Choose a Cold Email Tool

You should use a dedicated cold email tool to make cold email a dependable and predictable channel for your business growth.

Summary

1. A cold email tool allows you to automate and scale your email outreach.
2. When choosing the cold email software for your business, consider the following:
   - How it will connect to your existing sales stack,
   - If it offers essential cold email features,
   - If other users are happy with the tool and its customer support,
   - Pricing, specifically how much it will cost to use per mailbox and how many emails per month you’ll be able to send.

Why you need a cold email tool

If you send two cold emails a day, you might be able to track everything in a Google Sheet or even on a piece of paper.

However, you should aim to build a scalable process for your campaigns from the start, because eventually, you will most likely want to scale them – one of the main advantages of cold emails over other outreach methods is how easy it is to ramp up.

That’s where cold email software can make your life easier.

How to choose a cold email tool

There are five main categories to consider when choosing a cold email tool:

1. Your existing tool stack
2. Cold email features
3. Other features
4. Customer support
5. Pricing

Your existing sales stack

Before you choose a cold email tool, take a look at your existing stack. It should influence your decision, especially if you’re using cold email outreach as a part of a larger process.

For example, if you want to use cold emails to sell a service to enterprise customers, the tool you’ll use to send cold emails will only be a part of your setup. You will also need a CRM tool like HubSpot or Pipedrive, at the very least.

It’s easier to migrate from a cold email tool than a CRM that several departments might have been using for years. So choose a cold email tool that you can easily integrate with your existing sales stack.

<callout>Many cold email tools natively integrate with the most popular CRMs or spreadsheets. For instance, Hunter Campaigns can be integrated with multiple leading CRM providers, making it super easy to run cold email campaigns from Hunter and send all the data straight to your CRM.</callout>

Cold email features

Many tools can allow you to send cold email campaigns, but not all of them have the features necessary to maximize your success rates.

As you scale your campaigns, you’ll need typical cold email features like:

1. Connecting and using multiple mailboxes.
2. Rotating between multiple inboxes to send one campaign.
3. Personalizing your messages using custom attributes (merge tags).
4. Saving and using email templates.
5. Scheduling email sending.
6. Setting daily sending limits.
7. Tracking opens, clicks, and replies.
8. Using a custom tracking domain.
9. Integrating your campaigns with your CRM data.
10. Adding and customizing an unsubscribe link to your messages.
11. Collaborating with your team using multiple user seats.

You might also need advanced features, like adding personalized images and videos.

Setting yourself up with a tool will take valuable time, so make sure the tool you choose has all the features you need.

Other features

Many cold email tools don’t just focus on sending cold emails. For example, Hunter allows you to first find emails and verify emails, then save them as Leads, and finally use those verified emails in Campaigns.

Consider the role cold email campaigns play in your sales process. If you manage to find a tool that fulfills multiple purposes, you’ll likely save time and money you would otherwise have to spend on other solutions.

Customer support and reputation

Good customer service is essential in cold email software for several reasons:

• The industry is moving quickly, and most tools release multiple new features every year. With great customer support, you’ll have no issues implementing the new features you need to stay competitive.
• As you increase the number of emails you send, you’ll want a support team that will find and suggest optimal pricing solutions so you only end up paying for what you’re really using.
• If you encounter any issues, like an increased bounce rate or having your email addresses blocked, good customer service will help you with troubleshooting.

Fortunately, customer service is one of the main aspects customers rate when leaving software reviews on sites like G2, ProductHunt, or Capterra.

You can visit these websites and look through customer reviews to get a feeling of the customer service you can expect.

<expert quote>

Technical features are important, but I recommend finding a tool with world-class customer support. Issues will eventually arise, and you want a CS team that will be responsive and help you move forward in a timely manner.

Ricky Pearl

</quote>

Pricing

Finally, you need to look at pricing. This should be your final step because you can’t properly assess the pricing models of various tools before you know which features you’ll need.

When assessing the pricing of various tools, pay attention to the following aspects:

• How many emails can you send per month
• How many recipients can you add per campaign or in total
• How much it costs to add user seats
• How much it costs to add email accounts