3 Expert Insights About Email Performance (August 2024)

Email outreach is a powerful tool, but getting it right takes more than just hitting send.

These expert insights will help your emails stand out in crowded inboxes so you see better email results.

Turn off open rate tracking to help deliverability

Tracking open rates is a common way to monitor email campaign performance.

It may not always be a good idea though. Some email service providers ‘penalize’ open rate tracking by rerouting such emails to a person’s spam.

As Antonio Cerneli suggests, one simple fix for low open rates and deliverability is to just turn off the open rate tracker.

In his experience, campaigns that had been struggling suddenly saw a surge in performance. And despite having zero visibility into the number of opens, he could still see better results since there were 3-5x more replies.

One last point worth mentioning: Even though turning off open rate tracking led to more out-of-office replies, it was a sign that emails were landing in inboxes.

How you can apply this

Here’s how to apply this to your sales outreach:

• Turn off open rate tracking for all ongoing active campaigns
  • AiSDR users can deactivate open rate tracking from each campaign’s settings
• Don’t turn on tracking when setting up new campaigns
• Watch for an increase in OOO auto-replies to verify emails reach inboxes

Write your email follow-ups to mirror how customers talk

Email writers (especially new ones) have a tendency to overthink cold emails and their follow-ups. Consequently, the results are frequently generic and ineffective, even if there is some value (e.g. time savings and convenience).

As Josh Braun explains, instead of trying to condense customer words into a simple sentence that’s easy to read, you should just repeat what they said.

Here’s his example.

Option B might look a bit clunky, and you might want to simplify the language, but you shouldn’t.

Without a doubt, Option B is better.

Why?

It’s specific. It’s a customer’s words. And it speaks to their pains.

Leads feel like you understand them. In turn, they’ll engage and ask what you have to offer.

How you can apply this

Here’s how to apply this to your sales outreach:

• Take a step back from your pitch
• Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
• Ask yourself “Does this make me want to buy?”
• Personalize the pitch so that it speaks to the lead’s problems
  • Bonus tip: If you have any social proof like quotes or testimonials, you can leverage their wording to help you speak the same language and get on the same page faster

Use a CTA that works

Your call to action is your chance to tell leads what you want them to do.

Generally, as Gregory Martignoni shares, there are three main types of CTAs:

• Direct | Example: “Have time for a 15-minute call?”
• Interest-based | Example: “Are you interested?”
• Value-based | Example: “Can I send you a video explaining how to get 8-10 more meetings per month with cold email?”

In his opinion though, the first two are no longer effective in 2024. 

Instead, you should double down and rely on value-based CTAs to get outbound results.

How you can apply this

Here’s how to apply this to your sales outreach:

• Create CTAs that check these boxes…
  • Is it clear about the action the lead should take?
  • Does it provide a valuable resource?
  • Does it solve a problem relevant to the lead?
  • Does it mention a valuable KPI to measure itself against?