B2B Blog

Alternatives to “I Hope This Email Finds You Well”

Nothing at all

The email app Boomerang conducted a data study and found that emails between seventy-five and one hundred words in length had the best response rates. Although the response rate diminished slowly after that, talk to any busy person and they’ll tell you they prefer emails that are brief and get straight to the point.

Cluttering up an email with small talk that the recipient isn’t likely to acknowledge, or will acknowledge only with a curt “I’m fine,” isn’t magically making your email more friendly and civilized. Show that you value the recipient’s time by getting down to business right from the start.

Something personal

In my work as an editor, I’ve had people follow me on Twitter or Facebook, commenting on and sharing every article I publish. And, just when I think I’ve somehow earned a fan, I’ll get a letter from them asking me to accept a guest blog post or do some sort of cross-promotional content swap. I have to admit, I admire their dedication to getting to know me, even if it comes with an ulterior motive. And if they pitch something that reflects the knowledge they’ve gained about my style and the topics I care about, it’s more likely to be something I can use.

There may be a hook there.) And also, don’t make your message too personal. Saying you read an article is one thing, but mentioning the beach vacation photos you saw on Instagram will come off as creepy.

“I know you’re swamped, so I’ll be brief.”

I love this opener. It and the number of paragraphs in the email I see before me, tells me that the sender values my time and made an effort to keep things short and sweet.

“We met at”

Once again, this approach works best if your previous meeting is relevant to the topic at hand. If you met at a conference and exchanged words about marketing strategies, and you’re emailing now to ask the recipient to review your new app for marketers, you’re connecting the right dots.

A bit of small talk

If you really think a small talk opener fits your audience best, give it a whirl. Just don’t make it as empty and meaningless as “I hope all is well,” or “I hope you’re doing well.” Try something a little more personal:

How are things in New York? I hope you’re keeping cool during the heat wave.

Hope your summer’s off to a great start. Is it vacation time yet?

Hey, it’s Friday! I hope you have some cool plans for the weekend.

The more familiar you are with the recipient, even if you know each other only through email exchanges, the better this works.

In my opinion, the most important rule of email communication is this: don’t force it. If you’re trying too hard to be personable or clever, your recipient will almost always see through your attempts. When I write an email, even if it’s for a mass emailing campaign, I’m always thinking of my intended recipient and their persona. I smile as I write (seriously, it’s a little creepy) and write as though I’m having a face-to-face conversation with them. Just minus the time-wasting small talk.

An email client needs to know the IP address of its initial SMTP server and this has to be given as part of its configuration (usually given as a DNS name). This server will deliver outgoing messages on behalf of the user.

Outgoing mail server access restrictions

Server administrators need to impose some control on which clients can use the server. This enables them to deal with abuse, for example spam. Two solutions have been in common use:

• In the past, many systems imposed usage restrictions by the location of the client, only permitting usage by clients whose IP address is one that the server administrators control. Usage from any other client IP address is disallowed.
• Modern SMTP servers typically offer an alternative system that requires authentication of clients by credentials before allowing access.

Restricting access by location

Under this system, an ISP’s SMTP server will not allow access by users who are outside the ISP’s network. More precisely, the server may only allow access to users with an IP address provided by the ISP, which is equivalent to requiring that they are connected to the Internet using that same ISP.

This system has several variations. For example, an organisation’s SMTP server may only provide service to users on the same network, enforcing this by firewalling to block access by users on the wider Internet. Or the server may perform range checks on the client’s IP address.

Client authentication

Modern SMTP servers typically require authentication of clients by credentials before allowing access, rather than restricting access by location as described earlier. This more flexible system is friendly to mobile users and allows them to have a fixed choice of configured outbound SMTP server. 

Open relay

A server that is accessible on the wider Internet and does not enforce these kinds of access restrictions is known as an open relay. This is now generally considered a bad practice worthy of blacklisting.

Ports

Communication between mail servers generally uses the standard TCP port 25 designated for SMTP.

Mail clients however generally don’t use this, instead using specific “submission” ports. Mail services generally accept email submission from clients on one of:

• 587 (Submission), as formalized in RFC 6409 (previously RFC 2476)
• 465 This port was deprecated after RFC 2487, until the issue of RFC 8314.

Port 2525 and others may be used by some individual providers, but have never been officially supported.

Most Internet service providers now block all outgoing port 25 traffic from their customers as an anti-spam measure. For the same reason, businesses will typically configure their firewall to only allow outgoing port 25 traffic from their designated mail servers.

SMTP transport example

A typical example of sending a message via SMTP to two mailboxes (alice and theboss) located in the same mail domain (example.com or localhost.com) is reproduced in the following session exchange. (In this example, the conversation parts are prefixed with S: and C:, for server and client, respectively; these labels are not part of the exchange.)

What do you like best?

By far, my favorite feature is the “Journey” feature which allows deep customization and flexibility with conditional emailing options. I hadn’t been able to find a provider that was able to help me with our complex conditional cold email process…

Klenty has been the only one with flexible features such as webhooks, customizable conditional emailing rules, and awesome reporting tools.

What do you dislike?

The interface runs in ajax or something, so once in a while it can be slow to refresh.

Recommendations to others considering the product

Definitely try out the flexibility that the Journeys have to offer, and use the conditional functionality to tailor your communications to the right people at the right time depending on how they interact with your emails.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

We have a very elaborate cold emailing system that no provider had been able to help us with automating. Now with our Klenty Journeys, we can truly put it all on auto pilot and don’t have to manually move contacts from one list to another, or manually notify team members of a prospect’s disposition in the Journey.

“Best follow-up and lead generator tool to get your new clients”

What do you like best?

Great features to start cold talking. KLENTY has been very well developed as a IT tool and provides all the features you need to start cold talking and even with current clients in order to automate your conversations. Totally recommended!

What do you dislike?

Since Linked removed the ability to get contacts from the KLENTY Chrome Extension, the missing prospector from Linkedin has been very needed. However this is something that had happened to all apps working with scrapping at Linkedin.

Recommendations to others considering the product

KLENTY has been very well developed as a IT tool and provides all the features you need to start cold talking and even with current clients in order to automate your conversations.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Tedious follow-up with prospects, follow-up with existing clients. THe main benefit is time saving as well as to have a full automated tool to generate more conversations with companies to do business.

Klenty provides sales professionals and teams with an email automation tool to generate qualified leads and connect with potential clients. Its features include creating email campaigns and managing prospects, as well as tracking emails, links, and website visits.

We compiled Klenty user reviews from around the web and determined that it has generally positive ratings. We also shared its available pricing options

Summary of Klenty User Reviews

What Klenty Does Well

Users who gave Klenty a positive review said that they like its customer relationship management (CRM) integrations, bulk email sending feature, and data import functionality, email campaigns, as well as its customizable templates and workflows.

What Klenty Does Not Do Well

Users who gave Klenty a negative review said that its reporting tool should be enhanced. Several others mentioned that the interface is not intuitive and certain features can be hard to understand, especially for first-time users.

Most Helpful Positive User Review

One user who gave Klenty a positive review on G2 Crowd said that the software helps him sync his contacts and import his client’s data to his CRM. He added that he likes its email campaign feature that allows him to connect with cold prospects.

Most Helpful Negative User Review

One user who left a review of Klenty on G2 Crowd said that navigating through the software’s extensive platform can be daunting for first-timers. He explained that there is a learning curve when using the tool since some of its features are difficult to understand.

Klenty Pricing

Klenty offers three paid subscription plans: Tall ($30/user/month), Grande ($60/user/month), and Venti ($100/user/month). They also offer lower rates for users who sign up for an annual subscription. The main differences between the plans are the additional email accounts per user and access to features such as advanced CRM integration and website tracking.

Klenty also provides access to an email finder tool that sales professionals can use to locate a prospect’s email address. However, this is available as an add-on to the three plans. Prices range from $25 to $100 per month with email finder credits of 500 to 2,500, respectively.

Klenty Features

Check out the list below of some of Klenty features:

• A/B Testing
• Automated Follow-Ups and Smart Reminders
• Click-to-Call, Call Recording, and Call Details Tracking
• Dashboard and Analytics
• Data Import/Export
• Detailed Workflows
• Email, Link, and Website Tracking
• Email Campaigns and Email Templates
• Email Finder
• Prospects and Leads Management

Helpful Email Marketing Software Resources

Read about useful statistics that will help your strategy when it comes to email marketing. This covers trends, purchasing decisions, population statistics, among others.

In this guide, we identified the key features of several popular email marketing software. Read on for our comparison and review, including our top recommendations

To begin, connect your Google account.

1. Login to Klenty and go to Prospects, Add Prospects and the Google Sheets tab.
2. Enter the email id of the Google Drive account that you wish to connect to Klenty and click on Authenticate.

Once this is done, you can create Sheets via Klenty and add your prospects’ information. The Sheets will be created in a new Klenty folder in your Google Drive.

1. Enter a name to create a new Sheet.
2. Copy your prospect details over to this new Sheet.
3. In Klenty, you’ll see the Sheets you’ve created via this process in the Google Sheets tab listed as ‘Your sheets‘. Click on the Import button on the Sheet you want to import.
4. Your Sheet headers will be automatically mapped with Klenty prospect fields. You can verify and edit as required, and create a new custom field if there are no prospect fields that match your requirement.
5. Add to a list or tags if needed and click on Preview to confirm your mapping.
6. Click on Start Import to start adding the prospects to Klenty. 

Once a Sheet has been imported, you can

1. enable the auto-import option to automatically import new additions to the Google Sheet (remember to add the new prospects to the last row of the Sheet)
2. click on Import Now to immediately import any new additions in the Sheet.

Manually add prospects

To add Prospects manually

1. Login to you Klenty account and go to Prospects -> Add prospects.
2. Click on the + Quick Add button, and enter your prospect’s details.
3. Add the prospect to a new or select an existing Tag/List and click on Create.

1. Pipedrive

Before you begin

• Make sure that your email account is integrated with Klenty.
• Verify that you have filters in Pipedrive for the Persons you want to import to Klenty. The filters need to be for Contacts and not Organizations or Deals.

To import

1. In Klenty, go to Prospects -> Add prospects and under Pipedrive select the filter you want to import.
2. After selecting the filter, you can add the prospects to an existing or to a new Tags/Lists and click on Import. 
3. The filter will be displayed under Import History.

Import options

• Toggle on Auto import to automatically add prospects to Klenty when the Imported filter is updated. Note: We check your Pipedrive filter for updates every 6 hours
• Click on Import Now to immediately import updates from the filter to Klenty.

2. Salesforce

1. In your Klenty account, go to Prospects -> Add prospects.
2. Under Salesforce, select the Report you want to import from the drop-down box.
3. You can add the prospects to a List or Tag and click on Import.

Import options

• Toggle on Auto import to automatically add prospects to Klenty when the Imported filter is updated. Note: we check for updates from your Salesforce report every 6 hours.
• Use the Import Now button to import/update prospects immediately, when needed.

3. Freshsales

Before you begin:

• Make sure your Freshsales integration is set up. 
• You should have at least one filter in Freshsales that includes the Leads you want to import to Klenty.

To import prospects from Freshsales

1. In your Klenty account, go to Prospects -> Add Prospects.
2. Go to the Freshsales tab and select the Freshsales Filter to be imported from the drop-down.
3. You can add the prospects to an existing Tag/List or create a new Tag/List and click on Import.

Import options

• Toggle on Auto import to automatically add prospects to Klenty when the selected filter is updated in Fresh sales. (Note: we check your Fresh sales filter for updates every 30 minutes.)
• To import leads from this filter immediately, click on Import Now.

Features

Icoldemail is a great cold email campaign tool that is tremendously useful while it comes to increase the possibility of a cold email campaign. This particular platform offers ranges of great functionalities to its users. Let’s these features:

You can know what will happen following the clicking of ‘Send’:

Icoldemail can track email opens and also link clicks, reply rates, presentation pageviews, and attachment opens. These are all valuable pieces of information, helpful in identifying the ideal possible message for each and every step of the particular sales procedure.

Reliability of your Sales force Data:

This very useful cold email campaign tool is capable of logging activity data on an automatic basis on each and every sales email sent, received, and opened. It can also record every downloaded attachment, scheduled meeting, presentation viewed and all of them in real-time.

Automate the Outreach:

Icoldemail can set up email drip campaigns to maintain the involvement of prospects and never miss any follow-up.

Getting Stronger and Tremendously Predictable Deal Flow:

It can customize outbound campaigns at scale for getting more meetings as well as delivering a superior experience to its users’ prospects. It really sounds like a human, not like a robot.

Gaining Improved Visibility into What Performs:

Icoldemail can analyze the efficacy of each of the sales activity in the progress of the users, ranging from emails and calls to handwritten notes and social channels. It can continuously test to acquire insights and enhance the outcomes.

Why is icoldemail better than Klenty?

Icoldemail is a very efficient cold email campaign tool, equipped with a number of incredible features and facilities. The best part of this tool is its price structure and it is only $10/user. It is the most affordable cold email campaign tool in the market, offering all the required and useful features, without providing any type of restriction.

Icoldemail is a great cold email campaign tool for beginners and experienced alike. With its incredible features, simple-to-operate user interface, and an affordable price structure are suitable to every user. So, here, we can end up by concluding that Icoldemail is the best cold email campaign tool available in the market.

There is a difference between bulk pharmacy product emails (which accounts for 81% of spam) and one-to-one emails to a targeted business audience.

Under the CAN-SPAM act, you are able to send emails to business people that you do not know. However, you want to make sure you are complying with the rules that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has outlined.

Luckily, that isn’t difficult to do. Here are the seven things you need to incorporate when sending cold emails:

1. Don’t misrepresent who you are – Basically, your “From”, “To”, and “Reply-To” information needs to identify who you are.
2. Don’t use misleading subject lines – Using a subject line of “Your receipt” when pitching your product/service would be misleading. Keep it real.
3. Identify if the email is an ad – If your email is an advertisement or special coupon offer, just make sure it is labeled as such.
4. Include your business address – This can be a PO Box or your physical address, but you have to include it. Ideal placement for this information would be in your signature.
5. Give them an opt-out option – You don’t have to use an “unsubscribe” link which takes away some of the personal aspects of the email. Instead, ask them, “Please let me know if you are not the right person to contact for this.” It’s a good alternative that keeps things personal.
6. Honor opt-outs – If they don’t want any future emails, make sure they don’t get any more emails. I don’t even respond to the request, I just make sure they don’t get any more follow-ups.
7. Know what others do/send on your behalf – Even if you hire a company to handle your email outreach, you are still legally responsible. Make sure whoever you have working on your email outreach understands these seven rules.

Obviously, using cold email outreach is a method to generate leads and interest in your product/service. There are other ways you can use cold email outreach as well. Here are three other ways (aside from lead generation) I’ve used cold email outreach:

1. Determine Startup Viability

In today’s lean startup approach, it’s more important than ever to talk to your potential customers before you start going crazy with development and business plans. I’ve actually used this approach to determine the viability of a business idea.

2. Data Gathering

Let them know you’re performing research and planning to publish the results of the poll/questions/feedback in a future blog post on your blog. This is a very soft way of sending people to your website without directly asking for a sale.

3. Invitations

You might want to invite prospective customers to a webinar or a networking event (if they’re local). Cold email outreach is a great way to increase attendees with prospective customers.

4. SALES

One of the best ways to scale your sales is to automate your outbound lead generation. Identifying key target accounts and then using cold email can be a great way to generate conversations.

I spent the better part of a decade emailing hundreds of thousands of cold prospects, trying different tactics and strategies to see what resonated. Here’s what I found:

Increase Response Rates

1. Stop Talking About Yourself

The last thing you want to do is ruin your chances right off the bat by writing paragraphs about yourself and how great your company is. There’s a difference between logically introducing yourself and giving someone who has no idea who you are the entire spiel you give all your SQLs.

Remember that these people probably have no idea who you are. If they don’t see any value in you contacting them, chances are they aren’t going to reply. Introduce yourself politely and then start talking about them.

 2. Don’t Come Off Too Sales

It’s natural to want to drop the ball right away and ask to set a meeting—after all, that’s the whole goal of cold emailing. But remember what they say: “Slow and steady wins the race.” That is also true for successful cold emailing.

Think about the solicitors who ring your doorbell, fake a two-minute conversation, and then immediately slam you with a sales pitch about a product you’ve never heard of. Whether or not it could benefit you, you’re put off by the experience.

 3. The Subject Line Is Just as Important as the Message Itself

Your email is only as good as your subject line, and there are literally thousands of articles and “science-backed” evidence of subject lines that work. But the best data is what you can pull from your own past email sends.

There are so many different industries, so many different products, and so many different people that following the footsteps of someone else’s success just won’t necessarily work.

 4. Do Your Research

It is actually crazy how many cold emails I’ve received with my name spelled wrong, calling me “Mr.”, not knowing my job title when it’s public information, and so on and so forth. If you were face-to-face with someone, you wouldn’t call them the wrong name or mistake them for the opposite gender without feeling like a total fool.

5. Be Respectful

Let’s say a person replies to one of your emails and you get really enthusiastic and are ready to book that meeting and close that deal, so you rush to reply, but then they all of a sudden go cold again.

You decide to reply again in a few hours—maybe they didn’t get your first email. They don’t reply to that, so you wait until the next day (it’s been 12 hours!) and email again.

See where I’m going here? As with any relationship, rushing into things and not allowing space for the other person to critically think about the situation will most likely result in the person running away, quickly.

Give them time to breathe between each touch. Would you be annoyed if the same solicitor you ignored the first time kept on ringing your doorbell during dinner for a week straight? Let the conversations flow naturally and give it time before you reach out again.

 6. Make It Personal

Even if you have built the perfect cold email template, you’ll want to personalize it for each prospect, and I’m not just talking about “[[INSERT FIRST NAME]] here” personalization. Do your research and use it to your advantage.

One of their interests is college basketball? Perfect starter conversation. Their company just made the news for XYZ? Even better starter conversation.

7. Add Value

One of my all-time favorite marketing and sales professionals, Tim Riesterer of Corporate Visions, really helped me to transform the way I crafted our sales pitch for my sales team.

Too often, I see companies so excited about their product or solution that they forget that no matter how good your product/service is, unless you can get people to buy in and realize their need, your amazing product won’t make it far. 

Cold emailing has been around forever and it’s not going away as long as email addresses exist. Whether you take these tips into consideration or not, remember that you’re emailing real people. We are inundated with email, yet somehow we pick out the ones that matter. Why?