Is Email Outreach Still an Effective Link Building Strategy in 2024?

Myth: email outreach doesn't work for link building.

Wrong. While link building has existed for years, the age-old strategy of sending cold emails to land new link building opportunities has evolved. 

Today, if you send a generic email pitch with a list of links to thousands of people in your email list, it will backfire. So, you need to learn about the modern email outreach approach.

The State of Email Outreach in 2024

According to Hunter’s State of Cold Email:

• The average email open rate is below 30%.
• 74.5% of people say they see higher open rates when they use personalized subject lines for their cold emails.
• 72.9% of marketers spend anywhere between 1-10 hours every month managing cold email campaigns. 
• 19.9% of marketers say they send cold emails on weekends.

When comparing these stats to 2021, it was found that:

• The average email open rate is 21.5%.
• Marketers have seen the highest open rates during weekdays—Monday (22%) and Friday (21.6%). 
• 55% of marketers are prioritizing personalization in their emails. 
• 58% of email marketers spend two weeks or more on email production.

Overall analysis: Emails continue to have an open rate below 30%, while weekdays are the most preferred time slots for email marketers to send emails. 

Why Email Outreach Remains a Link Building Powerhouse

Businesses have evolved. Sales and marketing are in alignment now and strategies have modernized. Yet, when it comes to link building, email outreach remains an age-old strategy to land link opportunities. Here’s why: 

• It helps you build trust with content creators and decision-makers with a personalized approach.
• It lets you contact the target audience directly without the involvement of a third party.
• It offers flexibility and scalability when executing an email campaign. 

Common Pitfalls in Modern Email Outreach and How to Avoid Them

While email outreach is an age-old converting strategy for link builders, they still use old ways to convert the target audience. It doesn’t work anymore. 

So, let’s understand the common mistakes that you might be making in your modern outreach approach.

The Challenge of Standing Out in a Crowded Inbox

Recipient’s inboxes are the most crowded place with newsletters and promotional emails from brands who want to sell to them. It’s likely for them to skip the emails—even intentionally. 

So, you need to find ways to stand out in this crowd. Here are a few ways you can do that:

• Play around with the headline, as it’s the first thing the recipient will notice. Add humor, personalization, urgency, or something that will push them to open your email.
• Add extra information to the preheader text. It should be relevant to the subject line that hits the nail in the head. 

Avoiding Spammy Tactics

If your email looks something like the one below, congratulations—your email is likely to land in the spam folder. 

Source: LinkedIn

In case it doesn’t land in the spam folder and the recipient reads the email, they’re likely to mark the email as spam.

Source: Screenshot by User

When you send emails with spammy elements and the recipient marks them as spam, it affects your email deliverability score, which impacts the overall email outreach performance. 

And if you don’t want to lower your email deliverability score and send spammy emails, do this:

• Remove invalid, inactive, or disengaged subscribers from your email list to reduce bounce rates.
• Authenticate your emails using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication to prove your emails are legitimate.
• Use a spam checker tool to test your email for spammy content like excessive capitalization, exclamation marks, and aggressive sales-y language.

The Perils of Generic Pitches and Lack of Personalization

As a link builder, one of the common mistakes you could be making is sending a general pitch to the decision-makers and starting your email by referring to them as “Sir/Ma’am”. It’s a big no. 

Your pitch will likely get ignored and reported as spam. The reason is simple: you sent a generic, sales-y pitch about building links. These recipients (content creators and marketers) receive such emails regularly and ultimately skip them.

Here’s a perfect example of how you should not send your outreach emails.

Source: Screenshot by User

Things that can turn off the recipient after reading this email:

• The recipient’s first name isn’t mentioned (i.e. no name personalization).
• It has a boring, dull subject line that won’t get the recipient to click on the email.
• Multiple links are mentioned without anchor text, making the email spammy.

Don’t make this mistake. Instead, add personalization to your email. Make sure to also consider the following points:

• Conduct extensive research on the recipient and then craft a relevant email. 
• Include name personalization (i.e. add the recipient’s first name in the email body).

Importance of Relevance and Timing in Outreach

Crafting a relevant pitch is important but may still get buried if you fail to understand the formula of right timing. 

And if, in your personalized pitch, you have mentioned something specific to a certain day and time, it may be irrelevant to the recipient when received a day later. 

So, schedule your emails during your recipients' active hours. Also, check their time zones before sending the email and optimize the timings accordingly. 

Overlooking Follow-up

You're missing out on conversions if you're sending the first email but not following up with the decision-makers. Do you know why? Because when you follow up with your prospects multiple times, it can double your email response rate. 

So, follow up with the target audience within three days of sending the email. 

Pro tip: Use an email tracker like Streak or Mixmax that allows you to set the follow-up reminder.

Source: LinkedIn

The Trap of High Volume with Low-Quality

If you rely on sending emails to multiple marketers and content creators with lower-quality content, it will backfire on you. Recipients can easily determine whether you have invested time in crafting the email or if it is an automated email you have sent to the masses. 

There are two ways to avoid this problem: 

1. Send high-quality emails in low volume.
2. Send high-quality emails in higher volumes.

So, focus on sending lesser yet hyper-personalized emails.

Alternatively, you can build link builders who send personalized emails to the target audience. This way, you can send personalized emails to each recipient instead of sending a copy-paste template to the masses.

Crafting the Perfect Outreach Email

Ready to craft a hyper-personalized, compelling email pitch and improve your response rate? Let’s get started:

The Art of the Subject Line

A subject line is the deal breaker in your email outreach campaign. It is the first thing that the recipient sees when they receive your email. It is the subject line that lets them decide whether they should open your email or not. For these reasons, craft your subject lines with intention.

Source: LinkedIn

To write a compelling subject line:

• Use interesting phrases, statistics, or the recipient's pain points.
• Ask intentional questions that trigger the recipient's problems.

The Importance of a Strong Opening Line to Capture the Attention

By crafting a strong opening line, you can:

• Build a connection with the recipients.
• Showcase social proof for credibility.
• Highlight the pain points.

So, make sure to craft a short and concise, two-sentence opening line. For example, mentioning mutual connections in your email automatically builds the initial connection with the recipient.

A few ways you can craft a compelling opening line include: 

• Share an observation: It could be something you observed on the recipient's website or something the recipient shared on social media or in an interview.
• Compliment them: Heard a podcast where the recipient shared interesting insights? Compliment them and make them feel good.
• Emphasize the problem: Address the problem the recipient might be struggling with.

Brief, Yet Compelling Body Content

The decision-makers need more time to read long emails. So, keep it short and sweet. Avoid the “me” talk and keep your focus on the recipient and the value you want to provide them.

Also, format your email well so it's easy to scan and read. Use white spaces and bullet lists to make it scan-worthy.

Personalization

Personalizing your email goes beyond including the recipient’s first name in the email body content and subject line. To personalize your email, include personalization elements such as:

• Industry
• Job role
• Their content
• Their achievements
• Common connections

To implement such personalization elements, conduct comprehensive research by looking at the owner’s primary website and social media profiles.

Here’s how to do it: 

• Go through the content creator’s social media platforms they’re most active on and find the websites they write for. 
• Read through the articles on their website.
• Listen to their podcasts (if they have been on any). 

The key is to know the recipient better and personalize the email. 

Here’s an example of how most people personalize the email by just including the recipient’s first name and website. While it’s important to add these elements, they don’t make a personalized email.

Source: Screenshot by User

But you can fix these mistakes and personalize them. Here’s how you can do it:

Source: LinkedIn

Using Social Proof or Mentioning Personal Connections

When you include personal connections or social proof in your email, the recipient is likely to respond quicker than other emails. The reason is simple: your email pitch showcases credibility.

For example, this person sent the pitch on social media. 

Source: Screenshot by User

His pitch is minimalistic. There’s no intriguing hook yet, it got the response. 

Here’s why: he highlighted social proof (i.e. the authoritative websites he has written guest posts for.) 

Clear and Direct Call to Action

Did you direct the recipient to schedule a call with you? Or did you ask them to write a guest post on their website? If not, how do you think the recipient will understand your end goal? 

Here’s the thing: readers do not know what you want from them unless you ask them yourself. So, include CTAs in your email. 

• Don’t use vague phrases like “click here” or “find out more”.
• Be specific about your end goal, whether that be scheduling the call, offering expert insights, or writing the guest post.

The Power of the P.S. Line

The P.S. line is the second thing the recipients will see if they open your email and skim through it. It helps reiterate the message's main point, highlight urgency, or include your offer.

A few things you should know before writing the P.S. line:

• Decide when and how to use the P.S. line.  
• Choose the particular style to write P.S. and use the same style consistently across all the emails.
• Consider the purpose of the email.

The Role of Visuals

Visuals like images, videos, and GIFs make your videos more interactive. In fact, adding videos to your email can increase the clickthrough rate by 300%.

So, include a Loom video in your email to demonstrate how you can add value to the recipient's website. 

Or, use a GIF in your follow-up email to add a fun element while showing the emotions through the visual. 

Leveraging Tools and Platforms for Effective Outreach 

If you want our email outreach efforts to be successful, make use of the right tools:

• For research: To find potential link opportunities, track emails and analyze competitors, use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush. 
• For prospecting: To find contact details of your prospects, such as their email address (and verify their details), use tools like Hunter and RocketReach.
• For email tracking: To find the status of your email outreach (i.e., whether the recipient has seen your email, and for timely follow-ups, use tools like Streak and Saleshandy).

Alternatively, you can use a single email solution that provides all the functions—prospecting, tracking, and sending emails. 

By using email software, you can automate your email campaign. 

Doing so lets you segment your prospects, craft a different email for each segment, and personalize emails for your target audience.

Remember, your goal is to automate the emails while maintaining the personal touch.
For managing LinkedIn connections and automating outreach, consider integrating LinkedIn automation software into your strategy. These tools can streamline your process of finding and engaging with potential leads on LinkedIn efficiently.

Measuring the Success of Your Email Marketing Campaign

So you have automated your email outreach campaign. What’s next? It’s time for you to define the key performance indicators (KPIs).

Some of the key KPIs you need to look at include:

• Number of backlinks: Tracking the number of backlinks helps you determine the increase in your website traffic. 
• Quality of backlinks: Tracking the backlinks you receive from a high-quality website matters as it helps improve your website’s domain authority (DA).
• Link building conversion rate: Tracking the percentage of links acquired through email outreach efforts helps identify the effectiveness of the outreach.

Once you have identified your KPIs, start analyzing key metrics such as response rate, engagement rate, and email conversions. 

• Response rate: Track how many recipients respond to your email.
• Engagement rate: Monitor the traffic directed to your website from the links acquired through email outreach. 
• Conversions: Measure how many emails are converted to desired outcomes, such as backlinks or collaborations.

If you do not see success with your outreach efforts after analyzing these metrics, don’t stop. Instead, A/B test your strategy.

By A/B testing different elements of outreach emails like the subject lines, email content, and call-to-actions, you can:

• Identify what triggers the open rate and click-through rate.
• Determine what kind of content your audience resonates the most with. This will help you understand your audience better and secure backlinks.
• Identify what kind of content triggers the response rate.

Beyond Outreach: Building Genuine Relationships

Without a doubt, sending cold emails, crafting a better pitch, and understanding the nitty-gritty of email outreach are crucial for the success of your email campaign.

But, if you want to focus on quality over larger volumes of links, build relationships. 

Source: LinkedIn

Here are a few ways to do so:

• Create content on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter (where your target audience is present) and engage with them regularly without pitching them the links.
• Be active on Slack communities and provide your target audience with valuable insights.

Wrapping Up

Email outreach has been the favourite approach for link builders over the years. While you may think that email outreach for link opportunities doesn't work anymore, the truth is that you aren't aware of the evolving marketing trends. 

You can still ace the game and win links. The key is to stay updated with the new trends and adapt yourself accordingly. 

If you’re interested in learning more about digital marketing or the many superior services we offer at TechWyse, reach out today! Call (416)-410-7090 or contact us here.