Email marketing is effective because it’s versatile. There are tons of different kinds of emails you can be sending your prospects and customers, and when you use a CRM paired with an email automation tool, you can get creative and personalize your content, doubling down on email engagement. 

Emails can essentially be broken down into two approaches. There’s a cold approach, and then there’s a marketing approach. These two approaches serve two different but important purposes for your business. 

Customers usually opt-in to marketing emails on their own because they’re fans of your brand. They do this through website forms or landing pages. Marketing emails are a way to engage with and retain your existing customers by sending them resources that educate them and move them through the buyer’s journey. 

When you reach out to a potential customer with a cold email, that person has probably never heard of your business or interacted with you before. The point of cold emails is to pursue potential new leads with the hopes of turning them into paying customers. 

But that’s just scratching the surface. Read on below to learn more about the difference between cold and marketing emails and the benefits each offers your business. 

What Are Cold Emails?

To send out cold emails, you need to do research to find potential prospects, and LinkedIn is a great tactic. For instance, you could find decision-makers at companies on LinkedIn and reach out to them with a cold email introducing yourself and the solutions your company could provide for their business. 

The success of cold emails depends on the type of strategy you take. The average conversion rate for cold emails is 0.5%, but that’s if you’re sending out hundreds of generic emails without any personalization. If you personalize your emails and craft thoughtful, well-researched email content, you could have up to an 86% conversion rate. 

Cold emails are a good way to introduce your business to new customers who may be with a direct competitor. Even if a potential lead doesn’t convert right away, you’re introducing them into your sales funnel, and you’re extending a line to begin what can become a meaningful partnership. 

Cold emails are akin to outbound marketing, as they are more of a “push approach” to sales as opposed to a pull. You may have to reach out to a large number of potential clients before you convert them to customers, but the more you do it, the higher your chances of conversion are. 

Who Sends Cold Emails?

The cold email approach is one that is most often used by sales professionals and sales teams. After all, it’s the sales team’s job to do the selling, so they have to get creative with their tactics, which include cold outreach. 

In an age when cold calling seems almost invasive, cold emails can be a great way for sales teams to ease prospects into the buying process, as well as build trust so prospects will be more open to growing the relationship. Make sure to use the best cold email software on the market to send personalized cold emails at scale and improve email deliverability.

What Are Marketing Emails?

You can loosen up a little bit when you send out marketing emails. You’re not trying to convince a new customer to take a chance on your brand immediately like you might when you send out a cold email.

If someone is subscribed to your email, that means they’ve already opted-in to your email communication on their own, or they’re an existing customer who wants to keep engaging with your content. Either way, they’re telling you that they want to hear from you, so they’re the ones making the first move, essentially. 

Marketing emails are successful because they often provide incentives for subscribers, like resources, guides, discount codes, birthday promotions, or annual loyalty reward discounts.

Marketing emails are a good way to build brand awareness, keep customers informed about news that relates to your business, and they’re a creative way to generate new leads. 

Think of marketing emails as inbound marketing. They’re more of a pull approach, as the customer came to you first. Now all you have to do is keep impressing them through a lead nurture strategy so you can retain their interest and eventually convert them to a customer. 

Who Sends Marketing Emails?

Typically, it is the marketing team that sets up marketing emails and the inbound funnel. Even though the end goal is more sales, it’s the marketing team’s job to align these emails with the other moving parts of their strategy. So, if they’re running special promotions or paid advertisements, they can designate the right email campaigns to match the inbound traffic coming from these efforts. 

The marketing team can then check in on these campaigns using their email analytics to see how well they’re doing at converting new prospects to leads and new leads to customers. 

Marketing and cold emails serve two different purposes: one is to connect with a new potential client who isn’t familiar with your company, and the other is to build on an existing relationship with your customer. When you utilize both approaches, you create a dual strategy built on outbound and inbound marketing, covering all your bases and setting your company up for additional success.