HustleFriday
Power Member
So after a lot of discussions amongst our team members, we finally decided to launch an outreach service last month. No, I am not going to share a link as this is not to promote that service. It is about what we figured out after sending thousands of emails throughout last month.
Here's the thing!
We have always done outreach emails in small batches. The local SEO clients we work with do not normally require a lot of outreach (on page & PBNs + a few other tricks work fine for most of them); however, the scene is different in the affiliate side of business.
We did outreach to grow our affiliate websites. It was never more than 200-500 emails/month and it was on our own websites which are well designed with decent content. So we didn't have to face a lot of stuff that we had to in last 1 month when we decided to finally deal with client sites.
Recommendations
Homepage: About 99% of the leads (who reply) will reply asking to see your site. That's the first impression point. If you have a terrible homepage (filled with ads, affiliate content and bad design), you will lose that lead. Nobody wants to link to a site with static homepage and bad design.
Content: Surprisingly, not many leads care about the existing content of your website. They don't have a lot of time to read through everything. However, it shouldn't be so bad that it triggers their attention. Content should be natural, an author persona always helps and you should fill every content with QUALITY images.
The visual appeal really helps.
Use a custom domain and not your site's one for outreach
We tested this with everything. We used regular gmails, we used custom domains and we used Gsuites too.
Regular gmails have good response and delivery rate. But you can only send about 200-300 emails /day (though it officially is 500/day according to Google). The problem with gmail is that it gets blocked if too many of the recipients mark your cold email as spam (which they do).
If your gmail is blocked, you can say bye to that. There's no way to get a regular gmail back. There's an appeal system but it is worthless. So never use a valuable gmail if you have to use one.
Custom Domain has worked well for us. So if your site is bicycle.com, you can buy another domain (bicycle.co or bicycle.info) and do the outreach using an email like [email protected]. That's safe.
Buy a G Suite account on top of that and you will be allowed to send 2k emails/day. Again, that's official limit but the actual one varies. We were never able to send more than 1k/day as G Suite has blocked us for mass emailing.
The good news is that your account doesn't get freezed if you mess it up with a G Suite email. There's a support and they will help you get back that email.
How to Automate Outreach?
We used both Gmass and Mailshake and we like Mailshake better (for the easy to use interface). It costs $29/month for every email account and if you are doing outreach for your site, one should be enough.
Combine it with the GSuite ($5/month) and you have a decent outreach setup for $34/month.
Yeah, there will be additional cost of mining data, writing content for the guest posts and organizing everything with the help of a VA but the fixed cost would be about 34-40 with one email and about $70/month if you decide to use 2 email accounts.
Follow Up
I know marketers recommend that you send 3 follow ups (Grant Cardone says the money is in follow-ups). It might be true for cold callers but for email outreach, 1 follow up is fine.
If they are not replying you after the initial email and one follow up, they won't reply if you do another follow up.
Build Relations
Sending mass emails and getting replies is only the first step. Once a lead replies, you have to make sure that you build relations with them to convert this into a successful link. Be friendly (don't be formal).
Ask to be connected on FB, LinkedIn if possible. Ask them to add you on Skype. All these will help in building trust. Be personal. Talk about the niche if you can. Every additional interaction will help you.
Finally, when everything goes well, you should have a backlink from that site to yours.
Pro Tip: Don't worry about DA or Referring domains if it looks like an authentic website run by an actual person. DA will always improve and even if you get a link from a DA 1 domain today, the link will turn into a DA 20 backlink in a year if that person is real (as they will keep on working on their website).
Pro Tip 2: If someone is offering you white hat guest post links and they guarantee DA or Backlink metrics, there's a chance that these are not white hat links. These are bank of websites that they have access to and it is not the same thing
Pro Tip 3: Always warm your emails before going for mass destruction.
Pro Tip 4: When it comes to guest post, don't send a shitty article in a word doc. Invest in quality content, otherwise, you will lose the lead at the last stage which really sucks.
Best Wishes
You can ask me anything about cold outreach to get backlinks.
Here's the thing!
We have always done outreach emails in small batches. The local SEO clients we work with do not normally require a lot of outreach (on page & PBNs + a few other tricks work fine for most of them); however, the scene is different in the affiliate side of business.
We did outreach to grow our affiliate websites. It was never more than 200-500 emails/month and it was on our own websites which are well designed with decent content. So we didn't have to face a lot of stuff that we had to in last 1 month when we decided to finally deal with client sites.
Recommendations
Homepage: About 99% of the leads (who reply) will reply asking to see your site. That's the first impression point. If you have a terrible homepage (filled with ads, affiliate content and bad design), you will lose that lead. Nobody wants to link to a site with static homepage and bad design.
Content: Surprisingly, not many leads care about the existing content of your website. They don't have a lot of time to read through everything. However, it shouldn't be so bad that it triggers their attention. Content should be natural, an author persona always helps and you should fill every content with QUALITY images.
The visual appeal really helps.
Use a custom domain and not your site's one for outreach
We tested this with everything. We used regular gmails, we used custom domains and we used Gsuites too.
Regular gmails have good response and delivery rate. But you can only send about 200-300 emails /day (though it officially is 500/day according to Google). The problem with gmail is that it gets blocked if too many of the recipients mark your cold email as spam (which they do).
If your gmail is blocked, you can say bye to that. There's no way to get a regular gmail back. There's an appeal system but it is worthless. So never use a valuable gmail if you have to use one.
Custom Domain has worked well for us. So if your site is bicycle.com, you can buy another domain (bicycle.co or bicycle.info) and do the outreach using an email like [email protected]. That's safe.
Buy a G Suite account on top of that and you will be allowed to send 2k emails/day. Again, that's official limit but the actual one varies. We were never able to send more than 1k/day as G Suite has blocked us for mass emailing.
The good news is that your account doesn't get freezed if you mess it up with a G Suite email. There's a support and they will help you get back that email.
How to Automate Outreach?
We used both Gmass and Mailshake and we like Mailshake better (for the easy to use interface). It costs $29/month for every email account and if you are doing outreach for your site, one should be enough.
Combine it with the GSuite ($5/month) and you have a decent outreach setup for $34/month.
Yeah, there will be additional cost of mining data, writing content for the guest posts and organizing everything with the help of a VA but the fixed cost would be about 34-40 with one email and about $70/month if you decide to use 2 email accounts.
Follow Up
I know marketers recommend that you send 3 follow ups (Grant Cardone says the money is in follow-ups). It might be true for cold callers but for email outreach, 1 follow up is fine.
If they are not replying you after the initial email and one follow up, they won't reply if you do another follow up.
Build Relations
Sending mass emails and getting replies is only the first step. Once a lead replies, you have to make sure that you build relations with them to convert this into a successful link. Be friendly (don't be formal).
Ask to be connected on FB, LinkedIn if possible. Ask them to add you on Skype. All these will help in building trust. Be personal. Talk about the niche if you can. Every additional interaction will help you.
Finally, when everything goes well, you should have a backlink from that site to yours.
Pro Tip: Don't worry about DA or Referring domains if it looks like an authentic website run by an actual person. DA will always improve and even if you get a link from a DA 1 domain today, the link will turn into a DA 20 backlink in a year if that person is real (as they will keep on working on their website).
Pro Tip 2: If someone is offering you white hat guest post links and they guarantee DA or Backlink metrics, there's a chance that these are not white hat links. These are bank of websites that they have access to and it is not the same thing
Pro Tip 3: Always warm your emails before going for mass destruction.
Pro Tip 4: When it comes to guest post, don't send a shitty article in a word doc. Invest in quality content, otherwise, you will lose the lead at the last stage which really sucks.
Best Wishes
You can ask me anything about cold outreach to get backlinks.
