How to Do Cold Email Outreach for Backlinks?
Cold emails are essential for obtaining high-quality backlinks for your website, but without a proper framework, your email may fall into the 91.5% of cold emails that do not get a response.
In this post, we'll go over the do's and don'ts of cold outreach, as well as the important components of a great cold email that can make a big difference in your link building campaign.
After reading this, you will understand:
Why Email Warmup Is Important for Backlink Outreach.
Email Outreach for Backlink Building: Best Practices.
Things to Avoid When Doing Backlink Outreac
Before You Start Email Outreach for Backlinks
The first step in a successful cold outreach campaign is email warm up, which is essential for developing a positive sender reputation and ensuring that your emails reach your prospect without ending up in their spam folder.
Warming up an email means using it like a normal person would, such as receiving and sending emails, subscribing to newsletters, and signing up for websites.
Although email warming can be done manually, it is a time-consuming process. Automating your email warm-up saves time and gets your email ready for cold outreach much faster.
Learn how to automate email warm up with GoZen Growth for the highest deliverability.
Email outreach for backlinks: Best Practices
Now that your email is up and ready, the instructions below will show you how to write a cold email that receives replies.
Keep it simple.
Keeping your email simple and concise from the subject line to the call-to-action can boost engagement and open rates. For example, short and catchy subject lines average two times the open rate of long detailed ones. When reaching website owners, the easier the engagement, the better. Adding hyperlinks to referenced pages or a link to schedule a call are all methods to make things easy for prospects.
Customisation is key.
Reaching out to develop backlinks means pitching guest posts, highlighting broken links, providing value, and a variety of other situations. Rather than simply adhering to a template, you can personalise your email to fit the occasion. If necessary, changing your wording to reflect current events, such as a pandemic, or adding relevant, up-to-date phrases will break the generic template tone.
Get personal.
Here is an opportunity to make your cold email from the competition, which will not only help you get backlinks but also expand your network.
Message personalisation can enhance marketing ROI by five to eight times and is regarded as the best approach for increasing customer engagement.
But what exactly goes into creating a personalised cold email? This is when a little research and crafting get involved
Before reaching out to a prospects, spend some time learning about:
Their background.
If they are engaged on social networks.
What the website is about.
Starting your email with a genuine compliment on their most popular Twitter thread or addressing a pain point they just expressed on LinkedIn will make your email stand out and possibly flatter your prospect.
For inspiration, lead gen Jack Reamer recommends the CCQ (commonalities, compliments, and questions) strategy as a simple way to personalise your email.
Linkable Assets
Linkable assets are pieces of content created to attract links. Linkable assets include thorough studies, infographics, and online tools.
Website owners are often on the lookout for valuable content, which is where your linkable asset can help.
It helps to think backwards when creating content worth sharing. What are competitors creating that generates lots of backlinks? What studies, statistics, or even online tools would audiences find valuable?
The skyscraper and reverse outreach techniques are two examples of how to put the questions mentioned above into action.
Demonstrate Value
The key to a results-driven email outreach campaign is to demonstrate the value you can provide to your prospect and show how they or their readers would benefit.
While the primary purpose of cold outreach is to build backlinks, this is the end product of a successful value proposition.
Asking the following questions will help you demonstrate value:
Does your email offer content that is useful to the website owner's audience?
Do you have a linkable asset that is relevant, useful, and worth linking to for this prospect?
Is your guest blog idea unique, backed by research, and sure to drive engagement?
Tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush provide more in-depth techniques of demonstrating value, such as identifying broken backlinks or obsolete references that can be replaced.
CTA
Include a clear and strong call to action at the end of your email. Make sure your CTA is not vague or left up to interpretation. Ask whether your offer would be of interest to them, and if so, invite them to schedule a call via a booking link.
Follow-up Emails
Despite our best efforts, an email may be lost or ignored for a variety of reasons. In the world of sales, 70% of salespeople stop after one email, and link building is likely not so different.
That's why sending multiple follow-up emails is essential for a successful outreach campaign. You instantly distinguish yourself from the competition and show your prospects that you are serious about reaching out.
Wait at least three to five days before sending a follow-up email, and do not send it on weekends or holidays.
Looking to create a great follow-up sequence? Start with these follow-up email templates.
Email Outreach for Backlinks: What to Avoid
Below, we'll go over some typical mistakes people make while undertaking link building outreach and how to avoid them.
Not optimising your subject line.
When sending emails in bulk, the subject line may contain input code like firstName or long reference numbers that scream out 'delete me!'.
To avoid such mishaps, test your emails before sending them.
Merge fails.
Just like having a blaring line of code in your subject line, the same problem can crop up in the contents of your email as a merge fail, where {{firstName}} shows up in place of where the recipient’s name should be.
Using weird or spammy fonts
Fancy and colourful fonts may appear more appealing, but in the mechanical eyes of spam filters, they risk ending up in the spam bin or in the promotions tab, Using plain text without any styling throughout the email, including the signature, is always a safer method.
Exclamation Overload
This may seem apparent, but too many exclamation marks in the subject line or email can trigger spam filters, especially when combined with terms like "free" or "buy now". Keeping exclamation marks to a minimum sounds far more natural! Really!
Mindful your grammar.
Subject line: "Great opportunities for guest blogging!!!"
Grammatical errors in the subject line or email will quickly make your outreach attempt look unprofessional and lacklustre, and likely get it discarded on the spot.
Good Copy, Bad Copy.
Using generic or overly professional greetings like "Hello," or "Dear Sir/Madam," may have been the norm for handwritten letters back in the day, but in emails, they're a wonderful way to lose someone's interest right away.
The same goes for bland introductions like:
"My name is John, and I'm the content manager at example.com. I'm sending this email regarding...
To capture your prospect's attention and keep them interested, try adding humour, genuine compliments, or simple questions to your opening lines. ` If you can make them smile you've brightened their day a little! As a result, people will be far more willing to respond.
Key Takeaways
Cold email outreach is one of the most effective ways to grow your brand, build your network, and, most importantly, gain quality backlinks for your website.
To maximise the effectiveness of your cold outreach efforts in link building, be sure to:
Warm up your email to ensure maximum deliverability.
To achieve the best results, keep your emails simple and personalised.
Have something valuable to offer.
Prepare and schedule follow-up emails in advance.
Before you send anything, use plain text and double-check your grammar.
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