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Is Cold Emailing Dead? Share Your Client Acquisition Strategies! | Clay

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01 Community General

Is Cold Emailing Dead? Share Your Client Acquisition Strategies!

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Not sure if this is the right Slack group but… Is everyone really rejecting cold emails nowadays? A little storytime + a question When I started taking this business seriously during the pandemic, I cold emailed like my life depended on it. (Well, my bills sure did lol) I came from a journalism background and before that, content mills (I know...) and have zero experience working with brands. BUT, I guess my vulnerability and creativity worked because brands welcomed me. My cold emails basically said, “I’m a journalist and have reported for XYZ and I’ve never worked with brands before but I have THIS bright idea I think your audience would appreciate.” And it worked. I ended up writing for Urth, Zapier, Toggl, Teachable, Shutterstock, FM .co, and more. Unlike most writers who focus on SEO, I focused on storytelling. Everything was fine. Until these past few months... A lot of writers especially on LinkedIn started sharing their experiences of how cold emailing doesn’t work as well as it used to anymore. I thought it was just me. That I was sounding too sales-y, that my emails felt forced, etc. Turns out, it’s not just me. So the question (and I’m really keen to read your answers) is cold emailing dead? How do y’all find clients these days? How do you continue building that pipeline?

3 comments

David C.
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I feel you. Have had the same experience and trying to work this out too (not super successfully, yet). From my experience the key issue isn't the language you use, it's deliverability. Specifically, the affect of the infrastructure you use. More context: Lot's have changed in terms of email deliverability since June 2024 when Google and some other email service providers decided to enforce more strict requirements on bulk email sending (like the need to authenticate emails, to include "unsubscribe" one-click, etc.). This practically means that you need to take specific measures to setup the email inboxes you use to send the emails from in a way that doesn't alert the ESPs to suspect you're bulk sending, otherwise your emails won't even reach the primary inbox of the person your sending them too and then the chances of them reading the emails are existent. Try looking into this guide. It helped me a lot - https://www.za-zu.com/handbook#creating-email-inboxes-and-optimizing-them-for-deliverability
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Matt R.
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thanks for sharing David!
Hassaan S.
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Hi Tammy D., David is mostly right but it is also about the offer you are pitching and also you know that market has recently gotten crowded and everyone is sick of receiving 20-30 cold mails a day. But still people are closing deals based on the value they are providing. Key things to focus on are quality infrastructure, focus on elaborating the value business will get from the services also dont use too salesy language as it kills deliverability and force the reader to mark your mail as spam and also try to be straightforward and provide competitive pricing, reader is not a child that he/she will read a good story and will be convinced to buy, he is a mature person running a business he will always chase the value that makes his/her business more profitable. (Golden words BTW)