Contents:
What is an e-shot/mail-shot?
We classify an e-shot or mail-shot as a targeted Candidate Sourcing or Business Development activity, whereby a User sends an email with a "call to action" to a targeted audience of relevant recipients. A "call to action" is an engagement method that encourages a response from the recipient, e.g. "would be great to speak if you are interested in this role?" or "let me know if you want to speak to this candidate?"
If you want to send a newsletter, or other content that does not contain a "call to action", then you should use an email marketing specific tool such as: Mailchimp.
Sending e-shots/mail-shots via mail merge is damaging your email domain.
Important to note:
Email domain = @sourcewhale.com or @sourcewhale.co.uk
Email domain credibility = a score that determines the likelihood of going into spam.
"But I've always sent e-shots/mail-shots through mail merge?"
If you are sending e-shots or any type of outreach through mail merge, STOP! - It is likely to be damaging your email domain credibility and is a sure-fire way to get your emails into spam.
Mail-merge sends all of your emails out instantly and although it may have changed a couple of words in each email (name, company etc), the email copy is largely the same. Spam filters don't like this high volume, rapid sending of similarly worded emails and will often mark the majority as spam.
Here lies the problem...
Being marked as spam, either for spammy behaviour as described above, or for sending emails that have a low response rate reduces your email domain credibility. This results in even more of your emails going into spam, even fewer people opening your emails and fewer people responding, so you end up compounding the problem.
To reverse this trend you need to:
Control the number of emails being sent each day.
Space your emails out so sending looks more natural.
Ensure your content is hyper-relevant to the recipients you are approaching to encourage a higher response rate.
How can SourceWhale help?
SourceWhale monitors your open rates, enabling you to tell if you may be going into Spam. If your open rates are above 60% you are doing well. If you are still below this figure after at least 2 follow-ups, then you should read our guide to avoiding spam.
SourceWhale also automatically spreads the sending of your emails out over the course of a day and ensures you aren't sending too many. This will increase your email domain credibility and ultimately increases open and reply rates over time, usually 4-6 weeks.
Increasing your domain credibility through controlled sending will result in more people opening your emails, however, you need to focus on increasing reply rates to keep improving. 10% is a good reply rate. Anything below that you need to read our best practices guide to improve.
How do you send an e-shot through SourceWhale?
Create the Campaign for your e-shot/mail-shot - Creating a Campaign.
Tips: Keep your emails concise and to the point including your follow-ups. Use Grammarly and set up 1 - 2 follow-up steps to start with as you can always add more in the future. Out best practices guide has some useful points to help.
Create your list of Contacts that you want to e-shot and upload using the Spreadsheet upload function or import a list directly from your CRM (if it allows).
Tips: Users often try and write their email copy for too broad an audience making their emails very generic. Try subdividing your list by common characteristics you can use as personalised content - location, skills, background, methodologies used, etc. You should aim to break a list of 100 into 2/3 separate lists.
Monitor your email open and reply rates and adjust your daily sending volumes accordingly
Tips: If you have been using mail merge a lot in the past expect your open rates to start very low (30-40%), however, this will increase over 4 to 6 weeks. If your open rates are lower than 40%, read this article on how to avoid spam. If your open rates are between 40 to 60%, take a look at our best practices to improve.
Stuck or need some help? Click on the chat icon at the bottom right hand corner to connect with our support team! 💬