How to utilize email list via cold emailing

[mycarlow]

Hi there,

I hope this is the right place to post this thread as it relates to my business. I run a fledgling travel agency selling holidays to the Maldives and have access to a very focused email list of 250K. This list was not put together from my own website. All of these people are interested in luxury travel, and a large percentage of them are interested in traveling to the Maldives or have already traveled there. Some of these clients already travel with other travel agents.

As a Maldives specialist with vast knowledge of the Maldives travel space, my team and I can bring value to these high-end clients with our recommendations and usually offer cheaper rates than what clients can find online. I understand these clients are not that worried about money, but a cheaper price for the same service is, in my eyes, valuable.

I have previously only dabbled in email marketing (very little, not even for 3 months), and these clients do not know my company yet. Could anyone give me some pointers on how I should approach this, as the list has just been sitting there for 2 years, and I believe it is time to put it to use? I have done some research, and here is my thought process:

1. Clean the list using an email verifier service just to be safe
2. Setup a separate email domains to engage with the list first
   1. What can I use to send the emails ensuring maximum deliverability in the inbox? I have come across Instantly and custom SMTP or something in my research
   2. I guess there is a warm up phase and a tool like Instantly does that
3. Once step 2 is figured out, I need to come up with a way to hook them. I was thinking maybe introduce myself as a maldives travel consultancy and offer them the opportunity to opt in to the email list first to receive further emails?
4. If that works, then prepare an email sequence for those who opt in and make some travel offers for the Maldives and then introduce my actual travel agency as a partner to book the holiday with. I really would like to keep my travel agency company safe if this does not work out. I know that my team and I can provide them value; they just do not know me yet.

This is a very high level version of my idea to approach this and I would appreciate any seasoned colleague here to help me out with their two cents before I take the plunge.

Thank you for your time in reading.

 

[xcodes]

Proceed with the plunge without two cents. The Plan is good and routine with other business owners, too, so there is really nothing new in what you're doing.

Good luck

 

[mycarlow]

Proceed with the plunge without two cents. The Plan is good and routine with other business owners, too, so there is really nothing new in what you're doing.

Good luck

Thank you. I would appreciate softwares/tools that you have used and could suggest to
- Clean the emails
- ESP for cold emailing
- How to implement an opt in link with the first email

Would appreciate some suggestions.

 

[xcodes]

- Atomic Verifier
- Atomic Sender
- Using tags, you can read sender documentation.

Good luck

 

[Algo]

Your idea sounds good.

Clean your lists before any sending.

Try to test ideas, subjects, body emails...using small portions of your list to figure out what's working.

If you have some good Linux server administration skills, solid understand of how SMTP works, know how reputation works, and know how to setup DNS records.....then build your own server.

Or alternatively you can go the easy way, which is using an automation to send from many Gmail accounts and proxies.

Wish you good luck

 

[Juhku]

If I were you, I would forget all about doing that myself.

Email marketing is hard. Really hard.
There are too many variables that can get screwed.

Hire a marketing agency to do that for you.
You just send them your email list and they manage it from there.

Due to the large scale of your email list, you could most likely negotiate a nice pay-per-sale deal.

 

[mycarlow]

Your idea sounds good.

Clean your lists before any sending.

If you have some good Linux server administration skills, solid understand of how SMTP works, know how reputation works, and know how to setup DNS records.....then build your own server.

Thank you for your advice. I was hoping to hire someone from fiverr to setup the server, SMTP and mail software.

If I were you, I would forget all about doing that myself.

Email marketing is hard. Really hard.
There are too many variables that can get screwed.

Hire a marketing agency to do that for you.
You just send them your email list and they manage it from there.

Due to the large scale of your email list, you could most likely negotiate a nice pay-per-sale deal.

Thank you for your input. It sounds hard yes. If I do decide to go on my own, I would appreciate if you could share some resources to gain knowledge of the dos and the donts and anything in between.

Re: hiring a marketing agency, since this is a list I got from elsewhere and I didn't build this list gradually, wouldn't marketing agencies raise eyebrows? This is a B2C list. Do you have any recommendations that I can look at for marketing agencies? Also I know this sounds silly but I feel a bit uncomfortable outsourcing the list as you cannot buy this list anywhere.

 

[Juhku]

hiring a marketing agency, since this is a list I got from elsewhere and I didn't build this list gradually, wouldn't marketing agencies raise eyebrows?

Depends on the agency. Some might, some might not, but I doubt that anyone would actually care too much.
Eu GDPR is a pain in the ass with hefty fines, but it is practically non-existent when it comes to cold emailing. At least for now.

Do you have any recommendations that I can look at for marketing agencies?

I don't think it would be wise for me to refer companies directly, for the sake of bias.
Preferably find local agencies and book meetings with as many as you can. See which ones you click with well and also have good case studies and referrals from previous clients.

Also I know this sounds silly but I feel a bit uncomfortable outsourcing the list as you cannot buy this list anywhere.

Any marketing agency worth their salt won't do anything malicious with the list.
You could of course just send them a smaller version of the list. I doubt any good agency would be sending 250k emails either way.
Good agencies focus on conversion rates rather than poor quality spam emails to hundreds of thousands of people.