TOP 12 COLD EMAIL SOFTWARE
Have you ever gotten that annoying personalized email from a complete that addresses you by name? Yeah, that one that has actual information about you and hooks you to read more? And how many times have you opened a cold email to discover that the tool advertised actually has a lot of value for your business? If you ask me, I get these emails all the time
And I love them.
I’ve built relationships with tens of different marketers and marketing tools in the last few years, all from the best cold email outreach software directed at me.
Cold email outreach is so effective that I’ve built an agency around it and we use it to power up our link-building campaigns, our business development, and lead prospecting.
So why is cold email outreach so powerful? Let’s break down some of the top reasons why you should use cold email outreach software for your B2B company.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF DOING COLD EMAIL OUTREACH?
It’s the preferred method of communication for B2B professionals
Several research studies have shown that top-level executives still expect to be sold via cold email outreach. Marketing managers spend a lot of hours every day in their email inboxes and they still expect to receive communication from marketers via emails.
That’s why various marketing newsletters like ProductHunt’s daily newsletter and the Daily Brew are gaining in popularity because executives welcome the opportunity to be introduced to new marketing tools that can save them time and money.
It’s a perfect medium
Email is a great medium for B2B marketing. It is really easy to use and doesn’t require any coding experience (unlike some chatbots). It is capable of containing any kind of media be it a gif file, an image, or a video. It can be customized, personalized, and arrives quickly without delay.
It’s a great medium and it’s especially powerful when you combine it with other forms of marketing communication. And with a huge number of marketing automation tools, you can shift your focus elsewhere while your cold emails get sent for you!
What happens when you combine it with other channels
Email outreach is particularly powerful when you combine it with other marketing channels. Let me give you an example.
Several years ago I found a marketing agency owner on LinkedIn that was an expert in influencer marketing. I wanted to learn the ins and outs of influencer marketing to leverage influencers to grow my brand.
So I sent the guy an email and he wasn’t interested in partnering with me and teaching me the tools of the trade. I tried a second time by sending a personalized connect request on LinkedIn (it turns out that we were both from the same town originally) and then followed up with another email.
This time, the influencer marketing guru was happy to talk to me and we’ve worked on several projects together since.
So you can see that email outreach becomes even more powerful when it’s combined with social media outreach, whether that’s a LinkedIn page or a Facebook group. It also becomes enhanced when you participate in the online community of your lead (like a Facebook group) or engage with their content (like leaving a comment on their blog).
That’s all fantastic, but why do I need to use a cold email outreach tool? Why use the software at all? Can’t you just send emails yourself?
Great question, let’s look at some of the advantages and features of these cold email tools.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF USING COLD EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE?
Automation and Efficiency
One important advantage of using the best cold email software rather than sending all the emails manually is that you get to save a lot of time and make your operation much more efficient. You can send thousands of automated emails per month from one email account using a tool. This would take you hours and hours of time and instead you can set it all up with one click.
Cold email tools also allow you to schedule several campaigns at once and create automatic follow-ups. You can select to send 5-6 follow-ups per lead, significantly increasing the likelihood of a booking. According to some research done by a cold email marketing software called Woodpecker, the first email follow-up brings the highest reply rate, about 40% higher than the initial email.
Campaigns with at least one follow-up convert 22% better than campaigns with just one email. And Woodpecker found that frequency is important as well. You can set up follow-up emails with the optimal frequency of about 3-5 days (depending on your industry) with just a few clicks. Your outreach campaigns will be up and running.
Greater personalization
You can personalize emails much better when you are using cold email tools for several reasons. One, for a lot of these tools personalization, is a feature that’s built-in. You are able to upload spreadsheets of data about your leads and easily import them inside of your emails. For example, you can look up the top blog posts of a few marketing bloggers that you want to reach. Then, you could write a few lines for each one about a post they wrote that you really liked and save them in a spreadsheet. Then, import them into any cold email outreach software, and voila! You’ve got personalization!
Cold email gets really great results
When I first started doing cold email outreach campaigns I was brand new to marketing. I decided that I wanted to write some guest posts for a few marketing blogs.
I used a tool to scrape some leads and then I uploaded them all into an email outreach tool. I sent off an email campaign to several hundred blog managers and editors and followed up with them three or four times. In two weeks’ time I had more than 80 marketing blogs that were interested in publishing a guest blog post by me.
Cold email campaigns are highly effective in closing leads, prospecting, and developing relationships. So now that we went through some of the benefits of cold email outreach and tools let’s look at some of the top tools that you should be using in 2022 and beyond.
THE TOP 12 COLD EMAIL SOFTWARE TOOLS
Here are the best email outreach software in 2022:
SALESHANDY
Saleshandy is a popular cold email outreach tool that may help you streamline your efforts and improve your outcomes.
It’s one of the top cold email outreach tools on the market because of its ease of use, high email deliverability, deep level personalisation, cost-effective solution, and frictionless automation.
Mailshake
This is one of the most popular cold email outreach tools. It was developed by Sujan Patel who founded Single Grain and WebProfits, two of the most well-known marketing agencies. Mailshake one of the classic email tools that is really easy to use and has all the basic features that you need to get started from scheduling email outreach campaigns to personalization to email templates. It’s a great place to start if you are new in the world of email outreach.
Reply.io
Reply.io is on the other side of the spectrum. It’s a much more expensive platform that comes packed with a lot of advanced features. It has CRM integrations, email validation, automation and contact management. You can even filter the leads by who has clicked and who has opened your emails to see exactly who you should continue reaching out to.
Prospect.io
Prospect.io is not only a cold email outreach software tool but is also a prospecting tool. It helps you find the ideal leads for your business right within the tool. You can also use their Chrome extension to export an email from any website or LinkedIn profile page. This tool has some really great integrations such as Zapier, Piesync, Salesforce, and more. It’s a great tool for a well-rounded marketer that wants to use one system for both lead generation and for cold email outreach.
Lemlist
Lemlist has risen to fame with its incredibly advanced personalization features. It has a feature where you can take a picture of yourself holding up a sign with the name or company name of each of your leads. You can also place their name on a shirt, computer monitor, or any other picture. This looks super cool and though leads know that you are probably not wearing a T-shirt that you’ve printed with their logo, they still think that it’s really cool.
Snov.io
Snov is another one of the best cold email software with lead prospecting features. It doubles as a beautifully designed email outreach tool with some advanced email campaign capabilities as well as a prospecting tool that is able to scrape websites and get you the work email addresses of relevant people.
The tool also lets you see which leads opened your email and which ones replied. That allows you to target specific people with some manual or automatic follow-ups. It allows you to build intricate logic-based email sequences based on the behaviours of your leads.
Woodpecker
Woodpecker is another classic cold email outreach software tool. It has all the features of the other ones but it shines when it comes to team features. It lets teams collaborate, share contact lists, and rate each lead. They also claim that they are the most secure email tool out there, with features that let you send emails from your Gmail, Office 365, or an exchange account.
GMass
GMass is a really unique tool that stands out from the other ones. It’s a Chrome extension that lets you schedule sales and marketing campaigns straight from your inbox. It’s become popularized by some employees of really famous companies like Google, Twitter, Uber, and LinkedIn.
A really cool feature that GMass has is the ability to build email lists. You can literally search for any term in your inbox and then save all of the emails of the people you emailed about that topic. Then you can easily schedule an email campaign.
Yesware
Yesware is actually another extension that allows you to schedule and send email campaigns right out of your inbox. This tool lets you see which emails were opened and clicked on by your leads. It can also set up email reminders, track how prospects view email attachments and it integrates with Salesforce.
Gmelius
Gmelius is another tool that helps schedule and create email campaigns inside of your Gmail inbox. It has a little friendlier and clearer interface than Yesware or GMass but more basic features. It integrates with Salesforce and Hubspot CRM, allows you to build and share your cold email templates with your team, and monitor your email campaign performance and analytics.
QuickMail
If you are just starting out then pretty much any of these tools could help you set up email campaigns and get you started. However, if you need something more advanced, then QuickMail is the tool for you.
This tool has a lot of advanced campaign features where it allows you to create some pretty complex email campaigns and execute them seamlessly. Another really cool feature is the ability to reference a co-worker of your lead in an email automatically.
Close.io
Close.io is an incredibly popular tool that is often used for sales teams. As the name suggests, it helps teams close sales. It has a really great user interface that lets you plug in templates and send out personalized campaigns. It has real-time reporting and a customer interaction history, much like a CRM tool.
Klenty
Klenty is a great well-rounded tool that has all the great features that you need and for a great price. It lets you create email campaigns really easily, has those great integrations with Salesforce and Pipeline, and lets you track each of your lead’s actions (opens and clicks). It also has a great A/B testing feature that lets you test out different email templates and subject lines.
Now that you’ve got a list of tools to check out, let’s talk about some of the top strategies to use in your cold email campaigns.
TOP COLD EMAIL STRATEGIES
Here are some of the top email tips and strategies that you should use in your email outreach campaigns. You don’t have to use all of them. Think of them as guideposts, recommendations that you can follow if they are applicable to your audience and niche.
Be direct
One of the most powerful ways to improve your cold email outreach is to write direct emails. Nobody likes long-winded confusing emails. So when you’re conducting email outreach make sure that your emails are straight and to the point. Make sure that your message is clear and concise.
Talk about your value
This is perhaps the most important tip. You have to talk about the value that your product or service brings to your lead. Introduce it early and in a clear and concise way. Don’t bore your leads with fluffy compliments and fancy descriptions of your brand or accolades. Get straight to the point and talk about what the benefit is to your lead if they buy your product or service. Towards the end of this article, you will find a few email templates that exemplify this top tip.
Personalize your subject line
Studies have shown that personalization can increase the open rate of your emails by 90%. That means putting the name of your lead into the subject line. It could also mean putting something about their content or about them in the subject line. This works great for all types of cold email outreach.
Add emojis to your subject line
Emojis are another really powerful way to improve your email campaign. You might think that emojis are only used in social media as a cute way to message your friends, but that’s not all they can do.
Emojis provide a really easy way to make your emails stand out visually in the recipient’s mailbox.
MORE ADVANCED EMAIL INTEGRATIONS
What if you don’t have the time or money to purchase a more advanced tool with both email and CRM capabilities? Or what if you are already using a CRM for your business and don’t want to switch? How do you connect the CRM that you are using to your email outreach tool? And what other potential integrations do you need to look for when picking the best cold email software?
Let’s explore a few of the top integrations.
Zapier
Several of the tools on our list like Woodpecker have native integrations with Zapier. That means that you can connect them to the hundreds of tools that are available on Zapier. For example, you might want to automatically transfer those leads that respond to your email into a CRM or a Google Sheet. You can totally do that with Zapier so this one integration is going to be useful for you in many ways.
CRM – Hubspot or Salesforce
A lot of the tools that we mentioned, if not all, have integrations with different CRM systems. This should be a very important criteria for a sales organization but also for a marketing team using cold email marketing software . The more you scale your campaigns and increase the number of cold emails that you’re sending every month the more critical a CRM tool will become for you. So get one early and pick the best cold email software that has that integration. This will dramatically improve your efficiency moving forward.
EXAMPLES OF SOME OF THE BEST COLD EMAIL TEMPLATES
Here are some examples of really effective cold emails.
The first one that I want to show you is one of the best emails I’ve seen in a while. It presents a great way to reference an event and present the value of your product or service in really simple terms.
Subject: Congrats!
Hi [name],
Just saw the news about [trigger event]. Congrats!
Usually when this happens, [insert value prop] becomes a priority. So, I thought you might be interested in finding out how we helped [similar company] [insert benefit].
I know things at [company name] must be crazy now, but If you’d like to learn more, let’s set up a quick call.
How does [specific day and time] look on your calendar? Alternatively, here’s a link to my calendar or feel free to send me yours.
Another example of a really great cold email comes from Sujan Patel, the founder of Mailshake. He has this simple 3-sentence formula that can be used to craft really direct and clear cold emails. Check it out.
Hi [name],
My name is [your name], and I’ll keep this quick.
I’m the founder of a software tool that saves busy executives like you as many as 10 hours each and every week.
Could I have ten minutes of your time next week for a personalized demo that’ll make clear why entrepreneurs like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, and Malcolm Gladwell love our product?
Now, you might need to build some clout around your product or service to use this particular template, otherwise, you might need to change it a bit to fit your business if you are new or less known.
Here’s another great cold email. This one comes from Buffer and it’s called the Bridge-After-Bridge (BAB) formula. It’s a great way to present the problem that your business solves and the before and after snapshot.
Hi [name],
If you’re like most executives, you know how frustrating it can feel to have your time wasted.
Our software changes that, freeing up as many as 10 hours each week for clients like Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, and Malcolm Gladwell.
If you’d be willing to give me just ten minutes of your time, I’ll show you how you can achieve the same with our innovative platform. What’s the best time to connect next week for a personalized demo?
Here’s another one from Bryan Harris of Growth Tools. In this template you get to mention your competitor and then differentiate yourself and talk about why your product is better. Short and to the point.
Hi [Name],
Just ran across your website and noticed you were using [Your competitor’s product]. How are you liking it? I run a [service] called [your company].
It’s just like [your competitor’s product], only [key differentiator]. If you’re up for it, I would love to jump on a quick call with you and get your opinion on how we could make [prospect’s company] better (and see if it would make sense for us to work together).
Would [date and time] be a good time for you? (If not, I’m flexible, just let me know)
Here’s another great template from Replyify. It provides a really great opening email in a cold email sequence.
Subject: Question about {something they do}
Body:
Hey {first name},
I noticed that your site currently isn’t {something that you solve}.
Implementing {best feature} is actually something that we help companies {insert social proof like a competitor you work with or customer count} like yours with all the time.
Is there a day next week when you have 10 minutes to connect so we can talk about getting this taken care of for you.
Best,
These are great email templates and they provide a great start for someone that’s new to cold email outreach. What if you wanted to launch a 5-6 email sequence? What would that look like?
Here’s a particular email sequence that our friends from Brightech used to get 20-30% reply rates from cold leads. They sent this email campaign to several hundred bloggers to invite them to their affiliate program.
Email 1 – The short intro
Subject line: Quick Question 
We were looking for awesome DIY bloggers and your name came up.
I work for Brightech, we’re an L.A based lighting company,
We’re looking for bloggers to write about our magnifier lamps.
Would love to send you a magnifier lamp of your choice,
And have you do a post showing how you’re using it.
In return, we could add you to our affiliate program and provide 15% commission on any sales you bring in.
What do you say?
Email 2 – More Info
Hey {{name:there}},
Just wanted to follow up,
Would you be interested in joining our affiliate program?
We want to build some long-term relationships with people that have amazing content like yours.
People seriously love our magnifier lamps, and we got a bunch of different styles.
Take a look – [URL]
Let me know,
Email 3 – The Quick Follow Up
Hey {{name:there}},
Did you get a chance to read my last email?
Would love to add you as an affiliate.
Please let me know if you are still interested 
.
Email 4 – The closing email
Hey {{name:there}},
I’ve reached out a few times regarding our affiliate program.
My guess is that we’re out of touch for one of three reasons:
– You don’t see a fit
– You got lost looking at our amazing collection…
– You are secretly a superhero and have been too busy fighting crime to reply
If any of these are correct then they may be the exact reason why we should talk now…
Thanks,
I particularly love that closing email that they sent because it’s direct but has some humor in it as well. And it fulfils its main purpose – the lead responds with either a yes or a no, and that’s what you want when doing cold email outreach.
RECAP
Cold email outreach is a really powerful marketing channel if you have the right tools. The right tool for you should include the following elements: the right integrations with CRM tools, A/B testing, personalizations, campaign builder, and analytics on each of your leads. And that’s it, folks. Hope you enjoyed this guide on the best cold email software, please let us know if we missed a tool on our list and if you have a particularly good template you like to use, or if you have a recommended cold email platform, we would love to see it in the comments below.
FAQs
Cold email software is a program that delivers cold emails for you. Cold emails are unsolicited emails to a client or customer hoping to gain their services. With cold email software, you can deliver engaging emails to a whole host of potential clients, bringing more awareness to your company and brand.
In the digital age, cold email software is a valuable tool that allows you to book calls with clients instantly by reaching out to them. If your marketing department isn’t already making use of this software, then why not use one of the magnificent tools suggested above?
Great cold email software should have personalisation, automation, and other marketing features. With an ideal cold email program, all these features work together to generate high click- and open rates for your emails at an affordable price.
Here’s how those features work in tandem to support fantastic cold email software:
- Personalisation allows your emails to feel more friendly and exclusive to your clients, increasing the likelihood that they’ll respond to your message.
- Automation allows you to send out emails quickly to loads of clients, which will save you a lot of time in the cold email process.
- Marketing features will deliver you numerous data and customer insights so that you can adjust your campaigns to attract clients and customers better.
