your question on a guest post request? Or if you’ve spent all your time on a personalized email to a specific recipient, and it reaches someone entirely different, then all that effort has been for naught.

So, if you want to avoid awkward situations like this, here is a step-by-step guide to ensure you’re hitting the right person and email:

What are Your Goals, and Who is the Likely Decision-Maker?

First, ask yourself what the purpose of your campaign is and who would be the likely decision-maker who can fulfill your request.

For example, if you wanted to write a guest post, you’d likely find someone who has the title of “Head of Content,” “Editor,” or “Marketing Manager.” However, this will depend on each company's individual structure.

Find the Right Decision-Maker

Then, look at the company's roles on its website or use social media to find the right contact.

You can do so on LinkedIn by first searching the company name, and then, under the “People” tab, entering the relevant position or role of the decision-maker you’re after.

Find the Right Email

If you’re lucky, the decision-makers emails may be listed on their social media or on the company website. However, this is hardly the case.

I highly recommend you contact email outreach tools to find the correct email address. If you have a list built for your outreach campaign, you can automate finding emails, and you are guaranteed to find more accurate emails in a few clicks than manually scraping the web yourself.

All tools have different features, and sometimes, you might need to use separate ones to find the email and release the campaign. Still, they can save a lot of time, and you won’t be left wondering whether you have the correct email.

Ask Directly if You Can’t Find Anything

Sometimes, despite all your efforts, you only find the general support email. In cases like this, the best thing you can do is explain your goal or question and ask who the best person you can turn to is.

4. Your Goals Don’t Align with Your Recipient’s Goals

The best cold email outreach campaigns are about building relationships and showing genuine interest in working together. The last thing you want to do is appear insincere when reaching out to prospects.

So, if your contact list includes people who have no real reason to care about your product or service (i.e., it doesn't solve their problems or meet any of their needs), then you are wasting not only their time but also yours.

That’s why your ideal prospect is someone who will convert into a faithful user of your brand and not someone who will either ignore you or join for a few days and then leave forever. You can do this by targeting people whose goals align with yours—they have a need you can fulfill.

This is especially true in many app marketing campaigns. The data shows that the average app loses 77 percent of its average daily users within the first three days after the installation and 95 percent within 90 days. This situation arises from an incorrectly set target audience.

Therefore, it's equally important to consider customer retention and acquisition. This is much easier when you’ve researched and reached out to the right people.

In other words, when you reach out with an air of sincerity, there is a much bigger chance of everything lining up perfectly. The response rates will likely be through the roof from day one, making setting up future follow-ups much easier.

Here are some tips you should adopt to ensure you find prospects that might have a genuine interest in what you’re offering:

• This goes without saying but do your research. Tools such as Google and LinkedIn can be of great help, especially in finding the right niche and learning more about companies that you're not familiar with prior to reaching out.
• Sometimes, there is a chance of finding ex-employees of a certain company. So make sure you double-check that they are still in the same industry. If they aren't associated with or listed within those circles, sending a cold email outreach campaign would come off as spam instead of being helpful.
• When building your email list, pay special attention to where your audience is opting in, whether it’s pop-ups from an article or forms on your homepage; where they opt in can be a key indicator of whether your outreach goals are aligned.
• For example, if you’re promoting a weight loss product to your existing mailing list and someone has opted in from an article on gaining weight and muscle, then sending that email to them may not be the best fit.
• Thankfully, many email list-building tools can help you segment different subscribers so you can get this key step right.

5. You're Not Following up Enough

One of the most common mistakes in cold email outreach campaigns is not following up often enough.

Now, there are many trains of thought here. Some people believe you should follow up until someone responds, while others think there's no point in following up further once they don't respond to your first outreach or follow-up email.

So which one is right?

There's no definitive answer here that applies to all situations, but in general, you should follow up at least twice, extending the time between each follow-up email.

For instance, I’ve found that a 2-5-1 rule can be quite effective. The first follow-up email should be sent two days after no reply, the second follow-up email should be sent five days after the last email, and the third follow-up email should be sent one month after the last email.

If they haven't responded after one month, you can be certain that they’re likely not interested.

If that sounds like a chore, it definitely can be. That’s why it’s helpful to have tools to help personalize and automate the follow-up sequence in just a few clicks. Take the Close email platform as an example.

Following up a few times gives prospects another chance to see your email and realize the value of what you have to offer them. They may also just be busy people who get flooded with offers and emails—so it’s your job to remind them of your offer.

Here are some best practices for email follow-ups:

• Try to schedule a follow-up email 48 hours after your initial outreach attempt.
• Don’t just repeat the first email or ask if they saw it. Try to add something new, which can be that extra push prospects might need to turn from prospects to clients.
• Still, don't be overly persistent and continue following up daily if prospects are ignoring or declining offers multiple times—this will likely hurt your chances of converting them since it might come across as spammy.
• In your last email, apologize for your persistence, but leave your contacts at the end in case they change their minds.
• A simple tactic that can be quite effective in increasing response rates of cold emails is simply adding, “In case you don't get my first email,” to your follow-up campaigns. By doing so, you show prospects that while maybe they missed your original campaign, you still care enough to reach out a second time! The result is that prospects are more likely to open your emails since they know what it's about and don't feel like there's any form of "pest" factor involved.

Enhance Your Email Outreach Today for Better Business Results

As you can see, improving your email outreach isn’t rocket science.

While it’ll take a bit of time and a fair few tests, I’m confident that if you implement the tips I’ve outlined in this article, you’ll see almost immediate results with your open and response rates.

And remember, you don’t have to do it alone. Tools like the Close email CRM can make your email workflows significantly easier, so you can send better emails faster.