How to get more replies in cold campaigns

In this article, we'll share practical tips to increase the reply rate in your cold email campaigns.

A good reply rate not only improves your conversions but also positively affects your sender reputation. It indicates that your emails bring value to your prospects and that they are engaged enough to respond. Email providers view this as a signal that you're sending targeted campaigns.

What causes a low reply rate:

Successful campaigns don't just happen – they are always a result of careful research and preparation. One main reason is sending emails to a big list without personalizing them.

If your reply rate drops below 2%, it's a sign that you should review certain aspects of your campaign and make some improvements. To get more positive replies from your leads, follow these best practices.

1. Check if your prospect list is targeted
2. Segment your list
3. Personalize your emails
4. Schedule campaigns at the right time
5. Add value with each follow-up
6. Optimize the length of your email
7. End your emails with a question

Check if your list is targeted

Your prospect list should contain leads who are most likely to be interested in your offer.

Ask yourself these questions:

Question #1: Who can benefit from using your service? What is their job title? Are they on your list?

Question #2: What are their pain points/needs? What problem do they have that you can solve? Are they on your list?

Question #3: Who are the decision-makers? Who makes buying decisions in the company? Are they on your list?

If you're unsure, start by researching your audience and potential customers. Understand their problems and goals, what they need to succeed in their work and decide if your offer can help them. If yes - this is your lead. Learn more on how to identify your ICP.

How to optimize your prospect list:

1) Review it and ensure you're targeting the right prospects. Most of your leads should fit your ideal customer profile.
2) Your ideal customers are those who are dealing with the problems that your service can solve.

Segment your prospect list

In addition to creating your general customer profiles, break them down based on more specific criteria and sort your prospects into groups/segments. This will help you make your campaign relevant for different prospects.

Create a dedicated prospect list for each segment. The optimal prospect list size is 50 to 200 leads. Target one segment per campaign.

For example, you can use these characteristics to create lead groups. These criteria can be applied as search filters in our Database Search tool.

Company segments:

Company size, industry, revenue - easier to adjust your selling points based on the potential spending budget.

Lead segments:

Position/Seniority - easier to personalize the email sequence for prospects who share the same pain points

Geographic segments:

Location (city, state, country) - easier to schedule a campaign to be delivered at the right time for all prospects in the list.

How to get more replies from prospect segments?

1) Don't mix leads from different segments in the same campaign. This way, even if you send the same offer to 100 leads, it will still be targeted.

2) Personalize your campaign: Identify common needs or pain points for each segment and use this information in your emails

Personalize your emails

Email personalization is a must-have to raise engagement and reply rates. Any person would respond better to a personalized email.

Never write too much about yourself in your emails – the focus should be on your leads and their needs. Your email should be about what you can do specifically for them, not just what you do in general.

Make your offer targeted

The same offer won't resonate on the same level for prospects with different roles; they will have different needs.

To know what will be valuable for your leads, understand their goals and what's important to them. The more value your offer carries for the specific prospect, the higher the chance of getting a response.

To make your offer relevant for each of your segments, make sure that the content of your email matches their priorities. Mention how you can solve their problems or help them achieve their goals.

For a CEO, mention how your service can help them grow revenue and their business.

A Sales rep will care more about automating routine tasks and finding good leads in bulk.

Use variables and dynamic content

At the very least, use variables in your emails to automatically insert personalized details such as the prospect's name, company, or job title.

To be more specific and make your emails really personal, use dynamic content, one of the variables available in Snov.io. To add it to your emails, select it from the Variables menu in the email campaign editor.

Dynamic content lets you automatically personalize email for prospects who meet your condition. For example, you add your custom sentences for CEOs and Snov.io inserts them for prospects who match the position. Learn more about how it works.

Add unique first lines

To make your emails even more personal, write a personalized opening line. This requires some research, but the result may be worth it. It will help you immediately grab attention from the first sentence.

To find relevant information, check their LinkedIn profile and recent posts they’ve engaged with. Review industry reports and monitor news sources related to their role.

Adjust your campaign schedule

Check where most prospects in your list are from and set your campaign schedule accordingly. Make sure that active sending hours match the usual working hours in that time zone.

Your emails will get more replies if they are sent at the right time when your prospects are most likely to see them. Try various timings: morning, afternoon, evening, or different weekdays (Mon-Fri or Tue-Thu).

In your campaign settings, choose the time zone appropriate for prospects in your list. Go to Campaigns and set the schedule at Step 3, Sending options.

Add value in follow-ups

There’s a chance the initial email will be ignored, so follow-ups shouldn’t just be reminders — they should provide additional value.

With each follow-up, add something useful to keep the lead interested.

Highlight the benefits of your offer and maintain some level of personalization in every email. Space out your follow-ups with delays of 2–3 days.

Optimize the length of your emails

How you write your emails has a direct impact on a reply – short and “to the point” emails get more responses. This is because they catch attention easier and more likely the recipient will read it to the end. 

The optimal email length is 100-120 words. Include only the most crucial information that conveys the email's value. If more details are needed, include a link to a document, a landing page, or other resources.

End your emails with questions

Don't expect prospects to click links after reading your email and learning everything by themselves. Instead, at the end of your emails, ask a question that encourages a response and confirms either their interest or lack of it.

Ask prospects to respond and let you know if they are interested or not. Even if the answer is "No," it's a plus for your sender reputation.

The goal is to make the most of every situation, even if the prospect isn't interested in your offer.

Some examples of such questions:

1. Can I provide additional information?
2. Would you like me to share a Loom video for more details?
3. Please reply with "Yes" for more info or "No" if it's not the right time.
4. Can I share a link that explains how it all works?

Sort positive/negative replies

Paying attention to why some prospects reject your offer or don't find it valuable may help you sell it to future leads. The same goes for your strong selling points – if you notice that one approach brings more replies, use it for more leads that share the same characteristics.

Snov.io makes reply analysis easier for you by automatically marking their sentiment based on the prospect's reply content.

Take time to review and analyze the negative responses you get to understand why the email failed because there's always a reason behind it. Learn more about how to deal with negative replies.

In Snov.io, you can check all replies you get from leads directly in your Snov.io account. A built-in Unibox lets you connect multiple email accounts from any provider and sync all your emails into one inbox.

Related articles:

How to assign sentiment to prospect's replies

How to personalize emails with dynamic content

How to set up Unibox for managing replies

If you have a question that we haven't covered, feel free to reach out to our Customer Care team. You can contact us at help@snov.io or through live chat. We're here to assist you!