How To Use Attachments In Your Cold Prospecting: Benefits of Adding Video, PDFs and Docs To Your Outreach

Do videos and attachments in cold outreach increase or decrease the effectiveness of your message? Does it affect delivery, open, and reply rates?

The majority of cold outreach experts struggle to answer this. On the one hand, cold outreach attachments enable you to provide the prospect with more details about your brand, service, or solution. On the other hand, it might be preventing potential customers from opening and reading your Linkedin messages, DMs, and cold emails. And what's worse? They cannot respond to something they haven't read or watched.

Learning what a Linkedin, cold call, and cold email is and how to run one takes very little time. But to truly master them, a lifetime of constant tweaking and optimization is required. Now, I'd like to suggest personalized videos as a further way to enhance your cold emails and Linkedin messages.

According to a recent study of popular online lead-generation strategies, email outreach is the most efficient tool at your disposal. However, you must start by crafting excellent cold emails if you want to start capturing those sweet, sweet sales. Simply put, your email must successfully turn prospects into devoted clients. That seems a stretch, don't you think? However, if you can persuade prospects to open and read your cold emails, it is still possible.

According to research, the average open rate for a cold email campaign is between 15% and 30%. Therefore, if yours generates open rates of less than 15%, you probably need to make some changes.

So why don't potential customers open your cold emails? The following are the primary causes:

• Not laser targeting

• Bad and manipulative subject lines

• Your cold email's content is raising spam filters' red flags.

The final point, which is entirely related to your cold outreach content (videos and attachments) will be the main focus of this article. Your cold outreach campaign could be significantly impacted by the timing and method of doing this.

But first, let us look at why sales reps use attachments in their emails and what their recipients think of this.

Sales Reps View On Attachments

Many salespeople and marketers developed the habit of sending Linkedin messages and cold emails with attachments over time. And it makes perfect sense why you would need to do this. After all, a lot of the outreach advice that is currently available advises you to make your messages and emails as brief as possible. This rule can be a little annoying from a sales perspective. As a result, there isn't much room left to discuss everything about what you're marketing.

Therefore, there is a strong temptation to attach your company profile, brochures, and any other marketing materials that outline the features and advantages of your product or solutions to cold emails. The main benefit of this strategy is that it enables you to contact prospective customers all at once.

The presumption is that the prospect can easily open the attached files to find additional information if they are interested and need it. And as a result of this new information, they will be persuaded to respond.

Some, however, contend that cold outreach campaigns are not supposed to proceed in this manner. You must view it from the angle of the prospect in order to understand why.

Prospects View On Attachments

Sending videos and attachments in cold emails can make your life as a marketer or salesperson much simpler, but what do your potential buyers truly think of this? Consider yourself to be the prospect.

Imagine you get a message from a total stranger. They give you a hazy pitch about their product that you've never heard of. Then they ask you to watch a video of you repeating the same pitch or worse to look in a mysterious file they attached to find more information.

There are a few questions you might ask yourself if you were in such a situation:

• Do you feel secure enough to open and download an attachment from a

  complete stranger?

• What if the video contains something lewd?

• What if the video or attachment has a virus or other malicious

  software that will damage your computer?

• Do you have the time or desire to download and open the attached

  file, even if you could get over your fear?

• How often have you opened a cold email attachment?

Cold email prospects would need to be extremely interested in you or your offering before they would download, open, and analyze any attachment. And by the time of that initial email, you simply haven't established enough trust.

Even though you might think that including awesome attachments in cold emails will increase interest in your service or product, that is simply not how it works. Additionally, bear in mind that spammers are notorious for sending brief emails with attachments.

The prospect is unaware that you are not a spammer. Sending such a subpar cold email is not the way to prove that you are not a spammer; they will need every piece of evidence you can provide them with.

Remember that the likelihood is high that you'll lose the prospect and never hear back from them if your message causes them to hesitate for any reason. This is particularly true when you take into account the numerous calls, LinkedIn messages, and emails the typical business executive receives every day.

They simply lack the capacity to process all that information at once, regardless of whether you send them a wall of text or include a creative infographic.

Remember that getting a response is the main objective of any cold outreach campaign. It's not to force the potential customer to read a long email, visit your website, or make a purchase.

Instead, concentrate on forging relationships with potential clients that will benefit both parties. The only way to steadily increase your sales over time is to do that.

Anti Spam Filters Vs Attachments In Outreach Email

As mentioned earlier, spammers are known to send out bulk emails with lots of attachments but little text. As a result, many email service providers now consider such messages to be spam.

The length of text that a prospect can actually receive in their inbox is another issue. This varies from one email provider to the next once more. Adding attachments to your cold email messages will typically compromise deliverability.

Simply put, using this strategy might result in prospects never even receiving your emails due to increased sensitivity to anti-spam filters. Additionally, it might have a negative impact on the reputation of your domain, which will eventually hurt your outreach efforts.

What is the final verdict then? Try as much as possible to avoid using attachments in your cold conversations with potential prospects.

The tone and content of your emails are a further element that is frequently ignored. Certain words are marked as red flags by anti-spam filters.

Naturally, there are some words and expressions you should steer clear of. However, there are other, natural ones that might also set off the anti-spam filters. Words like:

• Cost

• Free

• Guarantee

• Shop

• Cash

• Sample

• Money

• Affordable

• Lifetime

• Paid

• Plan

The list continues forever. It's also important to keep in mind that it's impossible to predict with absolute certainty whether your cold emails will be flagged by an anti-spam filter. This is due to the fact that every filter has a unique set of standards that it adheres to. So your best course of action would be to refrain from including attachments in cold emails as well as from using any of the highlighted trigger words.

Also stay away from:

• Using ALL CAPS in cold email subject lines

• Exclamation points in excess!!! making typographical and grammatical

  mistakes

• Sending cold emails with only HTML utilizing JavaScript, Flash, or

  video

3 Ways You Can Use Video and Other Attachments Effectively In Your Cold Outreach

You might still feel the need to add content to your messages even after knowing all this. This could be because getting responses from your prospects depends on having that additional information.

In that case, there are a few alternatives to cold email attachments for giving access to this content. They consist of the following:

1. Server-Based Attachments

Place the documents and files you wish to attach on a server. After that, all you have to do is include a link to this information in your messages.

The prospect no longer needs to search for attachments, open them, or download them to their own drives thanks to this technique. Instead, they could easily access the information online by clicking on the link.

There are numerous alternatives available to you if you decide against hosting it on your own server for any reason. These consist of Poseidon DocShare, Dropbox, and Google Drive.

It's crucial to consider the file's format and share it on the appropriate platform. YouTube is the best option for video attachments. YouTube can be useful for audio files as well, but SoundCloud and iTunes might be preferable.

Note: If you include too many links, your email will quickly become a total mess. Instead, include a link that takes the potential customer to a location where they can complete the next step. This might be done in order to get in touch with you, learn more about your company or your product or service, or both.

2. Landing Page

However, your attachments don't have to be standard files or documents. On your website, you could also make a unique landing page for that purpose. Such a page will be jam-packed with extra details that prospective customers might find interesting.

But be sure to tailor this information to your target audience for the greatest impact. The ability to track more metrics than just open, response, and click-through rates make this idea even better.

Using analytic tools, you can monitor and examine how prospects behave while they are on the landing page. What you need to do to best appeal to your target prospects will be revealed by the data that is generated.

Note: Although it might seem obvious, you'd be surprised at how frequently cold emails with broken links are sent. Therefore, make sure the link is active before sending your email by checking it twice. Links that don't work otherwise might harm your credibility.

3. Ask For Permission

Ask for their consent to send more information before sending any attachments. To accomplish this, you must first pique the prospect's interest with your message and then conclude it with a compelling call to action.

Here, you can enquire about their interest in a report, ebook, or video that provides more information on the subject. By doing this, you in fact make it simpler for the potential customer to reply to your messages.

Over time, this will increase your reply rate. Additionally, it offers you the chance to pinpoint a potential customer who might actually be interested in what you're selling.

Conclusion: Video Outreach, Personalize Linkedin Inmail, and Reply Rate

It's crucial to take all reasonable steps to ensure that your messages actually reach prospects when it comes to cold outreach campaigns. Additionally, it's crucial to prevent alienating email recipients when they do so.

The first thing a potential customer will do when they become irritated is click "mark as spam", blacklist you, or call you out on Linkedin; therefore, you should try to prevent that from happening. You can accomplish this with the aid of these recommendations and best practices. Sending cold outreach messages without attachments is also crucial.

Attachments in your inMail and cold emails not only add weight to your message but also trigger anti-spam filters. Your messages will simply not reach your prospect if it contains an attachment because they will be sent to the spam folder. Make your email all about developing relationships and receiving responses instead.

Use attachments sparingly in your cold outreach efforts so as not to overwhelm the recipient with too much information at once. Get their attention! Additionally, you will have numerous opportunities to share all the information you desire with them once you have their attention.