In this article, we share with you 15 of the best guest posting services you need to consider in 2023, including our own service, Nerdy Joe. 

At Nerdy Joe, we’ve had a lot of success doing guest posting for ourselves and our clients. Here is a quick roundup of the success we had with our guest posting services. 

Here is the answer we got from CoSchedule’s Inbound Marketing Director, Ben Sailer. 

Here is the reply we got from ex-hunter.io Head of Marketing, Irina Maltseva.

We will show you in this post why we are one of the best guest posting services and how we can do it for you. You’ll also see some of the best services outside of us in the list so you can make an informed choice. 

15 best guest posting services for guaranteed placement 

As time goes on, your business will need more exposure to the public. To do this, you will need a guest posting service that can perform the task for you.

Here are 15 guest posting services you can consider for your business. 

1 – Nerdy Joe

We are primarily a lead generation agency that uses cold emails to generate sales leads for businesses to fill their pipelines and get more sales.

But in our years of experience doing cold email and trying to grow our own website, we’ve had to do guest posting outreach and found it was a service we could offer others. 

Mainly because we’ve noticed that most businesses offering guest posting services go about the wrong way and only get poor-quality links on link farms for their clients.

They generally own all the sites they get links from, so it’s easy for them to simply paste a 200-word post and put 200 links in it. 

Or, if they actually do the outreach, they will be chasing numbers — targeting too many websites instead of using the snipper approach).

They don’t take time to properly create compelling content for their customers and help them gain the authority and the trust of other site owners. And they get answers like the following:

This is what we are against. We offer our guest posting services by way of cold email outreach, also known as blogger outreach link building. 

After you sign up with us, we will have some discussions about your service and the target companies we should target; then we will proceed to build the lists, create the content, craft the cold email copy, and run the campaigns for you. 

Why Nerdy Joe is the best guest posting service for your needs

We care about your brand and offer value — we will get you quality backlinks from guest posts that make web admins, and Google love you

When it comes to guest posting services, the service you get falls into the following four categories. 

• The guest posting service like us, Nerdy Joe,  that actually takes the time to target websites based on clear criteria; creates high-quality, evergreen content that brings you quality traffic and SEO juice; crafts a compelling cold email, and actually gets your content published to earn you the backlinks. 
• The guest posting service already owns a lot of sites and easily creates a 500-word blog post to link to you and charges you for it. 
• The guest posting service makes you sign a long-term contract while promising you that you’ll get X numbers of guest posts per month while failing on the quality of posts and links and potentially failing to deliver on the number they promised as well. 
• The guest posting service is working in tandem with link farm websites, so they can easily send them a couple of dollars to get “random” content published and linked back to you. 

Suppose you were to work with a guest posting service; from the details we gave about each type above, which would you go with? 

If you said the first, then know you’re in for a treat. Because it’s only the first type that promotes quality while getting you valuable links that will help you grow and maintain growth on a long-term basis. 

The other types will only get you poor backlinks and blog posts, and that’s not how you want to be represented.

What we mean is that you probably don’t want your name attached to a 300-word post on some random site that no one will ever read. 

The worst part is that any Google algorithm update could penalize your site because of the poor sites that link to you.

That would mean that you’ve wasted your time, resources, and what you had going well on your website by working with the wrong guest posting service. 

Getting guest posting opportunities on high-quality websites is not easy and requires a lot of work. That’s why most companies look for shortcuts to scale it by getting guest posts on poor websites. 

There is no point in getting content published on low-quality websites and getting you backlinks if it’ll come back to haunt you. 

We believe if you want a guest posting service, it’s because you want your name attached to a high-quality post that colors you in your best, gets read and offers great value to the readers, and brings you quality backlinks that help you grow.

Outside of that, you’ll also have other SEO goals, such as:

• Increasing your domain authority (DA) or domain rating (DR)
• Increasing traffic to your site
• Building niche/topical authority 
• Increasing your search engine rankings 
• Etc.

That’s why our guest posting service only offers to create high-quality, fully-detailed, valuable guest blog posts for you and only publish them on high-quality websites that complement yours. 

You might wonder what type of content we create and where we publish it for you, which takes us to the next point about Nerdy Joe.

We only do the snipper approach — we are not throwing shots to see what sticks

There are primarily two approaches to reaching out to other websites for guest posting opportunities known as the sniper approach and the shotgun approach.

We only do the sniper approach, and here is why.  

The main difference between the two approaches is the level of personalization and research involved.

The shotgun approach is more of a quantity-over-quality approach, where the focus is on reaching out to as many blogs as possible — using tools to build lists and blasting them with emails.  

The downside of this approach is that the pitches are generic and can’t resonate with each individual publisher they are reaching out to.

The result can be a low response rate and a low success rate. But there is more:

• People will insult you; remember that email screenshot from above?
• It means you are lazy and selfish because you don’t care about bringing any value to the other website
• Sending that many cold emails will make you a spammer
• People will block you
• ESPs and ISPs could block your domain
• You’ll get a bad reputation and get insulted on socials
• And more.

But people do it because they imagine the more people you reach out to, the more opportunity you’ll have for guest blog placement.

That’s wrong. Now here is why we prefer the sniper approach instead so you can see what we mean. 

Contrary to the shotgun approach, the sniper approach is a quality-over-quantity approach. We focus on carefully selecting the most relevant websites and crafting personalized cold email pitches that speak directly to their interests and needs. 

Our ideal scenario is to create a list of 10 websites that makes sense for your needs, properly research the accounts to target, craft a personalized cold email with a compelling offer for each target, get six positive replies, and win 4 guest blog post opportunities for you. 

People are more likely to be receptive to pitches that are tailored to their specific interests and needs.

We understand that the approach requires more time and effort, but it leads to higher responses, more relevant placements, and higher success rates, and that’s what we stand for. 

Mind you; we don’t target websites simply because they are quality or align with yours. We do it all based on your goals and needs with the guest posting campaign.

Here are some scenario-based examples to explain what we mean:

• If you want to increase traffic to your website, we will ensure that we host your guest post on a website that has massive traffic — on top checking for quality, relevance, and authority. 
• If you want to increase your domain authority and improve your search engine rankings, we will get guest post opportunities from websites with massive traffic and domain authority.
• If you want to build niche authority, you can get backlinks from other websites in your niche (not your competitors) with a bigger domain authority than you do. 

We research your target websites and come up with guest posts content ideas that make people love you

This section is where we answer the question about the type of content we create for you for the guest posting campaign. 

We’ve learned from our experience that when you pitch people with regular, generic blog post ideas for guest posting, you have very little chance of success.

Because, after all, why would they want to host generic content that anyone could easily whip up from a guess on their site?

We get that. So, here is how we approach it. 

We start by researching their website and thoroughly understanding the type of content they publish and how they write it.

We want to ensure that whatever content we bring to their table is aligned with their philosophy, target audience, overall business and marketing goals, etc. 

Also, offering basic, what is, 500-word guest post ideas won’t cut it. That will sound like we are simply reaching out to whip up something that gets us a backlink without offering any real value in return. The content idea we pitch needs to be “dope”. 

We offer evergreen case studies.

This is one of our go-to strategies at Nerdy Joe. When it comes to guest posting outreach, one of our most successful approaches is to offer to create a case study for the target website.

They are the easiest way to convince someone to accept guest posts on their website. 

I mean, who doesn’t want to have a solid teardown of a company’s success case or marketing strategy on its website? It always works like a charm. 

Here are a few we’ve published over the years. 

On CoSchedule.

On RevGenius.

On Encharge.io

On The Good.

There are more. The main point of these examples is to show you that creating case studies and pitching them for guest blogs works, really. 

We offer guides.

Step-by-step guides also work really well for pitching guest post ideas. The target website’s audience will learn something specific, and they can genuinely benefit from the content. The key is to make them actionable and show expertise.

Here are a few examples that we did.

On Hunter.io.

On Vidico.

That’s it. Note that the type of content we create will depend on the plan you want us to work on and our agreed-upon deal. 

We build list and reach prospects to personalize our cold emails: we do everything manually to ensure data quality

Strong personalization is non-negotiable if you want to have success with a guest blog outreach strategy. 

To do it well, from building our target lists to the information we collect and use for personalizing our cold emails, we build all the data manually. 

We build our lists manually

You might wonder why we prefer doing it all by hand while we could simply use a data intelligence tool like ZoomInfo or LeadsEngine to easily build a list and collect all the data we want. 

Well, we do know the value of those, we’ve tried using them in the past, and that’s why we now prefer doing all the research manually and building all the data manually. 

In fact, these tools only aggregate surface-level data that are not really relevant to the type of data we need to properly personalize our emails. 

With these tools, it is easy to find data about a company, such as:

• They are in the healthcare industry, 
• Have 1000 to 1500 employees,
• Are series A-funded companies,
• Are in the U.S,
• Use HubSpot or Salesforce as part of their tech stack.
• Etc.

Well, that’s not the type of data we want. Remember that our email will be sent to a specific account at the target blog or company. So, this type of data can’t serve in any way. It’s relevant. 

Instead, we take it upon ourselves to find the right account to reach out to at each company. In most cases, this generally falls into the following heads at the company:

• Head of Content
• Content Lead
• Content Marketing Officer
• Content Marketing Manager
• Head of Content Marketing
• Content Marketing Specialist 
• SEOs

You might say that another tool like Clearbit can help us find these. Well, using these types of tools, it’s easy to find the leadership of a company. Positions like the Founder, CEO, CTO, President, VPs, and Head of departments. 

It’s hard, near impossible, to find the people that “actually get their hands on the blog” at those companies, like the Head of Content or Content Lead.

And even if they do make suggestions, they might not be accurate; they may be outdated, they could be the wrong title, etc. 

We avoid all this by actually researching the company’s blog, team page, and LinkedIn profile to see the people actually working there and doing stuff RIGHT NOW.

That’s how we ensure accuracy in account research. You can learn more about how we build our lists here. 

As we mentioned earlier, we don’t build long lists. So, here is what our list generally looks like before launching our guest blogging outreach campaign. 

We research each account manually to collect about them to personalize our cold emails

As we build the lists, we also research the people we will be sending the emails to so we can have topical data about them to make our cold emails compelling and our offers unique. 

For starters, we don’t want to send cold emails to webmasters with unique generic, templatized messages like:

“Hello John, 

I hope this email finds you well. 

I’m Jack from Cold Email Sucks. 

I found that your blog speaks about Email Marketing. 

I have an idea for a post about cold emails…bla bla bla. 

I’d like to place it on your website. Please let me know what you think. 

Cheers. 

Jack from Cold Email Sucks.”

This is the easiest way to lose the guest post opportunity. So, we do prospect research to actually understand who they are and collect unique data about them that makes them love you from reading the first few lines of the cold emails we send them under your name. 

Specifically, that’s how we go from the email above to something like the following.

“Hey, Marc

I was listening to your podcast with Xavier, and I have to admit that the take you had on marketing and sales alignment is pretty interesting. 

Nobody ever talks about how marketers have very little knowledge of the target audience’s actual needs and only make decisions based on guesses. More people need to hear this.

Also, I was playing around with your website and noticed that your content mainly covers email marketing services. 

I have an idea for a case study about a cold email campaign we run that I think your audience will love. I took the liberty to create a map of the content here {link}”.

That’s not the entire email, but you get the idea. 

The data we collect allows us to connect with them on a personal level. Immediately, we strike the difference in their inbox, and they know we did the homework before reaching out. 

They know you are not some random person blasting them with poor cold emails (because we send the cold email from your address).

Doing it like this promises value from the email, and people will be much more likely and happy to host your content on their site. 

Now, you might be wondering if we actually do the research. 

• We listen to podcasts your potential customers have been on.
• We read blog posts they wrote. 
• We read their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts.
• We read discussions on forums they’re in.
• Etcetera.

Using the data we collect, we craft first lines and icebreakers customized to each individual.

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

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Here are some examples of how this works for us.

Here is another positive response we’ve gotten from Hunter.io’s ex Head of Content, Irian Maltseva. 

As you can see, both loved the email and the content idea. That’s the result of targeting a short list of prospects, researching quality data, and perfectly personalizing your cold emails. 

We will make you sign no contract, no retainer: you’ll know exactly what you get

Our guest posting services are pretty clear. You’ll let us know the number of backlinks or guest posts content you want to be published per month, we’ll unfold the workflow to get it done, you’ll pay us accordingly, and that’s it. 

We won’t make you sign any contract, and we will only report on data that matters to you.

For example, at the end of the campaign, we will tell you how many positive responses we had and let you know how many guest post opportunities we got you. 

We won’t make you sign any contracts and quarter-long retainers, which are common in the B2B service space.

Most companies will ask you to sign a 3 to 6-month contract before you start working together. They’ll explain it by saying they’ll need to do some testing and all. 

Working with us means you get your post posted from the first month. We believe if you order blog post creation on other sites, it’s simply because you want a blog published under your name on quality websites, so that’s what we achieve for you, and you pay for it. 

Also, our service is subscription-based, and you’ll only renew if you’re happy with what we do for you. If you’re unhappy, you can easily unsubscribe; there won’t be any binding contracts.

This mitigates any risks associated with contracts and gives you the flexibility to choose when to subscribe and when to stop.

2 – LinksThatRank

Links That Ranks are a link-building agency that offers guest posting services and delivers quality links to their customers. Their goal is to deliver quality links after it has passed through a strict internal quality control process.

Such processes include ensuring the placement contains internal links, external links, high-quality content, images, and technical checks. 

They also operate a strict blacklist policy where they blacklist sites such as guest post farms on PBNs, resellers lists, guest post networks, publicly advertised links, or hacked lists from SAPE.

They update these lists every month to ensure their clients get high-quality links. 

Once you sign up for this agency, they ensure that you get relevant placements, including  1000+ words of content, and publish on sites that Google trusts and have 500+ organic visitors per month.

They also avoid “write for us” pages because they believe they are heavily farmed and pose huge risks to your website. 

Here is a quick view of how their process works for their clients.

• You place your order where you provide their target URLs and keywords.
• They manually review your order to avoid mixing up URLs or keywords.
• They add your URLs and target keywords to their internal rank-tracking system.
• They search for relevant sites within your industry and start negotiating link placements.
• After negotiation, they create well-written 1000 words content that includes relevant internal and external links.
• Each link goes through its 23-point quality control review.
• They send a final report with your links and anchor texts and fulfill your expectations.

Links That Rank’s pricing details aren’t displayed on their website, but you can contact them to request a quote or further information.

3 – GetMeLinks

GetMeLinks is a link-building agency that offers guest posting and other link-building-related services for various companies over the years.

With over 4 years of experience, they have been featured in publications such as Business Insider, SEO Tribunal, Search Engine Watch, Fat Rank, and more. 

GetMeLinks offers its guest posting services to get super relevant backlinks on its client’s website through unique outreach campaigns.

Based on their client’s request, they have a custom outreach campaign where they deliver guest posts based on the metrics you have on your website within 4 weeks. Such metrics often depend on the DA or DR traffic requirements of your website. 

In the case where the guest posts have very little URL authority, the agency manipulates this through the tiered links to the guest posts. In other words, they have PBNs link, which they use to increase the power to your site without causing any risk.

Based on their client’s preferences, GetMeLinks offers their guest posting in three ways which are:

Niche Posts

Here, the client chooses the type of domain rating on which they want their guest posts published. Common types offered by the agency include DR 30+, DR 45+, and DR 60+, and they cost $160, $260, and $340, respectively.

Gambling guest posts

Since gambling is a niche that few placement websites accept, the agency finds it more tedious to get a target placement. Due to this, the service costs more than the regular guest posts. 

There is a custom price for each domain rating on which clients want their guest posts published. For instance, a DR 30+ gambling guest post costs $220. Meanwhile, a DR 45+  gambling post costs $320. 

UK Backlinks

Since the Uk is a financial powerhouse where millions of individuals have access to the Internet, there is a lot of competition for many online businesses.

As a result, Get Me Links provides a specific UK link-building service to give your business a competitive advantage. 

Prices vary based on the domain rating on which you want your guest posts published. DR 30+ costs $200, DR 45+ costs $300, and DR 60+ costs $400. 

4 – Loganix

Loganix is a marketing agency that offers various digital marketing services to different companies. Some companies they have worked with include Rankings, OneLocal, Drift, From the Future, FreshBooks, Optimise, and more. 

One of the digital marketing services they offer is guest posting services. They help their clients to get links through a tough process that comprises prospecting, content creation, quality control, placement, and reporting. 

This rigorous process enables the clients to get links from trusted sites, a 1-month turnaround, relevant and well-written articles, and guaranteed placements. 

Here is a quick view of how their process works.

• You place your order by sharing the anchor texts and desired URLs you would like to place in each post.
• They send you a list of websites that fit your criteria and have their writers create content that fits your needs and the site’s guidelines.
• Once their team ensures that the link is naturally placed within the content, they send a white-label report with links to the guest posts you have purchased. 

Loganix offers two pricing plans for their guest posting services, and these include:

• Guest Posts Basic, which costs $200 and gets you 100+ visits.
• Guest Posts Premium, which costs $300 and gets you 500+ visits.

5 – OutreachZ

OutreachZ is a link-building agency that delivers authority backlinks for startups, digital agencies, and brands all across the globe. They have served over a thousand clients in 11 countries.

Some of the notable companies they have worked with include MOZ, HubSpot, HuffPost, Search Engine Land, Entrepreneur, and more. 

One of the major services they offer is guest posting services, where they deliver authority backlinks with confidence.

On their website is a prominent feature called “The Marketplace” where you can find publishers within your niche and personal network.

You can filter these publishers based on metrics such as organic traffic, niche, domain authority, and more.

Here is a quick view of how their process works.

• They find the right publishers and begin an outreach campaign.
• They present the publishers to the clients and seek approval.
• Once approved, they give the publishers different topics and write an interesting article that contains a backlink to your website.

The result of the process includes getting guest posts on thousands of high-quality websites. They also give out a 12-month guarantee for all your links; else, you get a free replacement. 

Outreach’s pricing plan varies based on different metrics, and this includes:

• DA 30+ plan, which costs $80 and gets you 1,000+ organic traffic.
• DA 40+ plan, which costs $115 and gets you 5,000+ organic traffic.
• DA 50+ plan, which costs $173 and gets you 10,000+ organic traffic.

6 – FatJoe

FatJoe is a link-building agency that provides various link-building services to agencies in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Unlike other agencies, they refer to their guest posting service as “Blogger Outreach.”

This blogger outreach service involves reaching out to blog owners with offers of writing free content or collaborating with them in exchange for links and mentions to their client’s websites.

The written content is relevant to their target audience and also relates to the client’s business.

Here is how the agency’s process works.

• Upon signing up with the company, the clients must provide the anchor text and target URLs while the team decides on the content length and placement. Then, they reach out to relevant bloggers within the business industry.
• Their copywriting team produces well-written content that includes a non-promotional backlink to your site. 
• You get a report of the blogger outreach they have secured and the domain authority metrics from your dashboard.

After going through this process, they provide unique and well-written content with high domain authority quality metrics. Fat Joe offers a 5-tier pricing plan for their services, and this includes:

• DA 10+ plan,  which costs £60 per placement
• DA 20+ plan, which costs £80 per placement
• DA 30+ plan, which costs £100 per placement
• DA 40+ plan, which costs £180 per placement
• DA 50+ plan, which costs £320 per placement.

7 – The Hoth

The Hoth is primarily an SEO-based agency that provides SEO services to grow businesses.

Although its primary focus is on SEO, PPC, and content services, it also provides a link outreach service that produces website authority and organic traffic services. They do this by getting high-quality backlinks from ranking sites within 30 days. 

Here is a quick view of their process.

• You provide the target URLs and anchor text.
• Then, you will give them some time (a maximum of 30 days) to get the final report on your HOTH dashboard
• If you have any questions about which links or anchor text to choose from, you will contact the agency.

Here is their four-tier pricing package based on a 500-words article and the type of Domain Authority you want.

• DA 20+ package costs $150 per post
• DA 30+ package costs $200 per post
• DA 40+ package costs $275 per post
• DA 50+ package costs $325 per post.

8 – Outreach Solutions (Outreach Labs)

Outreach Labs is a UK-based SEO outreach and link-building agency that offers content creation, SEO blogger outreach, and link-building services to small, medium, or startup businesses, freelancers, bloggers, and other relevant agencies. 

Their SEO blogger outreach service involves the creation of great content and then contacting some high-quality websites to pitch the content to them and get the domain authority you have selected. 

Here is a quick view of the agencies’ process with their clients.

• You reach out to them with your requirements
• They examine your website and current backlink profile
• They suggest a package based on your website’s current situation
• You place your order
• They get started on the blogger outreach and link-building service to get the links delivered to you within the agreed time.

There are no pricing details about their services on their website, but you can fill out their forms to get in touch with them.

9 – OneLittleWeb

One Little Web is an SEO-based agency that provides SEO and content services for leading agencies, SEO Pros, and business owners. They claimed to have worked with companies such as Niche Pursuits, Eric Ramos, Repair Smith, SEO Bank, JeffLenney, and more. 

The agency offers guest-post backlink services where they perform outreach campaigns by crafting 1000+ content filled with powerful backlinks to get traffic from real blogs.

They hand-pick the backlinks and do not select from link farms, PBNs, or any site that can pose a risk to your site. 

Here is how their process works.

• You select your desired plan from the order page and provide them with the target anchor text and URL.
• They perform manual prospecting and secure your placement with relevant sites.
• You approve the proposed domains, and they begin the process.
• Their expert writers and editors craft relevant content for your guest post backlinks.
• They publish the guest post with a link back to your targeted URL
• They track the progress of the project and provide a final report when they finish. 

One Little Web offers its pricing plans in two categories — monthly plans and DA Guest-Posts. Here is their DA Guest-Posts pricing plan.

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• DA 30+, which costs $139 per placement 
• DA 40+, which costs $199 per placement
• DA 50+, which costs $349 per placement.

The monthly plan is as follows:

• Startup plan, which costs $999 per month and gets you 6 guest post backlinks
• Growth plan, which costs $1999 per month and gets you 11 guest post backlinks
• Scale plan, which costs $3999 per month and gets you 24 guest post backlinks.

 10 – The Adsy

Adsy offers guest posting services for buyers and publishers. They deliver quality blog posts with backlinks from sites to gain traffic.

To do this, they perform anti-fraud control and regular content checks in order to get quality backlinks from sites.  

Here is a quick view of their processes.

• You find publishers through a search in the inventory or open offers.
• They order your blog post to be written and placed
• They receive your blog post on a publisher’s platform
• They profit from premium backlinks on sites with real traffic.

After going through the process, they get you top-quality DA 40+ backlinks that can bring organic and referral traffic to your site. The increase in traffic from other sites will be up to 80% and build brand awareness. 

There are no pricing details about their guest posting service on their website, but you can fill out their forms to get in touch with them. 

11 – Niche Website Builders

Niche Website Builders is a content publisher marketing agency that helps investors and individuals to build profitable content sites.

They are featured in WP Eagle, AuthorityHacker, Craig Campbell, Empire Flippers, Flippa, Niche Pursuits, and so on. 

They provide guest post services for various industries, including crypto, medical, and gambling sites. To begin with them, you must provide the target anchor text and URLs. 

Then, they craft well-written content (750, 1250, or 1750 words) and include links in the most natural way using your anchor text.

The chosen links undergo a strict vetting process which is assessed through 17 proprietary metrics. These checks are carried out by their quality control team, which guarantees you quality and safety.

Niche Website Builders offer a three pricing plan for their guest posting services, and this includes:

• DR 30+, which costs you $150 per placement,
• DR 45+, which costs you $240 per placement,
• DR 60+, which costs you $310 per placement.

12 – Uplers

Uplers is an Indian hiring platform that helps remote companies to hire talents efficiently. They have worked with global brands such as DHL, Disney, Amazon, Meta, National Geographic, Oracle, JXT, and more.

Although they are primarily a hiring platform, they also offer guest posting services to grow businesses. They craft well-researched and unique articles that include your website link and publish on the targeted sites. 

They ensure that the targeted sites have metrics such as high domain authority, high organic traffic, traffic location, indexed pages, and more.

They go through a process that gets you 100 unique links within 30 days. If you don’t like the links, they replace them.

Here is how their process works.

• You place an order and provide them with a URL and anchor text.
• Their native content writers craft a unique copy and publish it on the blog with links back to your site.
• Once the content is published, they will send you a guest post progress in the form of a white-label report.

Their pricing plan varies according to the domain authority you want and whether you want them to craft content for you.

For instance, a DA 20+ plan without content costs you $50, but the same plan with content costs you $75. The image below shows you a vivid illustration of their pricing package.

13 – OutreachMaMa

Outreach Mama is an SEO agency that drives organic traffic to grow businesses.

They offer guest posting, blogger outreach, and link-building services to improve their clients’ search engine ranking and build brand awareness.

They have worked for over 300 companies, such as Forbes, Craft Whack, Entrepreneur, Perfect Dog Breeds, Mighty Deals, Backlinko, Vital Reaction, and more. 

Their guest posting services involve handling content creation, outreach, and placement services. Here is how their process works.

• They will collaborate with you to select the best content on your website for guest post links. If you don’t have one, they will create it for you.
• They will go through their inventory and reach out to industry blogs to discover and secure guest posts on their blogs. 
• Once they have agreed on blog posts, they will put together content ideas that fall within the publisher’s guidelines.
• Their content writers create content that is consistent with guest post requirements. 
• Once the content is published, they inform you by sending monthly guest post reports.

They offer three guest post pricing packages, and these include:

• 5 links which cost $1,100 per month
• 10 links which cost $2,100 per month
• 15 links which cost $3,000 per month.

14 – Smash Digital

Smash Digital is an SEO agency that helps to scale organic traffic and earn backlinks for businesses. They provide SEO and link-building services for agencies and businesses through proven strategies to increase rankings and traffic.

Once the website is ready, their goal is to build high-quality backlinks that would get their first-page rankings. 

They partner with thousands of website owners, editors, and marketers to get their clients’ content featured on their relevant sites. All you have to do is to submit your URLs and the keywords you aim for.

Then, you leave the rest of the process — initial contact, content creation, and publishing — to them. If you want to know about their pricing and other details, you can contact them.

15 – PrestigeLinks

Prestige Links is an SEO agency that provides link-building services for startups, agencies, and businesses.

They have worked with over 100+ companies, including StudyGate, Binance, Spot, Hvseo, Pantheon, Preply, Airwallex, and more. 

Their blogger outreach service involves performing 100% manual outreach so that clients can get links to real websites and gain real traffic.

In other words, they do not deal with BPNs, fake sites, BS, or any site that gets them low traffic.

Here is how their link-building process works.

• You choose the sites you want, along with link URLs and anchor text.
• Their team writes articles and reaches out to get them published.
• The articles are published and then linked back to your brand. 

Prestige Links offers three pricing packages for their link-building service. This includes:

• DA 40+, which costs $180 per placement
• DA 60+, which costs $280 per placement
• DA 80+, which costs $380 per placement.

Why you need to outsource your guest posting services 

As a business owner, you may have lots of digital marketing campaigns and other activities you need to deal with. 

For instance, you could be busy figuring out how to generate B2B leads or perform outbound lead generation.

If your focus is fixated on this, you could find it a bit challenging to build an effective guest post campaign that is relevant to your target website and audience. 

Fortunately, you can outsource the guest-post campaign to an agency that specializes in the service. This removes the burden of having your team do everything and could allow you to focus on other activities. 

If you are still unsure about guest posting services, here are some reasons why you should outsource your guest post campaigns. 

1 – You team up with professionals.

Outsourcing your guest post campaigns allows you to team up with professional writers who have experience in blog writing. Since most professional writers stay updated with the latest trends in the industry, they are conscious of the type of information that can attract your audience and the ones that won’t. 

Not only will they understand the objective of your content, but they will apply their experiences to create content that delivers. Besides, you get exposed to sheer talent that delivers quality work to you. For instance, a guest post service that specializes in B2B lead generation can produce an engaging article on how to generate B2B leads. 

2 – It saves time.

Although you can make money, it is impossible to have more time. To create more time, you have to prioritize what is more important to you and clear your schedules.

Rather than spending time creating content or looking for sites that would accept them, you should channel your energy and time to other important business activities. 

Allow a reliable guest blogging service team to handle the job. Since they already have a creative writer’s team and have a good network with target websites, allow them to do the job.

They can handle your requirements with ease because it is their specialty. 

For instance, if you need an article about saas email marketing strategy, you can hire a guest posting service that will not only craft engaging content for the audience but also for the target website. 

Also, you can have your project delivered within a specific timeframe. Most guest post services have more than one client.

In other words, they have many projects to complete and deadlines to meet. Hiring them means you get your project done in less time than when an in-house team handles it. 

3 – It saves money.

Hiring an in-house team means you have to pay salaries. In-house writers often cost a lot. A source revealed that labor cost accounts for 70% of the total business costs.

You have to pay for employees’ wages, benefits, payroll, and other related taxes. Hence, adding more labor increases the cost of running the business.

However, outsourcing your guest posts saves you from these unnecessary costs and other hassles.

By investing in a guest posting service, you get the most talented and productive team that will deliver quality work to you. You can also spend the saved finance on other aspects of your business that need money. 

4 – SEO and technical knowledge.

The goal of guest posting is to gain traffic. You can’t do this without knowing about SEO and other technical aspects. This is where the guest posting service appears in the picture. 

They do not simply craft content but craft SEO-imbued content that ranks faster. They possess the SEO and technical knowledge which you can use to increase your traffic and grow your business. 

5 – Get relevant content. 

If you feel that your guest post won’t align with your brand tone when you outsource it, you are wrong. Think about the time you hired a web designer to design your business logo.

You gave them all the specifications — font, color, style – relating to the logo. The same principle applies to the guest blogging service team.

You can specify the vision of what you want in your content. It helps the writers to stay on course. They understand your vision and would create connections not only to your audience but to the target website. 

The more you use a particular guest post service, the more they become familiar with your brand tone. For instance, a guest post agency that specializes in digital marketing can craft engaging content about email marketing campaigns.

How to choose the best guest posting service 

Guest posting service is an effective way to build brand awareness and grow your business. Although you may find the task challenging, you can outsource to a guest posting service that can do it for you. And if you outsource it, how do you choose the best guest posting service for your business?

1 – Service

Before you settle for a particular company, you have to research the service they offer. This includes researching the kind of websites and blogs they offer their services. Is it related to your niche or industry? 

Working with a guest posting service that specializes in your niche or industry gives you access to guidance and recommendations on the type of websites you should target for guest posts. 

They can also help you to craft high-quality content that will be relevant to the target website as well as an audience. However, if you select a company that is too generic with its services, it could affect the expected result. 

Also, you should take a look at the quality and relevance of the website they work with. Look out for their domain authority and reputation as well.

The more authority the target website has, the better your guest post will perform. Choosing a service that offers access to high-quality websites that are relevant to your target audience and industry. 

2 – Prices and Packages

Pricing is a crucial factor when you are considering a guest post service. Although this shouldn’t be the sole focus, your business must have a budget, and you should align it with what the business offers you. 

It is best advised to search for a guest posting service that offers different pricing packages. You can find this on various companies’ websites. Some can offer you bulk discounts too.

This allows you to know what you are getting once you pay them. If you don’t see a price list, this may be a red flag. You may be shocked at their prices later on. Hence, look for a transparent company. 

Also, you should avoid guest post companies that charge too low. Sometimes, the cheapest service isn’t the best. What you should look out for instead are companies that offer competitive rates for their services. 

3 – An in-house content team

One of the main goals of guest posting is to drive traffic to your website. You must make sure that content is high-quality and relevant to the audience of the target website. One way to make this happen is to look for a guest post service that has an in-house content team.

This means that the company has a team that is committed to researching and writing quality content that is relevant to your business and resonates with the audience on the target website.

An experienced team creates engaging content that is free of grammatical errors and knows how to include links naturally. 

4 – Social proofs

As a client, social proofs remain a significant factor you should check out before you select a particular company. Know what their previous customers are saying about them or their experiences. 

Ask for testimonials. Most reputable companies would have it available for you to read. This is the evidence that demonstrates they receive good feedback from clients and can prompt you to work with them. If the company can’t provide you with social proof, then you don’t have to work with them. 

5 – Quality control and blacklist policy 

When choosing a guest posting service, ensure that they have quality control measures in place. This enables them to review and approve your articles effectively before they are published.

In other words, they ensure that the article is free of grammatical and spelling errors, contains well-naturally placed links (internal or external), has a relevant image, and is free from technical errors. 

Besides, you should ensure that the guest posting service operates a blacklist policy on specific websites that could pose great risks to your sites when linked to them.

Such websites include guest post farms, PBNs, or any other site that could pose a significant risk when linked to your website. 

6 – Results

The main importance of guest posting is to produce results. In other words, you must see a significant increase in your website traffic.

This can help to boost your conversion rates. Due to this, you have to ensure that they give you a report when your guest posts are live. 

They must also provide you with the details of the progress, especially the organic traffic. Hence, when you are choosing a guest post service, ensure that they give you a detailed report of what is going on. 

Let Nerdy Joe do your guest posting services for you

At Nerdy Joe, we have perfectioned the best blogger outreach styles and tactics to reach out to influential CMOs, and content team leads to get backlinks from the world’s leading websites. 

If you need guest blogging services, here is what we can help you with:

• Finding target websites to get quality backlinks from.
• Target account research and list building.
• Coming up with the best pitch ideas and ideating them.
• Craft the outreach campaign emails and get your results. 
• Get your content posted on niche-relevant sites and get contextual links.

Ready to ace your guest posting campaign? Talk to us.

AppSumo made $37 million this year from its email marketing strategy.

ConvertKit has grown from 0 to 8 figures by leveraging four SaaS email marketing strategies.

What do these brands have in common? They all have a great email marketing strategy.

The fact is that nothing beats a good email marketing strategy. At least, for an ROI of $42 per email sent, that’s the best we can say.  

So, if you are struggling to come up with an effective email marketing strategy, this article is for you.

Let’s start with the basics.

10 Email Marketing Tips You Can Use to Boost Your Campaign Results

Now that you know the basics of email marketing, here are some email marketing tips that’ll help you give a boost to your current email strategy.

1 – Set your goals

Taking the time to set your goals is a key part of your email marketing campaigns.

Setting up goals can help you determine what type of email marketing campaigns you send, how and who you target, what content you include, and your performance indicators. 

So what do you want to achieve with your campaign?

Is it to drive new sign-ups for mailing list development? New sales prospects? Higher attendance at your event?

If you want your campaign to be successful, it’s worth spending some time thinking about what you want to achieve with it before you launch. 

Also, be sure to set measurable goals, such as specific numbers, dates, etc., of your objectives, so you can measure your success.

Here’s an example.

❌ Wrong: Boost email open and clickthrough rates

✅ Good: Increase email open rate by 25%

You should also be aware of vanity metrics. 

These are the kinds of metrics that make you appear strong in the eyes of your competitors but don’t serve you well in understanding your performance. (i.e., Email CTR = 20% when revenue is actually $15 )

So slow down the process, sit down, and get your goals perfectly defined so you can better achieve them.

2 – Build your email subscribers’ persona or avatar

The key to creating an ideal persona is simply to get to know your target audience and to keep looking for them.

• Who is interested in your products/services?
• What keeps them up at night?
• How can you help them?
• What interests them?
• How do they relate to your brand?

These are just a few of the questions you’ll need to answer in order to create a solid subscriber profile.

In fact, your emails are only as good as the engagement of your readership. So if your emails don’t attract them, you’ll only get crickets, and your unsubscribe rate will increase.

Designing your subscriber persona will help you paint a big picture of your target audience.

You’ll be able to understand the different issues they face, which will allow you to serve them better. This is the key to writing emails that your subscribers will love.

3 – Design your email marketing strategies

Your strategy is the starting point for your email campaign.

An effective strategy helps you achieve your marketing goals with maximum consistency and structure.

Yet you don’t have to go through thick and thin to create an effective one. 

Here is how to design your email marketing strategy.

Define your audience

A study conducted by MailChimp shows that 43% of consumers unsubscribe from a company’s email marketing if the messages are not relevant.

You need to identify and get to know your target audience. The target audience is the person or group of people identified as the ideal recipients of your campaign emails. 

These are the people you want to appeal to your product or service through your marketing initiatives. Understanding who they are will help you unfurl your tactics accordingly.

Signup sources

Signup sources are where and how your subscribers sign up for your list. A successful campaign requires a variety of subscription sources.

Knowing where your customers have signed up for your list can give you a better idea of how to engage with them and where you might focus your marketing energies in the future. 

So, if you notice that the majority of your sign-ups are driven by lead magnets or option forms, you may want to focus on creating more lead magnets.

But if your subscribers are coming from some other newsletters, you may want to sponsor more newsletters.

Establish your sending frequency

There are many ways to define your email-sending frequency.

Your main goal now should be to find a healthy balance between your email-sending frequency and your subscribers’ preferences.

You may decide to send daily updates to keep your subscribers constantly informed, or you may decide to send only twice a month to keep subscribers excited about your emails.

The general rule is to send your emails at least once a month to keep your subscribers engaged.

However, you don’t have to stick to this, it depends on your strategy and the preferences of your target audience.

Some tools, such as Klaviyo and Mailchimp, allow you to find out the best average time to click and respond to emails. So you can check this and commit to it. 

Make a schedule

The idea of scheduling your campaign amounts to creating a content calendar to schedule the flow of your campaigns.

This is especially meaningful if you need to work with a team to manage the email marketing campaign or if you have a busy job.

How you schedule your email marketing will be determined by your industry, the types of content you send, and how often you choose to send it.

For instance, in D2C, people like to purchase towards the end of the day. But in B2B, people mostly open their emails early in the morning and around 2 PM.

4 – Write Emails Your Subscribers Will Love

Writing emails is not rocket science, so you have to be flexible in how you go about it. You can choose to be fun and relatable or serious and boring.

But, how do you come up with a killer email copy?

The short answer is: By keeping your readers in mind. And for the longer answer, keep reading.

Let subscribers decide what they want to read right off the bat

Letting your subscribers decide what type of content they wish to receive from the start is the best way to set the grounds for meeting their expectations.

Remember. Your subscribers signed up for your email list because of a specific need or a specific pain.

Here is how TechCrunch does it.

By letting your audience choose the type of content they want, you can easily feed them the right content, address their pain points, and win their hearts.

Plus, it will save you a lot of trouble down the road.

Also, letting them guide you will help you easily segment your list accordingly.

Here is how SEMrush does it.

Use segmentation to send the right message at the right time

If you’re following this rationale, segmentation starts the minute you let your subscribers decide on the type of content they want to receive.

Now, you need to make your content more relevant and meaningful by dividing your subscribers into specific groups based on their common traits, interests, and needs.

You will also need to consider the pillars of audience segmentation, as suggested by EmailMonday to send the right content at the right time.

If you’re starting with your email list segmentation, the first three pillars will get you off and running.

But if you’re somewhat advanced in your email marketing strategy, then the last pillar, behavioral segmentation or your subscriber’s digital body language, should be where you stand.

This is basically what is otherwise known as considering their stage in your buyer’s journey.

Personalize your emails to make them more appealing

Now that you have your email lists into segments of people who share common traits, it’s time to drive it all home by focusing each email content on its recipient.

Segmentation makes your emails relevant to your subscribers, but good personalization makes them significant to them.

Personalizing emails will help you improve relevancy, and you will be able to stick out from the competition.

Also, guess what? It will enhance your email campaign metrics, such as the open rate, the click-through rate and cut your churn rate.

Include interactive elements

In an email, interactive elements are worth a thousand words.

People are naturally curious, and interactive elements allow the readers to better engage with your emails by allowing them to tap, swipe, click or simply watch.

Using interactive elements gives your subscribers a better experience with your emails and makes your emails more appealing and more memorable for your readers.

More importantly, interactive features boost the performance of your emails.

For instance, a video in an email can increase your email click-through rate by up to 300% and reduce your unsubscribe rate by 75%.

And they guarantee a 96% higher click-through rate over emails without videos. 

But video is not the only interactive element that works. Images, gifs, emoticons, etc., are also part of interactive elements that work.

Drive it home

Here are a few tweaks to make your emails perfect and appealing to your subscribers.

Using these tips, you will be able to design emails that trigger response, boost your email marketing metrics and crush the competition.

• Leverage branding

The goal here is to define the main communication channel with your readers and to stick to it. This strategy is important for one main reason: consistency.

Consistency fosters authenticity and trust with your readers at a core level.

You need to leverage branding at every stage of the sales journey. Customers will interact with different people in your company.

You will need to be consistent in your branding for each person they interact with.

For example, if you use a corporate tone or signature format, make sure your entire team uses the same corporate tone and end your emails the same way. Same goes for how you start your emails.

This keeps the brand identity consistent across the board, and regardless of who is sending the emails to the customer it aligns with your brand and resonates with the readers.

• Highlight the value to the customer

Ask yourself a simple question. Ask yourself what would make you care if you were the one reading the email.

The response to that question will help you write emails with your readers in mind and prevent you from writing for your own confirmation. 

• What’s in it for them?
• How does your email benefit them?
• Will they learn?
• How will your offering make their life easier?
• What will they gain out of your product or service at the end of the day?

People don’t care about your business or your products, let alone your emails. You need to highlight the value to the customer to drive engagement.

• Send your emails at the right time

Should I define a timeframe for sending my emails? I’m so glad you asked.

Yes.

You might be swayed to run your campaign as soon as you get your emails nice and ready.

But don’t send it right away. You need to send your emails at the right time to get optimal engagement.

Why?

The time you send your email is as important as the overall engagement rate of your e-mail marketing.

This may not sound like much, but people won’t read business emails after business hours, and they won’t read promotional emails when they’re focused on their daily work.

Get the gist?

You need people to eye up as soon as you’re in their inbox, which is why you need to set a prime time to send your emails.

An excellent way to do this is to audit your campaign analytics and deduce the best time to send your emails.

Analyze which day of the week and time of day people are most interested in your emails and figure out a prime time to send them accordingly.

5 – Personalize your messages

Sending personalized email campaigns is vital to make your emails appealing to your subscribers and making you stand out.

As we mentioned before, personalization goes beyond just adding your recipient’s name to the email.

It’s about writing content they can relate to, painting a picture they will recognize themselves in.

And to do that, you need to know your target audience, right down to their daily lives. 

When you can do this, the recipient feels that you have sent a message just for them, and they will engage more with the content of your email.

And as a result, you will see your open and click rates improve.

6 – Use email software to increase efficiency

After writing and styling the interactive elements, you will need comprehensive email marketing software to facilitate your campaigns.

You can automate the tedious work of creating emails for each recipient, and you can send thousands of emails in the blink of an eye.

Email marketing automation is also a great way to quickly 2x, 3x, or even 10x your email marketing ROI.

With your email marketing software, you’ll be able to distribute to segments easily and reach out to all subscribers on a personal level.

In addition, you will be able to mold your emails and trigger them based on user behavior so that you send the right email to the right person at the right time.

Software options include HubSpot, MailChimp, Active Campaign, or Constant Contact.

They will provide you with comprehensive email marketing features to design, organize, customize, and track performance metrics for your email campaign without requiring any technical or graphic design experience.

7 – A/B test your emails

As you designed your campaign and got the emails all spruced up, don’t just send it yet. Test it first. 

AB testing allows you to see if the design is relevant if the campaign will proceed as planned if it is going to be a big hit or a flop.

You can also test the different elements of your campaigns to see how they will impact your subscribers’ reactions.

Here are a few ways to test your emails.

• Test in different email clients.
• Test with and without images.
• Try the plain text version versus the HTML version.
• Get a second pair of eyes on your campaign before you send it.
• Evaluate how the different changes affect recipients’ behavior or engagement.
• Find the best version and send it.

8 – Send both educational and promotional emails

Your primary goal in email marketing is to promote a product or service. But that doesn’t mean that all of your emails have to be sales-y.

If you only send promotional emails, you will see your churn rate increase. Similarly, if you only send educational emails, you won’t make any money.

That leaves you with one option. Balancing educational and promotional emails.  

The goal of email marketing is to establish a long-term relationship with your subscribers, and that’s what educational emails are for.

Secondly, your promotional emails will help you keep your business afloat.

Overall, you will be able to help your subscribers solve their problems while still running your business perfectly.

9 – Design mobile-friendly emails

Data from Campaign Monitor present the following figures:

• 47% of all people across demographics use a mobile application for checking their email, while a meager 26.9% still prefer a desktop.
• 81% of recipients prefer to open emails on their smartphones. On top of that, 21% of recipients open their emails on their tablets.

This simply translates to the fact that mobile-friendly design has the highest open rate and performs the best thereof.

And as such, mobile-friendly email design is no longer an option. You need to ensure that all your email marketing copy renders well on mobile devices.

This will directly see your campaign performance skyrocket.

10 – Write punchy and witty subject lines

A subject line is one of the first things — besides the preview text — your recipients see when you shoot them an email.

So, it’s crucial to ensure your subject lines entice recipients to click and open your email.

Here’s how to write subject lines that get replies.

Use questions in your subject lines

Questions in a subject line are a great way to stir people’s curiosity. Email marketers use questions to push their readers to imagine and wonder what is in the email for them.

e.g. Quick question, [[First_name]]

e.g. Is this you, [[First_name]]?

Use power words in your subject lines

Power words are words you can use to trigger some emotions within your recipients. You can use a power word to trigger fear, joy, excitement, urgency, or even sadness.

Using one in your subject lines helps emphasize your desired outcome and urges the recipient to take the desired action.

• e.g. Ends soon [[2hrs left]]
• e.g. [[Revealed]] My secret to high conversions

Use emojis in your subject lines 🎯

Emojis make your recipients even more curious about the content of your email.

It makes them wonder what’s inside, but it also makes them think of your email as an informal conversation — which removes the initial friction your recipients might have.

What are the basics of an email marketing strategy?

An email marketing strategy is a set of tactics used to achieve desired business objectives through email marketing campaigns.

Successful email marketing campaigns start with understanding the basics: knowing your business in and out and setting clear objectives.

Know your business

First thing first, you need to know the nitty-gritty of your product and industry.

As a brand, you will know your aha moment when you correlate the quality of your product, industry trends, your business model, and your audience’s behavior.

Because that’s when you have enough data to combine to build a killer strategy.

AppSumo, for example, is a company that sells software online; it’s an Appstore for software, if you will.

Their target is small business owners, and this very target audience is susceptible to the price of the products they buy.

So, AppSumo constantly sends them emails with discounts, lifetime deals, and even freebies.

They make more than 49% of their revenues leveraging email marketing as a result of this strategy.

But the same strategy cannot be adopted for Ahrefs. Ahrefs is an SEO software company.

A better strategy for Ahrefs would be to feed prospects with relevant information to create demand and then offer their software as a solution.

Set clearly defined email marketing goals

No work is in vain unless it is done without a clear goal in mind. Setting goals helps you determine if you are on the right track.

Here are some questions you will need to answer in order to set a great email marketing goal.

What content should you include in your email?

Your emails, from the sender name to the email subject lines to the call to action to the email sign-off, need to align with your goals.

Your targeting must be on-point, and the audience should resonate with the email content.

For example, suppose you wish to convert free users into paying customers.

In that case, you should send them onboarding emails, customer success stories, social proofs, and whatever collateral is needed to make them buy.

Also, bear in mind that your prospects will be spread across different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Therefore, the same email content would not be appropriate for everyone. So, craft your content accordingly and mind your segment audience.

What type of email marketing campaign do you want to run?

For each type of campaign you run, you need to set a target to hit.

For instance, if you are running a Black Friday campaign, your objective could be to make $3 million worth of upsells.

On the other hand, if you want new leads from a list you got from Zoominfo, you need to run a cold email campaign.

This means that your email marketing campaigns should be a mix of different types of emails, such as lead nurturing emails, welcome emails, newsletters, dedicated emails, transactional emails, and autoresponders – all of which have a specific purpose.

What would be a good win for you after your campaign?

What would be a good win for you after implementing a 6-month email marketing strategy? How would you define your success?

Setting up key performance indicators will help you better track your email sends, and you’ll be able to see how your efforts compare to those of your competitors and even your previous campaigns.

Some of the most common metrics include deliverability rate, open rates, bounce rate, click through rates, click-to-open rate, unsubscribe rate, inactive subscribers, and many more.

But these metrics will only tell you about each of your email marketing campaigns separately. Not on the overall email strategy.

So to make it more straightforward, tracking these metrics will not allow you to evaluate the success of your overall email marketing strategy but only the success of each email campaign.

See the nuance?

You need to look at the big picture and track much more relevant metrics, such as revenue, interest rate, or response rate.

These are the metrics that really tell you about the results of your overall email marketing efforts.

Read more: 15 Email Templates to Inspire Your Email Campaigns

Key Takeaways

• Email marketing is highly effective and can help you drive success for your business. Your goal, however, is not to sell hard. You just have to keep nurturing your leads and keep them happy with your communications.
• Most people are not ready to buy, and that’s why many sales emails fail. Your goal is to keep feeding your audience with valuable content and build a solid relationship so the day they want to buy, you are top of their mind.
• All it takes is to understand your business, know your audience, set clear goals, and build great emails they’ll love.

Appointment-setting services cost vary based on a lot of factors. Every appointment-setting company has its own set of rules and considerations it uses to come up with its pricing model. 

In our experience, we’ve found that most appointment-setting services, especially with their pricing model, fall into one of four categories:

• Some services charge you for the complexity of the work or workflow it requires but not for the number of meetings they book for you. This can be frustrating because it’s the meetings that matter most to your business.
• Other agencies may promise you incredible results but fail to deliver on those promises. This can leave you disappointed and wondering if you wasted your time and money.
• Some services require you to sign long-term retainer agreements, even if you’re unsatisfied with their results. This can be a big financial burden, especially if you’re not seeing the results you were promised.
• Then there are agencies like us, Nerdy Joe, who only charge you a flat fee for the number of meetings we book for you. We present you with a proven, surefire process for generating leads and booking meetings. We’ll book the meetings, and you’ll only pay us for that.

We believe that our approach is the fairest and most transparent way to do business. You’ll never have to worry about paying for anything other than the results you’re looking for. But we’re not jumping to conclusions. 

In this article, you’ll learn everything about appointment-setting services cost. You’ll find the average amount of dollars companies pay to lend themselves appointment setters. 

We’ll also compare the different pricing models we see in the industry from the top companies. 

By the end, you’ll know how much you should pay for appointment-setting services and why.  

How much do appointment-setting services cost?

What are the different appointment-setting service price models?

Keep in mind that the pricing model can vary depending on various factors, such as the service provided, the level of expertise, the number of appointments, and more. 

Here are some standard appointment-setting service price models:

1 – Flat rate/pay-per-performance

In this pricing model, the appointment-setting service charges a fixed rate for a predetermined number of appointments. You know precisely what you get; you pay for it and get it. 

For example, we charge you $999 for six appointment bookings with sales-qualified leads. This pricing model is typically best suited for businesses with a fixed budget and a specific number of appointments they need.

2 – Hourly rate

In this model, you pay an hourly rate for the time they spend setting up appointments. For example, a service provider might charge $50 per hour for an appointment setting. 

3 – Commission-based

Here, the service charges a commission based on the number of appointments they set up, typically a percentage of the sale resulting from the appointment. 

For example, a service provider might charge 10% of the sale that results from the appointment they set up. 

4 – Pay-per-appointment

This means you pay based on the number of appointments the service provider sets up for you. For example, they might charge you $50 per appointment they set up. 

5 – Subscription model

This can sometimes include a contract, and you pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee for ongoing appointment setting services. It can be a good model if your business needs regular appointment-setting services.

6 – Project-based model

Here, the service charges you a flat rate for a specific project or campaign, regardless of the number of appointments set up. 

For example, they might charge you $2,000 for setting up appointments for a product launch. This is a great model if you have short-term appointment-setting needs.

What’s the average appointment setting cost?

There are no fixed figures for the cost of appointment setting services. It depends on many factors, and every lead generation agency suggests a pricing model and range based on what they believe will offer them and their clients the best value. 

That being said, we’ve been through websites and pricing pages of over 50 of the most notorious services in appointment setting, and here are some rough estimates of the average appointment setting cost:

• Flat rate: The flat rate can go from $500 to $5,000 for a set number of appointments.
• Pay-per-appointment: This can cost you anywhere from $20 to $200, depending on the complexity of the service and the industry.
• Hourly rate: For the hourly rate, you can pay from $15 to $100 per hour, depending on the level of expertise and workflow required for the appointment setting service.
• Commission-based: The commission rate can range from 1% to 30% of the sale that results from the appointment.

How Do Appointment Setting Companies Compare?

Here is how appointment setting services compare when it comes to pricing. 

Nerdy Joe

Pricing: Flat rate/Pay-per-performance model

With us, you know exactly what you get. You pay us; we get it for you. 

We understand that the main reason you’re seeking an appointment setting service is to get more appointments or sales meetings with sales-qualified leads and ultimately turn those prospects into customers. 

The drive for this goal can either be that you’re not growing at the rate you wish and are therefore looking to a service to help you expand or are simply looking to grow your business. 

At our agency, we pride ourselves on our unique approach to appointment setting. 

Unlike other services (as seen in the introduction) that charge you for the campaign or the workflow they perform, we only charge you for the number of meetings we book. 

We’re not interested in vanity metrics like email opens and clicks, the number of hours it takes to book the meetings, or how much you’ll make from it — we’re focused on delivering tangible results that matter to your business, and that’s only what you need to pay for.

Here’s what you can expect when you work with us:

• We have a proven, surefire process for generating leads and booking meetings that we’ll share with you.
• Our lead generation specialists use cold email to reach prospects and book meetings for you.
• We will work tirelessly to bring actual meetings to your table.
• We use a unique process where we manually research prospects, build lists manually, and personalize every single cold email we send — we don’t send out generic emails to a massive list. 
• We won’t lock you into a long-term retainer agreement – you only pay for the meetings we book for you, and you’ll get results from the first month.
• We won’t bother you with metrics that don’t matter – we’ll only report on the metrics important to your business, like the number of meetings booked, positive replies, and interested prospects.

Callbox

Pricing model: Subscription-based

Callbox leaves no pricing information to be found on their website. You can only reach out to them and get customized pricing. 

But a review article on the Martal Group’ website indicates that a few Callbox clients paid anywhere from $4,300 – $5,300 a month, with some larger projects costing as much as $15,000 monthly.

It still doesn’t answer the question of how many leads people get. But this pricing clearly comes as a steep price for most businesses on a tight budget.

Also, there is no guarantee that all appointments they get for you will turn into sales.

CIENCE

Pricing model: Subscription with six months minimum retainer

Cience’s outbound outsourced SDR team service is where you get appointment setting services. Although they don’t display the exact dollars hiring this team will cost you, we see the pricing type and everything it entails. 

To work with Cience, you must commit to a 6-month minimum of the price you agree on. Although this can be great for your company, it does not offer any guarantee, and you’ll have to pay them (for six months at least) regardless of the results they get you.

So whether or not you’re satisfied with their work, the agreement still binds you to pay them for six months.

This type of contract gives them time to try and test things, but it doesn’t really guarantee an ROI for you. It also means that you won’t be able to scale down, should you need to.  

Belkins

Pricing model: Pay-per-appointment

Belkins don’t display fixed pricing on their website, as well. Instead, they’d rather discuss with their customer to devise customized pricing to suit their needs and budget.

Though we could easily see that they have a pay-per-appointment pricing model, and according to The Cost Guys, they charge anywhere between $400 to $600 per appointment. 

That’s literally between $4000 and $6000 for every ten appointments they book for you. Keep in mind that it can happen that the leads they get for you don’t convert. We believe that pricing is way too expensive and not sustainable for the average business on a budget.  

Martal Group

Pricing model: Project-based

Martal Group’s website does not provide pricing information, and the FAQs section does not address this topic either. Pricing cannot be found anywhere else, so you will need to book a consultation. 

Though, a review post on Cience’s website reads that Martal Group’s pricing policy states that the minimum project cost is $5,000. This is also expensive and can’t be a choice for a new startup or a small business looking to grow. 

Pearl Lemon Leads

Pricing model: Hourly rate

Pearl Lemon doesn’t even have a pricing page on its website. But we could pull data from a review post on the Cience website. The minimum project size is $1,000, and an approximate hourly rate for Pearl Lemon Leads’ services is between $50 and $99.

The issue with hourly pricing is that you’re getting charged for the workflow, and from our experience, there is no standardized way to get leads all the time. You’ll fail, try, fail, and it could take days and weeks to see results. 

This pricing, although looks reasonable and quickly becomes expensive for the business. 

Lead Cookie

Pricing model: Hourly rate

Lead Cookie doesn’t disclose its pricing on its website. However, we read on Cience’s review post that Lead Cookie’s hourly rate ranges between $25 and $49. 

Moreover, Lead Cookie’s website advertises that if its services do not help you meet your goals, you will get a 30-day money-back guarantee.

3 Questions to Ask Before Hiring An Appointment Setting Service Provider

When hiring an appointment setting service provider, there are a few key things you should keep in mind to ensure you’re making the right choice for your business. 

Here are three questions you need to ask an appointment setting service before hiring them:

1 – What is their approach and process for generating and booking appointments?

You should prioritize understanding the appointment setting service’s approach and process for generating leads and setting appointments. You’re basically hiring a team that’ll do outreach on your behalf. 

Most people do it the wrong way and spam people with poor strategies. 

You need to ensure that they represent your brand very well and take the time to understand the audience, do the proper research and reach out to people with meaningful, personalized messages and not internet-scattered message templates. 

You need to ensure that they use a proven, results-driven method and can demonstrate how their process has worked for other businesses in your industry or with similar sales goals. 

You need to be sure that they’re using an approach that’s suitable to you and your business. For example, do they use cold email, LinkedIn outreach, or a combination of both?

2 – What’s their pricing model, and how does it guarantee ROI for you?

Make sure you understand the service’s pricing model before signing on. 

Some providers charge based on the number of appointments set, while others charge a flat fee for a certain number of hours worked. Ask questions to know what you are getting into and how it’ll benefit you. 

For example, are they charging a flat fee per hour? What if they spend 90 hours working on your project and only generate one lead? Is that OK with you? Is it a good investment for your business? 

Be sure to ask about any additional fees or charges and any minimum commitments or contracts. Also, research and calculate how sustainable their service is for your business, especially if you plan on working with them for an extended period.

3 – How do they measure success and report progress? 

So, how do they measure success? What’s success for them? A booked meeting? A positive reply? A click? You need to be sure that you’re on the same page as them regarding the final results they’ll report on. 

Next, communication is key when working with an appointment setting service provider. 

You want to ensure they’re keeping you informed every step and that you are personally a part of every idea they test and vet every cold email/message they send — from the initial outreach to the final appointment. 

Again, we can’t speak for all the appointment setting service providers. Still, we believe the right is the one that provides regular reports on their progress and is willing to adjust their strategy as needed to improve results. 

They should have a well-streamlined platform with message boards and dashboards where you discuss ideas and keep everything.

For this, our team uses Basecamp. We onboard you, explain how the platform works and everything you need to know, then move on to working together. 

Failing this, consider how easy it is to communicate with them, whether it’s via phone, email, or another method.

What Do Appointment Setting Services Do?

Appointment-setting services are designed to help you connect with potential customers and set up meetings or appointments with them. 

Our team at Nerdy Joe set out to be an appointment setter agency because we see that small businesses starting and large businesses looking to scale their sales activities struggle to establish a proven process for active lead generation and customer acquisition. 

Also, sales reps spend a lot of time prospecting, researching, and reaching out to prospects. That’s not the best use of their time.

We do that work for your sales team, freeing up time for sales teams to focus on what they do best: face-to-face selling and closing deals.

So, like any other appointment setting agency, our goal is to generate more leads and sales for you or your sales team by scheduling face-to-face meetings, phone calls, or virtual appointments with interested prospects.

The appointment setting agencies typically use a combination of strategies to achieve this goal. They may use cold email outreach (like we do), LinkedIn outreach, cold calling, social media outreach, or targeted advertising to identify potential customers and connect with them. 

Once a potential customer expresses interest, the appointment setting service will work to schedule a meeting or appointment with them.

You can then take it from there and close the lead, turning them into a paying customer and growing your business. 

Why do you need an appointment setting service provider?

One of the main benefits of using an appointment setting service is that it allows you to focus on what you do best — running your business.

Here are the main reasons you may benefit from working with an appointment setting service provider. 

Saving time

Especially if you’re new to it, appointment setting can be a time-consuming process. Think about all the prospecting work, list building, message crafting, account research, etc., work you must do. 

If you are a small business or a startup looking to grow, you’re probably already swamped managing other aspects of your operations. 

By outsourcing appointment setting to a service provider, you can free up time and focus on other business areas.

Improved lead quality and more sales

We can’t speak for all the appointment setting services out there, but we at Nerdy Joe target and generate high-quality leads that convert. 

We use advanced data mining and prospect research techniques that help create super-personalized cold emails that resonate with your target audience and generate higher conversion rates and more sales for you. You can learn more here. 

Accessing business expertise

Appointment setting service providers often have a team of experienced professionals who specialize in lead generation and appointment setting. 

By working with these experts, you can benefit from their knowledge and experience and access to advanced technology and tools.

Cost-effectiveness

Outsourcing appointment setting to a service provider can be a cost-effective solution, particularly if you’re a small or medium-sized enterprise. 

By paying a flat fee for appointment setting services, you can avoid the costs associated with hiring and training in-house staff.

Finding the go-to-market process — so you can scale

Another reason you may benefit from working with an appointment setting service provider is that you will find the go-to process for generating leads and booking appointments. 

For example, when you sign up with us, our experts try black and white to find the proven methods for generating leads and setting appointments for you. 

This can help you identify the most effective strategies for your specific industry, target audience, and sales goals — resulting in a higher conversion rate and more sales over time. 

Plus, experts can provide valuable insights and feedback on the effectiveness of different lead generation strategies, helping you continuously improve your sales process.

What Should You Look for in Appointment Setting Services?

Here are some key factors you need to keep in mind to ensure you hire the right people for your appointment setting needs.

• Experience: Look for appointment setting services with a track record of success in your industry or niche. For example, if you run a DevOpp company, you may want to find appointment setters with experience in that industry.
• Marketing philosophy: Do they use aggressive sales tactics that could damage your brand reputation or turn off potential customers? Or do they take a more consultative approach, seeking to understand your customers’ needs and provide value? Finding an agency that aligns with your brand values and marketing goals is important.
• Quality leads: They should be able to provide you with high-quality leads that are likely to convert into customers. Ensure they use a targeted approach to finding leads rather than just mass emailing or cold calling.
• Marketing ethics and standards: Ensure the service follows ethical practices in lead generation, such as obtaining consent and respecting opt-outs. They should also comply with industry regulations such as GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and TCPA. 
• Communication: Good communication is essential for a successful partnership. Ensure the appointment setters are responsive and able to communicate effectively with you and your team via a reliable channel.
• Reporting: Will they be able to provide you with regular reports on the progress of your campaign, including the number of appointments set, leads generated, and conversion rates?
• Pricing: What’s the cost of the service in relation to the value it provides? Don’t be afraid to shop around and compare prices from different providers to find the best deal.
• Guarantees: Look for appointment setting services that offer guarantees, such as a certain number of appointments or leads within a specific timeframe, and money-back guarantees.

Hire Nerdy Joe for your appointment setting service needs

For most of the appointment setting services, you can’t even determine whether the services suit your budget or business needs. But, with us, we let you know what you’re getting from the beginning. 

You’ve probably had all the data you need to compare all the services we listed in this post. 

If what you’re looking for is:

• An agency that charges you for results, not tasks.
• An agency that doesn’t require you to commit to a contract.
• An agency that does not waste your time and that’s affordable.
• A group of experts that care about your company’s reputation and relationship with prospects.

Nerdy Joe is the appointment-setting service you’re looking for. We will help you generate and have meetings with qualified leads so you can convert them with minimum effort.  

Blogger outreach link building doesn’t have to suck. Outreach can be done at scale without feeling spammy.

About a year ago, when we launched our B2B lead generation agency, we wanted to grow through inbound marketing. So, we worked on a few blog posts on our website, and part of the strategy was to get backlinks from some established, high authority sites in the marketing industry. 

So, we decided to run a blogger outreach campaign to acquire backlinks from some of the most popular websites and the most influential marketers already established in the industry. Basically, we targeted websites RevGenuis, Hunter.io, CoSchedule, Ahrefs, etc.

Here is a quick rundown of the answers we got from the people or marketers we targeted. 

The answer we got from CoSchedule’s Inbound Marketing Director, Ben Sailer.

Here is the reply we got from ex-hunter.io Head of Marketing, Irina Maltseva.

Here is what we got from Ahrefs’ Head of Content, Joshua Hardwick. 

We got some more. But, you get the idea, we did well. Very well, indeed.

In this article, we will show you the exact same process we used for our successful blogger outreach campaign and how you can emulate it. But first, let’s get the fundamentals out of the way. 

What exactly is blogger outreach link building?

The idea of blogger outreach link building is to get backlinks from other sites that are more authoritative and have topical relevance to yours by sending them outreach emails. 

Basically, this involves developing a strategy to convince them to link to your site. This could be pitching them a guest post idea, asking them to remove broken links and update them with yours, Brian Dean’s skyscraper strategy, link swaps, etc. 

The next step is to write a beautiful cold email with a compelling offer and pitch them your idea. You write the outreach email in such a way that they see how you can mutually benefit from linking and lay in value and tactics to compel them to take your desired action. 

To be successful, the blogger outreach campaign must be a win-win for you and your target. 

For example, you get a link on their website, which can lead to more exposure for your brand and more SEO benefits, such as increased domain authority, better rankings, more traffic, and more business overall.

In turn, the site hosting your link publishes a new and fresh solution or content on their site that their audience will benefit from or enjoy in some way. So, more experience for their audience and SEO benefits for them. 

Why do most companies, teams, or outreach specialists suck at blogger outreach?

Most web admins or site managers hate blogger outreach. And they hate random link-building emails even more. That’s because most people’s blogger outreach link-building approaches lack genuine, well-planned targeting and just SUCK. 

Most people’s blogger outreach strategy is to send tons of templated cold emails to strangers whose email addresses they’ve scraped from a data intelligence tool. 

From what they offer the other site to their way of doing it, everything sucks — basically — and in most cases, they get answers like this. 

Image source

Of course, it comes as no surprise because they come across as spammers. 

There are two blogger outreach strategies or approaches that marketers use. The approach you use determines how everything plays out and the results you get. Let’s discuss each approach. 

The two link building outreach approaches are the sniper and shotgun approaches. Let’s start with the shotgun approach. 

The shotgun approach 

The shotgun approach is a mass outreach strategy where you send a large volume of generic, impersonal, cold emails to a broad range of bloggers. 

Proponents of this approach believe it is easier and less time-consuming than the sniper approach — which is why most people tend to embrace it. 

What they actually do is sacrifice quality in the name of scalability, and the approach typically results in a lower response rate, deliverability issues, and lower-quality backlinks. 

This mainly has to do with the fact that the cold emails are templates sent to too many people and can’t be personalized to make an impact. 

First, you are sending a cold email. Your targets didn’t know who you were whatsoever. You have that playing against you already. Plus, the fact that your email is generic and brings nothing special kills any chance you had. It also says a lot about the person that sends them. 

• You’re selfish.
• You’re lazy.
• You don’t give a damn about them or their business. 

Here is an example of a blogger outreach cold email we received. 

That’s a shotgun approach. We can easily see that the email is designed to be quickly sent to thousands of people without too much editing, and it just reads terribly. 

Also, that link building outreach will — for sure — result in poor outcomes because before someone accepts your link to their website, they need to know that you:

• Studied who their target audience is and what they love to read. 
• Studied the type of content they create and share on their blog and social media profiles.
• Took the time to determine that they (or their website) are relevant to your niche.
• Bringing something of value, such as a guest post, a discount code for their readers, or any other incentive to their table.
• Wrote a personalized email explaining why you are reaching out and what you hope to achieve through the collaboration.
• Are not just reaching out to get a link and call it quits.
• Etc. 

The key to succeeding in a blogger outreach campaign is to prove to the target web admins that you are a genuine, serious marketer bringing exciting benefits to their site.

But how do you do that? The snipper approach. 

The snipper approach

As the name implies, the sniper approach is a targeted, personalized outreach strategy where you carefully research and select specific blogs or websites to reach out to. 

With this approach, you craft personalized, well-researched cold emails tailored to each website owner’s needs and interests. 

The aim is to establish long-term relationships with high-quality bloggers in your niche. It takes time to research and requires a well-thought-out strategy to succeed, which is why most people find it challenging and would rather shoot at every site they find (you know, Shotgun).

But here is the kicker: If you were to send 800 cold emails to convert one prospect or 30 well-crafted and personalized cold emails to still convert one, what would you do? 

Don’t lose sight of the facts that while you send 800 cold, generic emails, you will get reported for spam, damage the sender’s reputation, and most of your emails will go unanswered and unread. 

So, which is it?

Well, we will choose the “30 well-crafted emails” deal every day because it’s worth it. That’s the approach we use and advocate at Nerdy Joe. That’s how you get answers like these: 

5 steps to get backlinks with a well-crafted blogger outreach campaign

First thing you need to know is that our link building strategy is guest posting, and we use the snipper approach — that’s how we know blogger outreach works.

Here are five steps you need to follow to create and run a successful blogger outreach link building campaign.  

Step 1: Find your target websites 

The first step in your outreach strategy is finding the websites you want to target for link building. For this, you must have some criteria about the websites you get the links from. Let’s detail this.

Have criteria about who you want to get links from. 

First thing you need to know about blogger outreach link building is that you cannot target everyone. The idea of acquiring backlinks from other sites is that you want the other sites to help promote your own in some way. 

Ideally, you will want to:

• Increase your domain authority (DA) or domain rating (DR)
• Increase traffic to your site
• Build niche/topical authority 
• Increase your search engine rankings 
• Etc.

And so, based on your goals, you cannot reach out to every site that’s available to you to get links from. Getting backlinks from a website with less SEO value than your own will not benefit you.

• If you want to increase traffic to your website, you will want to host your guest post on a website with massive traffic. 
• If you want to increase your domain authority and improve your search engine rankings, you will want to get backlinks from websites with massive traffic and domain authority.
• If you want to build niche authority, you can get backlinks from other websites in your niche (not your competitors) with a bigger domain authority than you do. 

Keep in mind that whatever site you target with your blogger outreach strategy needs to have a topical relevance with your own, and you somehow need to be addressing the same target audience. 

For example, Hunter.io sells a tool that helps people get the email address of their target leads so that they can reach out to them via email. Our company offers outbound lead generation services plus email marketing. 

That means that our company can find value in having our content hosted on Hunter’s blog since the reader might be interested, and they can hire us to do lead generation for them. 

Also, from a Google standpoint, it makes us a good match since we both talk about lead generation and email marketing on our respective blogs. 

Build a list of your target websites in a spreadsheet

If you set your goals and have all your criteria sorted out, there will be only a handful of blogs or websites you will be happy to get backlinks from.

Here is how to find those websites — with both topical and audience relevance criteria in mind. 

How we do it

Our way of building target website lists could be faster, but when we decide to use the list, we are sure that we have built a list of qualified websites that are aligned with ours.

This is a long-term planning approach, and the main reason we are able to do this is that we don’t rush. We build the list gradually as we write articles on our blog. Here is how.

Before we write an article, we usually go to Google to do some research to map out the article. And there, we discover other sites that cover the same keywords. 

If we find the site interesting, the next step is to find out what service or product they offer to ensure it’s not a competitor and that the audience is relevant. 

This can be figured out just by reading the content on their homepage. The next step is to quickly check the website’s domain authority. Thanks to the Moz Chrome Bar Extension, we can do this in an instant. 

From there, we can clearly understand the website’s overall strength and whether we are interested. 

Keep in mind that this is not a strategy we have specifically designed to identify websites to target for our guest posts. No. 

This is all happening while we write other articles for our blog. When we find an interesting site, we file it in our spreadsheet and move on.

And the day we decide to run a guest posting blogger outreach campaign, we know where to find our targets. Here’s an example of how we keep them lined up in Google Sheets.

So, that’s how we eliminate the sweat when finding the websites to reach out to for blogger outreach link building. But since this is not something you had planned, there are other ways to do this.

Other ways you can do it

• Keyword research

Identify keywords related to your niche and use them to find relevant websites and blogs that cover similar topics. You should use an SEO tool for this. We recommend Ahrefs’ Content Explorer.  

• Competitor analysis

Look at the websites that link to your competitors’ websites and consider reaching out to those websites for a guest post opportunity. Here also, you’ll need an SEO tool. We recommend using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. 

• Google search

A simple Google search can also help you find authoritative sites that discuss the same topic as you and you can target them. Use Google search operators such as “guest post,” “write for us,” and “submit a guest post” to find relevant websites in your niche that accept guest posts.

• Industry events and conferences

You can attend industry events and conferences and network with bloggers and websites in your niche.

• Personal connections

Reach out to your network and ask for recommendations for websites in your niche that accept guest posts.

Step 2: Find who to reach out to, find their email address and build a list

By now, you’ve already created your list of the websites you want to target. At this point, you want to figure out the right person to contact at each of your target companies to get your cold email acted upon. 

Ideally, you want to reach out to the person in charge of the blog or someone in the position to understand the value you are bringing to their table and with authority to act upon your email. In most cases, that comes down to the following positions within the company:

• Head of Content
• Content Lead
• Content Marketing Officer
• Content Marketing Manager
• Head of Marketing
• Content Marketing Specialist 
• SEOs
• Etcetera. 

Here is how to find the person to contact at each company. 

Using the company’s website

The best place to find the people working at a company is on their website. Head over to their team, about page, or career page and find the best position to reach out to for your needs. 

Let’s take Ahrefs, for example. Go to the site. Scroll down to the lower fold of the page. Ideally, you are looking for these keywords Company – About – Team – Career – People. 

Then go to the page to see the team and find the person you are looking for. 

Using their blog

Sometimes, the company might not have a team page on its website to list the people working there and their different titles. An alternative tactic is to look at the company’s blog. 

Here, you want to find the name that publishes the most content on the blog. The person with the most content on their name will likely be the content team’s head. 

And even if they are not, they are still the right person to contact because they can easily link you with the manager you’re looking for. Let’s take the SparkToro blog as an example here.

Clearly, you’ll have a good chance of being heard if you reach out to Rand Fishkin.

Using LinkedIn

Go to your target website’s profile on LinkedIn and head over to their employee section to search for the position you are looking for to find the name you need. Suppose we are targeting Ahrefs.

Step one, going to Ahrefs’ profile on LinkedIn. 

Step two, click on “Employees” or “People” to find the people working there. 

Here are the different people working there.

Now you want to search keywords such as: 

• Head of Content
• Content Lead
• Content Marketing Officer
• Content Marketing Manager
• Head of Marketing
• Content Marketing Specialist 
• SEOs

Here is the result. 

Find their email address using Hunter’s Email Finder

You’ve got your target’s name and the company they work for. Go to Hunter’s Email Finder to find their email address easily. 

Suppose your target’s name is Ibrahim Litinine, and they’re at Nerdy Joe (nerdyjoe.com).

Hit the find button and get the email address.

Here is a screenshot example of how we keep everything lined up before our campaign. 

Note: If you can’t find the email address this way, we share more tactics for finding someone’s email address here. 

Step 3: Come up with a guest post content idea

You have your target websites and the accounts to send the cold emails figured out. Now, you need to find out what type of content you want to offer them so that they say yes. 

Do it right

The first thing you need to do here is research their website and thoroughly understand the type of content they publish and how they write it. 

You’ve probably done some good research before choosing your target website in the first place. But here, you must ensure that whatever content you bring to their table is aligned with their philosophy, target audience, overall business and marketing goals, etc. 

Simply put, your suggestion can make or break your link building strategy here. You can’t guess it. Research and come up with an excellent content idea.

Also, offering basic, what is, 800-word guest post ideas won’t cut it. That will sound like you are simply reaching out to whip up something that gets you a backlink without offering any real value in return. The content idea you pitch needs to be “dope”. 

Here are the two blogger outreach guest post content ideas that work for us.

Offer evergreen case studies

This is our go-to strategy at Nerdy Joe. When it comes to guest posting outreach, our main and most successful approach is to offer to create a case study for our target website. They are the easiest way to convince someone to let you post on their website. 

I mean, who doesn’t want to have a solid teardown of a company’s success case or marketing strategy on its website? It always works like a charm. Here are a few we’ve published over the years. 

On CoSchedule.

On RevGenius.

On Encharge.io

On The Good.

There are more. The main point of these examples is to show you that creating case studies and pitching them for guest posting works, really. 

Offer guides

Step-by-step guides also work really well for pitching guest post ideas. The target website’s audience will learn something specific, and they can genuinely benefit from the content. 

Here are a few examples that we did.

On Hunter.io

On Vidico.

Step 4: Craft your cold emails

This step is where you write your cold emails. There are three steps to that. 

Create icebreaker opening lines

The target prospects included in your blogger outreach campaign don’t know who you are. There is also a good chance they’ve never seen your website before. 

So, you are coming into the unknown, and you need a good first impression to catch their attention and hook them to read your cold email. 

Simple cold email opening lines like “I hope this email finds you well”, “Allow me to introduce myself”, etc., won’t cut it. 

What you need is an icebreaker. As the name implies, icebreakers are email opening lines designed to help you break the ice between you and your recipients. 

Here are the different things having an icebreaker means for your outreach:

1. an opening line that doesn’t strike the recipient like “I’m here for a backlink; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”
2. an opening line that rapidly differentiates you from other link building emails and hooks your target webmaster to read your email. 
3. a beginning sentence that makes your recipients feel valued and states that you did your research before reaching out to them. 
4. a phrase that indicates you know them personally and conditions them to be more receptive of your email and offer. 

So, instead of simple greeting opening lines, you take it a step further and bring exciting facts about the recipient to personalize the opening line and make it more impactful. 

And that’s how you can go from an email opening line that reads like:

“Hey, Ben

I hope this email finds you well.”

To an icebreaker that reads like:

“Hey, Marc

I was listening to your podcast with Xavier, and I have to admit that the take you had on marketing and sales alignment is pretty interesting. 

Nobody ever talks about how marketers have very little knowledge of the target audience’s actual needs and only make decisions based on guesses. More people need to hear this.

Also, I was playing around with your website and noticed that your content mainly covers email marketing services. 

I have an idea for a case study about a cold email campaign we run that I think your audience will love. I took the liberty to create a map of the content here {link}”.

Oops, I almost wrote the entire email. But it is interesting, yeah? 

But how do you do it? 

Well, glad you asked.

• Watch interviews and podcasts your target audience has participated in.
• Read blog posts and thought leadership articles they wrote or contributed to.
• Read their comments and posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon.
• Read their company’s new mentions.
• Etcetera 

You then combine the information you collected to find unique angles and craft personalized first lines or icebreakers.

Here is an example of keeping it all in a spreadsheet before the campaign.

Craft a compelling subject line

The subject line of your blogger outreach email is the first thing your target blog manager will see. It’s crucial to get it right to pick their attention and get them to open your cold email. 

A compelling subject line can make all the difference between a blogger outreach email that gets read and acted upon and one that gets ignored. 

Your goal is to craft a short phrase that catches your prospect’s attention and gets them interested in reading your cold email. 

You can do this by striking curiosity, bringing an interesting fact about their website or blog, complimenting them, etc. 

Here are some examples of best email subject lines we use in our link building efforts:

• Collaboration opportunity: [Blog Name]
• A [Niche] guest post that’s going to make waves
• A valuable resource for your readers: [Your Website]
• Join forces with [Your Website] for [Niche] domination
• Ready for a [Niche] adventure with [Your Website]?
• Let’s add some [Niche] sparkle with [Your Website]
• Partnering for [Niche] success
• A unique [Niche] guest post proposal
• Sharing [Your Website] with [Blog Name]

Here are some do’s and don’ts for your blogger outreach cold email subject lines:

• Do keep it professional.
• Do keep your subject line short and to the point. A subject line that is too long will be cut off and may not get noticed.
• Make it fun.
• Do make your subject line personal and relevant. This will make it more likely to catch the attention of your prospect.
• Do show your target why collaborating with you is a great idea.
• Don’t use all caps or excessive punctuation. This can make your subject line appear spammy and unprofessional.
• Don’t use generic, vague, or boring subject lines. A subject line like “Guest post request” is unlikely to get much attention.
• Don’t include any spam trigger words. Using such words in your subject line can get your email into the spam folder. 

Create a personalized email for each prospect

We believe in not sending the same email copy to two different people. We believe every prospect in our list is different and has unique needs and goals for their website.

So the same offer or email won’t resonate with all of them; that’s why we create a different email for every person we target. 

Here are some elements you can include in your cold emails to make them compelling and easily win backlinks. 

Prove that you know them

Personalization is a non-negotiable aspect of your emails here. If you can’t make the recipient feel like you know them personally, don’t send the email yet. 

Prove your value

Believe it or not, marketers or website owners usually have strong egos and are very meticulous about who they collaborate with.  Because of this, you may need to convince them that you are not just another spammer landing in their inbox. 

You do this by creating a compelling, super-personalized, and meaningful outreach email. Everything inside your cold email needs to be excellent and hook them. From your tone to the content idea you offer to create. You need to win against their ego.

Explain why you’re reaching out to them

You’ll need to highlight and detail the unique offer you’re bringing to their table and how it will be beneficial to their website and target audience. 

Hint at a relationship

You don’t want your recipients to read your pitch and feel like you’re just reaching out to get a link and disappear. Show them that you’ll continue to engage with their content and offer to help with future projects. This will even help to strengthen the relationship and increase the likelihood of future collaboration opportunities. Both parties will benefit from this. 

Create a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency in your email can help motivate the recipient to take action. For example, you can simply let them know that the collaboration would be especially valuable for you at this time. You only need to be subtle about this, don’t make it that much of an ask. 

End with a call to action

Of course, you’ll want to end the cold email with the clear next step you hope for your potential collaboration. Just let them know what action you want them to take and lead them on with a clear ask in your email. 

Step 6: Send your cold emails and follow up

You won’t get any results unless you send the outreach emails. So, send your emails and keep track of the bloggers you’ve reached out to and the positive response rate.

If you get positive feedback from your outreach, work on creating excellent content for them. It’ll make them fall in love with you, and you can win even more backlinks from their network. 

Also, you need to make following up an integral part of your strategy. CMOs, Content Leads, and SEOs, are really busy people striving to bring results to their websites. 

So, don’t be shocked when your emails go unanswered. You need to have follow-ups ready to reiterate the previous emails and give them a nudge to act. 

Get help with your blogger outreach link building

There you have it. Most link building blogger outreach campaigns fail to deliver good outcomes. But it does not have to be that way. 

At Nerdy Joe, we have perfectioned the best blogger outreach styles and tactics to reach out to influential CMOs, and content team leads to get backlinks from their sites. 

If you need blogger outreach services, here is what we can help you with:

• Finding target websites to get quality backlinks from.
• Target account research and list building.
• Coming up with the best pitch ideas and ideating them.
• Craft the outreach campaign emails and get your results. 
• Get your content posted and bring you backlinks. 

Ready to ace your backlink blogger outreach strategy? Talk to us. 

“Email marketing is dead.”

If you’re in B2B SaaS marketing, you’ve probably already been stunned by this unsubstantiated claim.

Ask any digital marketing guru what is the best channel for acquiring and retaining clients today, and some will tell you “social media.” Some would go “SEO,” and others would argue “paid ads.”

Well, they are all right.

Truth is, we all want to reach the light in the tunnel in the least amount of time possible. And to that end, every marketer or sales rep’ has their own idea about which digital marketing channel converts best.

But let’s face it: email is the only channel that you can own and get ROI from almost instantly.

For instance, we once sent a single email to a list of 5100 marketers, and it generated $17,000 within 48h. 

Another example is when Ernest sent a 100-word email, and it got us a $1400 per month client within 2 hours

Well, we can go on and on with these cases, but you can read them all on our case study page.

Email marketing is unarguably the best digital marketing strategy. Regardless of whether it’s confirmed by a guru or not.

In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about email marketing. And by the end, will be able to create and launch SaaS email marketing campaigns and ensure success.

Without further ado, let’s jump into it. 

This is a long and extensive blog post, so you may want to jump to the sections that appeal to you the most.

What Is An Email Marketing Campaign?

An email marketing campaign is a digital marketing strategy that consists of sending emails as a direct marketing medium to convert prospects into customers and turn one-time buyers into loyal and engaged customers. 

Think of it as a way to provide value to customers/users in the form of content through the various stages of the customer journey using dedicated funnels. 

8 Steps To Ace Your Email Marketing Campaign

Using the following tactics will help you get your emails to the right people, get them opened and read, and ultimately turn that attention into real revenue for your business. So let’s get started, starting with building an email list.

Step 1: Start your email marketing campaign by building an email list

Email marketing is like a puzzle game with many pieces. But as soon as you create your email list, all the other pieces will fall into place, and you can kick off your campaign. 

Your email list is the starting point for your campaigns for the simple reason that you can’t run any campaigns if you don’t have anyone to send the emails to. 

So, your first step should consist of building an email contact list. 

Here’s how…

Use the basic website opt-in form

Of the countless ways brands can capture email addresses, the simplest is to have a standard and straightforward opt-in form on your site. 

Why do you need an opt-in form?

An opt-in form allows you to collect essential information from a website visitor and add them to your mailing list. Here is an example from Nerdy Joe.

Opt-in forms also allow you to have control over your audience and the content you are nurturing them. 

Add an opt-in pop-up form on each page of your website

According to MailChimp data, email list growth rates increased by an average of 50.8% after adding a pop-up form to their site — making it a powerful lead-capture resource. 

Pop-up forms are typically small windows or specific types of layering that suddenly appear in the forefront of a website’s visual interface when a user/visitor clicks on a call-to-action or poses a given action. 

Pop-ups offer visitors a swift and seamless way to share their contact information and sign up for your list while they’re browsing your site. 

For instance, when a visitor is leaving your website, you can set an exit intent pop-up to appear so they can optin.

These are the types of pop-ups that appear when a visitor bids to depart your site and offer you one last chance to capture their email address.

The technology behind these pop-up forms tracks the movement of the mouse and triggers the pop-up form as the visitor seeks to close the site.

Just like in the image below…

Sumo claims that its users leverage exit intent pop-ups to increase conversions by over 60%. So while they can be annoying, they give you as much of a chance as any other technique.

Create a dedicated opt-in or sign-up landing page

The sole purpose of such a landing page is to get visitors to sign up and subscribe. 

This example from Campaign Monitor describes it best.

Dedicated sign-up or opt-in pages are one of the most effective ways to attract subscribers to build and grow your email list.

TELL A FRIEND

So, instead of directing visitors to your home page, which contains almost all the information about the various services you offer, you can focus on specific funnels that only seek to get them to sign up. 

Offer valuable incentives

Sometimes, to entice your visitors to subscribe to your email list, all you have to do is bring something relevant to their table in return. 

This works because it tells potential subscribers what they are into and what they will get for signing up. 

It may strike you like some fashion of bribery, but offering valuable incentives to your visitors not only gets them to sign up for your list but can also get them to buy from you. 

While this depends on your industry and the services you offer, there are many amazing incentives you can use to entice someone to sign up for your lists, such as a discount, promotion, or free shipping for a limited period.

Here is an example of a valuable incentive from Skinny DIP.

Step 2: Grow Your Email List

Building an email list and fishing are basically two sides of the same coin. 

Think of it; fishermen don’t throw their nets in the water and leave them there to see if the fish is hooked or not. Instead, they keep adding lures for the fish on the hook. 

The same goes for lead capture.

Putting a simple opt-in or a pop-up opt-in form on your website and hoping people will sign up is not enough.

TELL A FRIEND

Opt-in forms do work. But while they do, you need to keep attracting more and more people with new lead generation strategies, basically like adding lures on the hook. 

Here are some of the tactics you can use to grow your email list.

Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a sign-up ‘bribe’, usually a free service or item, that you give away to collect contact information from your visitors. 

There are many types of lead magnets you can give away to capture email addresses, and you won’t have to jump through hoops to create one.

It can be a free trial, templates, PDFs, media files, and white papers. 

Here is an example from Giosg.

Based on the content the visitor engages with on the website, Giosg offers a relevant item to pique their interest and collects their email address as they request it. 

Case in point, in the example below, Giosg offers a comprehensive guide to website lead capture best practices to collect emails from visitors who view their article on high-conversion tactics for websites.

And as the visitors click on the download button, this is what happens:

For your lead magnet to be effective, you need to have a clear idea of who you are targeting. 

You need a buyer persona, and based on that, you can identify and create something valuable for them. 

Free ebooks, webinars, coupons, and tip or resource sheets are examples of magnets that work best. 

Referral Programs

In the email world, a referral program is simply a concept of encouraging and rewarding your subscribers to spread the word about your product or service. 

Here is an example from Ryan Deiss’ Scalable newsletter.

The goal is to get your current subscribers to tell their friends, family, and industry colleagues about your amazing company or the great services you offer to get them to subscribe as well. 

How effective are referral programs?

B2B marketing experts observed that referrals have an average conversion rate of 11%. 

Additionally, customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate than customers acquired through other marketing channels.

Social Media

There is a lot of talk about the inefficiency of social media platforms. Yet, the truth remains. 

The perfect places to collect email addresses are the places where your target audience hangs out.

Social media is a powerful tool for lead generation. For example, according to Backlinko data, Instagram alone has 500 million daily active users.

What’s more, 90% of those users already follow businesses.

That is, every company can easily convert its followers into email subscribers. 

The catch is that once on social media, most businesses focus on growing their followers while ignoring their email list. 

Here are a few strategies to grow your email list from social media.

• Creating a dedicated lead generation landing page for your social media profiles.

Here is a Facebook example.

And as users click, they’re redirected to a dedicated landing page.

Here is another Facebook example from Marvel.

Here is a good LinkedIn example from John Bonini promoting gated podcast content.

• Creating contests or sweepstakes programs.
• Hosting webinars (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook).
• Creating tutorials with call-to-action cards (Youtube, LinkedIn).
• Creating and promoting gated visual content (Pinterest).

Step 3: Choose an email marketing service provider (ESP) tailored to your needs to run your email marketing campaign

Now that you’ve built and grown your email list, the next step in the mix is to send your email campaigns. And to ensure accuracy and effectiveness while running your campaigns, you will need a good email service provider (ESP). 

ESPs bring it to anyone’s ken to easily manage their email campaigns and send their emails as a breeze. 

Here are some of the ways an email marketing service provider can help your business.

• Sending permission-based emails by aligning with ISP rules and permission policies. 
• Ensuring deliverability and making sure your email campaigns don’t end up in the spam folder.
• Respecting your subscribers’ privacy and giving them the ability to unsubscribe with a single click.
• Automatically performing the essential list management tasks, such as signing up new subscribers, allowing subscribers to edit their own profiles, and giving them the ability to unsubscribe.
• Guaranteeing that your emails are delivered in the right format by allowing you to send both a text and HTML version of each message you send.
• Providing you with detailed reports to track key metrics and see how your campaigns compare to industry standards, such as open rate, click-through rate, click-to-open rate, unsubscribe rate, etc.
• Ensuring that your emails are compliant with important legislation such as CAN-SPAM and CASL.
• And many more.

Top 4 Commendable Email Service Providers (Email marketing SaaS comparison)

There are hundreds of software that offer email marketing services out there. So choosing the right service can be tricky or challenging. 

Fortunately enough, our good friends at ContentMavericks analyzed the top 50 email marketing service providers and came up with the top five email marketing solutions you can choose from to scale your email marketing success in 2021. 

1. ActiveCampaign
2. SendFox
3. ConvertKit
4. Constant Contact

1- ActiveCampaign

When it comes to email marketing services, ActiveCampaign offers la crème de la crème.

ActiveCampaign helps businesses across the planet optimize their customers’ experiences thanks to powerful email features.

It offers companies the best mix of email marketing tools and services, such as pre-built automation, a comprehensive collection of email templates, and effective contact management.

ActiveCampaign has the highest email deliverability rates in the industry over time. 

And overall, their tool is one the best email marketing software that beats all other tools by striking the perfect combination of automation and human touch and by combining customer insights with your business at a price everyone, from novice marketers to professionals, can afford.

2- SendFox

SendFox is an email marketing tool that allows you to create, schedule, automate, and send an unlimited number of personalized emails. 

It is great when it comes to sending weekly broadcast emails or sending your campaign emails in a loop with little to no cost. 

In a sense, it’s a less advanced version of ActiveCampaign. And it has no advanced features such as contact scoring, list segmentation, CRM, etc. 

3- ConvertKit

ConvertKit is the ideal email marketing software for beginners and businesses with a small budget. 

It is the best free alternative to the two above-mentioned solutions and one of the most successful and rapidly growing email marketing solutions.

ConvertKit makes it easy for any business to create, automate and send customized email marketing campaigns. 

And as long as your email list is less than 1,000 subscribers and you don’t need to access any of the premium features, you can use it for free. 

ConvertKit claims a higher deliverability rate than most free tools. It offers customizable signup forms and landing pages to help you attract more subscribers, as well as two free courses. 

One on how to get your first 100 subscribers and the second on how to make your first dollar online. And guess what? They’re all included in the free plan.

4- Constant Contact

Constant Contact brings email marketing to the feet of any business down to beginners with no website.

It provides users with a plethora of easy-to-use marketing tools to create and run their email marketing campaigns, build AI-powered websites, create online stores, and launch Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns to capture new contacts and build email lists. 

It also offers businesses an abundance of advanced features such as: 

• Free email template builder, 
• customizable pop-up forms, 
• a full library of mobile-friendly templates,
• email automation tools, 
• marketing automation,
• drag-and-drop editing tools, 
• integrations, 
• and reporting tools. 

Step 4: Segment your email list for a targeted and personalized email marketing campaign

Email list segmentation is a strategy you can use to structure your email subscribers into groups or segments based on:

• behavior, 
• interests, 
• familiarity with your company, 
• demographics, 
• etc.

According to MailChimp, segmenting your email list can increase open rates by nearly 14.31% and reduce bounce rates by nearly 4.65%.

That is, just by breaking down your email list into the right segments, you’ll increase your SaaS email marketing performance and ultimately get more conversions, more purchases, and more satisfied customers. 

Here is how you can effectively segment your email list.

• Create different subscriber personas

To the extent possible, every company should know as much as possible about its customers or potential customers. 

1. Where do they live? 
2. What are the different places they go? 
3. What problems do they face? 
4. What do they want to accomplish? 
5. What are their careers and incomes? 
6. What are their interests and behaviors? 
7. How can your company help them achieve their goals? 
8. What is a day in their life like? 

Well, depending on your strategy and field, the list goes on and on… 

Customer personas are the foundation of your list segmentation, as they help you define which segments need which message. If you miss out on this, nothing else matters. 

• Create your content accordingly

Now that you know and understand your customers or subscribers and have decided how to segment them, you need to create the content they want. Doing so will allow you to strike a better chord with them.

Step 5: Decide which type of email marketing campaign works best for you

There are different types of email. 

The one thing you need to keep in mind when sending out your campaigns is that you should not send exclusively promotional emails.

Sending only salesy emails adds no real value to your customers or sales prospects. Eventually, they will lose interest, and your content will come across as a repetition of the same type of information from a pushy salesperson.

TELL A FRIEND

Here are the main types of emails you can send to your recipients to keep them interested and engaged with your business. 

• Newsletter

Both SaaS and eCommerce businesses widely use email newsletters to send educational emails to maintain relationships with their prospects and customers simply because it is the most effective email marketing type.

The main purpose of a newsletter is to inform and educate contacts about a topic of interest or updates pertaining to your business, products, updates, special offers, and services. 

A newsletter can be sent regularly: quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even daily. 

However, be careful not to overwhelm your busy recipients and encourage them to either fly over the message or not read it at all.

• Announcement

An announcement email is a publicizing email that a company sends to its contacts to inform them of changes in its business, a new product, a recent update, the launch of a limited edition, or an upcoming event. 

The ultimate goal of an announcement email is to get the audience eager and hungry about forthcoming products or events.

So, an effective announcement email clearly states the email’s subject and tells the audience why the message is important or how they will benefit from your product or service (for example, how your product will help solve their problem).

It also briefly describes the upcoming product, service, or event to showcase the new value offered to pique the audience’s interest and prompt them to take the desired action.

• Event Invitation

An event invitation email is an email sent to your subscribers announcing an upcoming event to entice them to attend. 

The event could be a webinar, conference, or any kind of presentation that your company is hosting. 

To entice your subscribers to come or attend your event, you need to tell them exactly what’s in it for them. Are they going to learn? Are they going to network? 

In your event invitation emails, always provide enough information about your event and details such as time, date, location, and duration.

• Marketing Offer

You need to keep your customers and sales prospects posted about your marketing offerings. 

Marketing emails can include several things, including the launch of a new product, a limited-edition release, a special promotion, an upcoming event, or the option to pre-order a product. 

You don’t need to fill your marketing emails with salesy words for them to be effective. You only need to explain to your customers how your solutions will help solve their problems or make their life easier. 

So simply explain the features of the offer, so your readers know what you’re talking about and spice it up with the benefits of the new product. 

That way, they will understand how it meets their needs and why they should be interested. And for that, you need a beautiful sales email.

• Survey Invitation

Here, the researcher generally presents the survey invitation email as a data collection procedure that seeks to gather both qualitative and quantitative data from the customers/users for improvements in the overall business and customer experience. 

This goes down to creating survey instruments, typically a questionnaire that is sent to a cherry-picked handful of customers via email. 

Recipients will then simply answer the questions or elaborate responses to the thought-provoking questions in the embedded links or respond via email.

Here is another example from Slack…

Step 6: Create a campaign and draft your email copy

Creating an email campaign is as straightforward as putting together a two-piece cake. 

Using email marketing service providers, users generally navigate through a series of steps that go from creating a campaign to choosing a template to kick-start the drafting of the actual campaign email.

Now to make sure your email is good to go, there are a few things you need to check depending on the type of email you want to send.

But in general, every email has three main parts. We’ve broken down each part into its different components to help you write your email perfectly.

1. The Header

The header is made up of the different elements that your recipients see when your email hits their inbox.

The elements you put in the header are the basis for your recipients to decide if your message is worth reading, and as such, has a direct impact on the performance of your campaign—especially your deliverability and open rate.

A good header usually contains three elements.

2. The From Line

Also known as the “sender’s name,” the “from” line tells your customers or prospects who the email is from. 

It can be the company’s email address or a personalized email account of a senior company official, usually the CEO.

This means that you will need to run some tests to determine which one your recipients like better. 

But it has been observed that emails from personalized accounts generate a higher response rate. 

So, rather than using your company name, use a personalized account that refers to the actual sender, which will boost your open rates.

3. The Subject Line

It’s no news to email marketers: your subject line can make or break your email campaign. You design and tweak it to give your recipients a taste of what your actual message is about.

For this reason, your subject line should engage your recipients from the start. If they hate it, your campaign goes downhill from there.

Here is a simple yet great example from Nerdy Joe’s own Ernest.

Your subject line should be short and to the point, usually 7-10 words for a higher open rate, personal, addressed to only one person, and action-oriented in order to entice them to click and read the actual message. 

Take a look at how short subject lines perform:

4. The Preheader

The preheader is a few words from the email introduction that appears in the inbox preview as a tail of your subject line.

Again, recipients can read the few words that make up your preheader and decide whether or not to open your email. 

Here is an example from Andrei Zinkevich from ROI Plan.

However, its relevance hinges upon the devices and your email marketing service provider. Anyway, a rule of thumb is to make it mobile-friendly, as 70% of people receive their emails on their mobile phones. 

5. The Body

Whatever the purpose of your email campaign, nothing happens until your customers or prospects read the content of the email and take the desired action. 

To achieve this, your recipients must first open your message and then click on the links in your call-to-action. 

Here are a few tips to help you write your email body to perfection.

• Keep it direct and simple

While people spend very little time reading emails, they receive dozens of emails every day that try to sell them something. Your email content needs to stick out. In your email body, your goal is to educate, and drive action with an eventual purchase, but you don’t need many words to achieve this.

The most successful emails are distinctive for their brevity, conciseness, and, ultimately, their straightforwardness.

As such, it would be best to find the right language to address your recipients’ pain points, no need to make it wordy. Instead, keep it short, clear, simple, and direct.

• Include visuals

A picture is worth a thousand words, everybody says. So, put what you want to say into a few words and spice it up with pictures. It is advisable to put a cover image at the top of the display and smaller images scattered throughout your content. 

However, be mindful and don’t just put images for the sake of it. Your pictures should resonate with your content and overall campaign objectives.

• Focus on readability

Format your content to entice your recipients to read it. Your content needs to be scannable. Regardless of your readership, no one wants to read emails with overly long paragraphs.

So chop up the paragraphs into shorter lines of text, and if the email seems too long, reduce the text. You can also use layout to break up space and help create chunks of content.

• Keep your design consistent

First, you need to establish a style guide and build or choose a template that fits your campaigns and readership. 

The design of your emails should allow your recipients to identify and read what appeals to them most first and then move on to where they want. They should be able to quickly skim the email in a well-organized layout, with large headings and images to grab attention.

Also, when it comes to email design, most marketers tend to advocate HTML emails. Granted, HTML ensures user experience, eye-catching display, and brand consistency and, as such, thrives for it.

But the truth is that HTML email can be a security risk. This is mainly because HTML emails are not always readable, can contain junk and viruses, and ultimately will not appeal to your readership.

And when it comes to deliverability rate, the hedge goes to plain text emails. So, you may want to go slow on the use of HTML in your emails.

Read more: How To Write A Follow-up Email After No Reply (+ 10 Templates)

• Include multiple calls to action (CTA)

Including multiple CTAs does not necessarily mean including tons of calls to action in your email content. Don’t just place a single CTA at the bottom of your content and wait to see who clicks or not.

Instead, you can, for example, increase your click-through rates by including 3 calls to action in your email but at different places so that they don’t seem repetitive. 

6. The Footer

By now, you have what you need to succeed in getting your recipients to read and take the hoped-for action. Now it’s time to design the email footer. 

Your footer won’t get them to read your email; in fact, this stretches beyond the scope of email marketing, but it will ensure they stay engaged with you. 

Here are the two elements you need to include in your footer.

• Contact Information

Contact information can be anything from your company’s physical address to a link to your company’s accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other social network you use. 

Adding contact information will help your business comply with federal anti-spam laws and ultimately provide you with more ways to engage with your customers or prospects.

• Unsubscribe Links

Offer your recipients the option to opt out of your mailing list. This will increase your unsubscribe rate, but you will only be able to keep people who relate to your business. In addition, offering them the option to unsubscribe is also mandatory to comply with anti-spam laws. 

Step 7: Automate your email marketing campaign

You successfully created and segmented your email list; you chose the email marketing service that works best for you, you selected the type of email you want to send, you created your campaign, and you wrote your email.

Now it’s time to automate that process to send mass emails to your segments of subscribers while focusing on adding value and driving more sales prospects. And automating your email marketing campaigns boils down to enabling autoresponders.

What is an autoresponder email?

Autoresponders are email marketing programs that are used to automate the process of sending campaign emails. 

Once set up, an autoresponder is prompted by specific actions such as:

• subscribing to your email list, 
• a certain browsing behavior, 
• cart abandonment, 
• a customer service request, 
• downloading an ebook or purchasing a product, 
• or scheduling to launch over time.

Every online business needs a series of autoresponders as part of its email marketing strategy to nurture prospects and deliver useful information about products, services, or promotions. 

It’s a cost-effective way to send relevant content to your various segments, and you don’t have to spend time and energy writing each message. 

Here is an example of an email sent from an autoresponder.

Awesome, huh? Now you may be wondering how to create an effective autoresponder series for your business. We got you covered.

Set a goal for your autoresponder

Your autoresponder can help you send any email you want. And if you choose, you can schedule the process – once a week, once a day, or on specific days of the week – and send your emails like a breeze. 

Here are some common purposes for which you can set up your autoresponder series. 

• Welcome email sequence

A welcome email is an email you send to welcome a new subscriber or customer after signing up for your email list. 

Your welcome email series should contain a simple thank you note for signing up and potentially a call to action to check out the most popular articles on your blog. 

But it doesn’t have to be lengthy to be effective. It just has to be brief and straightforward. 

• A lead magnet

You can use your autoresponder to send a series of emails containing lessons or other valuable information to drive new subscribers to your mailing list. 

This is usually done in the form of a free “mini-course” that you promise to deliver over several days or weeks. 

• Sales on autopilot

This strategy is widely used by SaaS startups, eCommerce businesses, and many other online service providers. 

Using an autoresponder to make sales on autopilot involves creating a sales funnel based on an email autoresponder. 

In other words, it is creating a sequence of emails that are automatically sent to your customers or prospects along the various stages of the customer journey that ultimately leads them to make a purchase.

• Up-sells and cross-sells

These are emails suggesting products that are either complementary or associated with the ones the customer has just purchased.

Depending on the products you sell, you can offer an upsell by recommending related products or asking users to upgrade to a higher plan. 

For example, if a customer buys shoes, you can offer to add socks before shipping. 

Or if you are a SaaS company selling a service, you can ask your customers to upgrade based on the different plans you have.

In the case of cross-selling, for example, if you sell products that people frequently buy, such as food or renewable service, you can automatically send them offers for new items based on when their product will end up or the time of their last purchase.

Map out your autoresponder sequence

Now there are a few questions you need to address. 

How long do you want your sequence to be? How many days? How far apart should each email be sent? How many emails? How much time, money, and effort are you willing to invest in your email marketing campaign?

This is an essential part of your automation process, as you need to strike a healthy balance between your audience, your marketing strategy, and the goal you chose in the first place.

So you will need to map out your email sequence based on data such as your segments, your subscribers’ preferences, and the goal you want to achieve to ensure you get it right.

Write your autoresponder series

Most people like to hire email copywriters to write their autoresponder email series, and they do so for a good reason. At Nerdy Joe, we offer email marketing services and can write an entire email sequence for you at $799. If interested, choose a plan here. 

However, if you think you have what it takes and still want to write the emails by yourself, you need to:

• Write an attention-grabbing subject line

If your recipients don’t get past the subject line, your campaign is doomed to fail. And the success of your subject line is all about grabbing your recipients’ attention.

If it doesn’t grab their attention, it means it’s not interesting to them, and they won’t read it. Your subject line is, therefore, as important as the goal you want to achieve with your campaign. 

Take your time and create a subject line that will leave your subscribers wanting to know more. Make it personal, pique their interest, and create curiosity about the content of the email.

• Ensure that the content is focused on the reader

Remember! No one signed up for your mailing list to read content about your company.

Instead, they did so because they find your content valuable to them and want some more. So you have to give them what they expect. 

Of course, your ultimate goal is to make as many dollars as possible, but you won’t make a dime if your prospects aren’t interested in your email content. 

You need to focus on them, how to help them with their problems, and suggest ways to solve them and make their lives easier. 

• Personalize your content

Let’s look at some examples of subject lines: 

1. 3 Brand Awareness Tips for your SaaS company
2. 5 Steps to Build Brand Awareness

Assuming you are a SaaS business owner, which of these two subject lines are you most likely to read?

Well, no doubt you went down the SaaS road.

The point is that personalizing your emails will make them more appealing to your subscribers. 

Generic emails as the second one no longer work, and personalizing simply by saying “Hi, Joe” at the top of the email is even less effective.

Now that you have automated the sending of your emails, the one thing you need to do is monitor the campaign, track how your business compares to your industry standards, and eventually find room for improvements. And this brings us to the next and last step.

Step 8: Track industry benchmarks, define your KPIs, and measure your performance

Tracking email marketing industry benchmarks provides companies with valuable data to understand their success or lack thereof.

Besides, it will give you an overview of how your campaign is performing compared to other companies in your industry and the email marketing industry.

This will help you identify the different areas in your emails that need tweaking to improve the performance of your campaigns.

Before we dive in, here are the email marketing benchmarks.

Metrics	Industry benchmarks
Open rate	18.00%
Click-through rate	2.60%
Click-to-open rate	14.10%
Unsubscribe rate	0.10%
Bounce rate	0.70%

Now here are the industry performance indicators you need to be tracking.

• Open rate

The open rate is the proportion of emails that were opened by your recipients after a campaign was sent. 

To know your open rate, simply divide the number of emails opened by the number of emails delivered. The result should then be multiplied by 100 to obtain your percentage rate.

For example, if you sent a campaign to 24 of your customers and 22 of them opened it, the opening rate will be 91.66%.

• Click-to-open rate

This is the percentage of recipients who both opened the email and clicked on a link. It is the number of clicks made in your email divided by the number of emails opened. 

You then multiply by 100 to get the percentage of your click-to-open rate. 

The click-to-open rate helps you assess the performance of your campaign by telling you how effective your content is in terms of the people that opened it.

• Click-through rate

The click-through rate is the number of clicks made within your email divided by the number of emails sent. You then multiply by 100 to get your click-through rate. 

When it comes to your click-through rate, the higher, the better, as it determines whether you are targeting the right audience or not and helps you know if your content is convincing enough to get them to click on the link. 

In addition, it tells you what is working and what needs to be improved. 

• Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate refers to the percentage of your subscribers who decided to remove themselves from your mailing list after receiving an email.

You can easily calculate your unsubscribe rate by dividing the total number of unsubscribes by the number of emails delivered. You then multiply the result by 100 to get your unsubscribe rate.

This metric has a direct impact on your email content. It’s essentially a red flag that your audience isn’t relating to the content you’re providing or that you are not addressing their pain point. 

• Bounce rate

Bounces are emails that are not delivered to the recipient. In this regard, the bounce rate represents the percentage of emails that did not reach the recipients due to an error with the ISP, the email address, or your email services provider like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.

To calculate your bounce rate, you take the total number of bounced emails and divide it by the total number of emails sent. You then multiply by 100 to get your bounce rate.

How To Create An Email Campaign: Key Takeaways

• When it comes to email campaign success, your ability to build quality lists, segment your email list and create personalized emails is what will make the difference between you and most of your competitors. 
• Always ensure that you use the right email service provider for business. Also, always warm up your domain to ensure a good deliverability rate for your email campaigns. 
• When drafting your emails, keep in mind that you must always ensure your campaign emails are simple and easy to understand. As well, you will need to personalize your emails to each of your recipients. 
• Sometimes, especially in sales, you will need to send more than one email across your campaign. Keep in mind that the same rules apply and that you must always seek to provide value first. 

Did your sales email or call go unanswered? 

Oh, cool! It just got real. It’s not uncommon for sales emails or calls to go unanswered. Most sales professionals and marketers know this, and a lot of sales statistics back it up. So, no reason to tremble. 

According to a study by InsideSales, 80% of sales require 5 follow-ups or more to close. Yet 48% of salespeople never even make a single follow up attempt, and 44% of those who do, give up after just one follow-up. 

That’s about half of sales reps/sales teams and marketers walking out of deals and closure they could’ve bagged for their business by simply following up a few times. And according to Invesp, 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes. The same is true for sales calls.

This goes to highlight the importance of persistence and dedication when it comes to following up with your sales leads. The marketers who said the fortune is in the follow-up couldn’t be more right. 

In this article, we will discuss the most important sales figures about follow-up to help you understand its current state and the different trends surrounding it. 

Buyer behavior about sales follow-up

Considering buyer behavior when conducting sales follow-up allows you to understand your customers’ or leads’ needs, preferences, and decision-making process, and this can help you tailor the follow-up approach and increase the likelihood of making a sale. 

Here is what statistics say about buyer behavior when it comes to sales follow-up. 

60% of customers say no four times before saying yes (InvespCro)

Persistence in following up is an important aspect of it. Many customers will need multiple interactions before they are ready to make a purchase. So, it is important for you to be persistent and not give up too soon. You could be one touch away from scoring the sale. 

35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first (InvespCro)

This statistics calls you up to be more responsive in dealing with prospects. As a sales rep, a quick response time demonstrates that you are proactive, attentive and professional and being the first to respond can give you a significant advantage in closing a sale. 

This is especially important in today’s fast-paced business world, where customers have high expectations for quick and efficient service. Therefore, you should prioritize following-up and responding to customer inquiries and requests in a timely manner.

57% of people said they would be encouraged to make a purchase from a salesperson who doesn’t try to apply pressure or hassle them when following up (InvespCro)

Non-pushy, non-harassing follow-up approaches are more effective in encouraging customers to make a purchase. 

That’s because high-pressure sales tactics can be off-putting and may make customers feel uncomfortable or resentful, which can negatively impact the sales process. 

On the other hand, a more relaxed and non-intrusive follow-up approach can make customers feel more at ease and comfortable with you, and it can help you increase the likelihood of making a sale.

42% of people would be encouraged to make a purchase if the sales rep called back at an agreed-upon, specified time (InvespCro)

You should always be mindful and respectful of the customer’s time and preferences in your sales follow-up, be it through a call or by way of email. 

Whatever the channel, this stat shows that people appreciate when salespeople follow through on their commitments and keep to an agreed-upon schedule. 

You can use this to build trust and demonstrate that you are reliable and dependable. It’ll help you win more customers, gain their trust, and score sales. 

A typical market has only 3% of people actively buying at any given time. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin (Vorsight)

Not all customers will be ready to purchase at the same time. It comes down to understanding the customer’s buying journey and working on your sales funnel accordingly because it means that different customers will be at different stages of the buying process. 

So, before sending random follow-up emails, you might need to take the time to understand where the customer is in the buying journey and to tailor the follow-up accordingly. 

12% of buyers like a company to try as many times as it takes to get a hold of them (InvespCro)

This could possibly mean two things. 

• That some buyers will appreciate a more persistent follow-up approach from you.
• That some buyers may not purchase until after multiple interactions with the salesperson. 

So, sometimes, persistence and dedication in your follow-up approach can be the best way to go. 

75% of online buyers say they hope to receive 2-4 phone calls before a company gives up (InvespCro)

Customers expect a certain level of follow-up on sales. And you should not give up too soon in your follow-up efforts. People in general, and especially interested prospects, expect a consistent follow-up and communication. So, they may not want you to give up on them too quickly. 

You need to understand those expectations and maintain a consistent follow-up approach, even if the customer does not make a purchase or answer right away. This will help build a long-term relationship with them and they are ready to buy, they will think of you.

Follow up frequency (follow-up cadence)

Maintaining a good follow-up frequency in sales will help you stay top of mind and maintain a relationship with prospects. It will also help you address any concerns or objections prospects may have, while making sure they are still interested in making a purchase. 

Here are the stats you need to know about sales follow-up cadence.

Typically, high-growth companies have 16 touchpoints with prospects every two to four weeks (ZoomInfo)

High-growth organizations are making multiple attempts to reach out to their prospects and maintain a consistent level of communication over a relatively short period of time.

This can help increase sales likelihood and demonstrates that the company is interested in their business and is willing to put in the effort to maintain a relationship.

So, this statistic from ZoomInfo suggests that a high volume of touchpoints, or interactions with a prospect, can be beneficial for sales success. It’s basically a representation of a consistent and persistent follow-up approach. 

The optimal number of email messages is five and the optimal number of call attempts is six  (Marketing Donut and Inc) 

It can also be beneficial to have a moderate number of touches with your prospects. Too many touches can be overwhelming and may lead to the recipient unsubscribing, blocking your phone number or marking your emails as spam. 

On the other hand, too few touches may not be enough to maintain the customer’s interest. Five or six touches is the perfect balance, it is enough to maintain contact and interest, but not too many to be seen as aggressive or annoying. Plus, other studies show that 95% of all converted leads are reached by the sixth call attempt. 

The ideal sales cadence based on replies is six touches within three weeks with follow-ups spaced out three or four days apart (Yesware)

This stat pretty much corroborates the one above it. What you should put your mind on here is that spacing out your follow-up touches at regular intervals can be a great idea. 

So, basically, you should make multiple attempts to reach out over a relatively short period of time, but also space out the follow-up interactions to maintain a balance between persistence and respect for the prospect’s time and preferences. 

Doing so allows you to maintain a consistent communication level while also giving your prospect time to consider their options.

Sales follow-up statistics about consistency and persistence

Consistency and persistence are important in sales follow-up. Many of your customers will need several touches with you before making their minds up about your product or service. Some just won’t be ready at the time. 

Maintaining persistence and consistency in your follow-ups helps you maintain the relationship and reassures the prospects that you are a reliable, dependable business partner.

Here are the main sales follow-up statistics you need to consider about follow-up persistence and consistency and what they teach us. 

48% of salespeople never even make a single follow up attempt (Invesp)

This statistic indicates that many salespeople are not following up with customers as much as they should and it can be detrimental to the sales process. 

Follow-up interactions are mandatory to address concerns or objections your customer may have, and to make sure they are still interested in making a purchase while keeping the conversation on. 

70% of salespeople stop at one email. Yet if you send more emails, you’ve got a 25% chance to hear back (Invesp)

You should not give up too soon when following up on sales, even if you do not receive a response after the first email. Sending multiple emails increases your chances of hearing back from the customer, and thus increasing the chances of making a sale.

You can also refer to the user behavior stats and focus on the right follow-up balance (between 5 and 6 touches).

50% of sales happen after the fifth touch (InsideSales)

This aligns with most stats about the buyer’s behavior and the follow up cadence. Persistence and consistency should be part of your follow-up mentality. 

That’s because it takes multiple interactions with a customer before a sale is made. So, always make sure you see it through with the prospects so you don’t give up one touch too soon. 

The average sales rep only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect (HubSpot)

This stat by HubSpot also indicates that the average sales rep is not following up or being persistent with their follow up as much as they should. 

This basically means that they are leaving deals on the table. You need to be more aware about and shoot for an outreach and follow persistence that’s balanced. 

92% of salespeople give up after no sales on the 4th call. (NuGrowth Solutions)

 We discussed earlier that 60% of customers say no four times before saying yes. So, it makes sense that a lot of marketers want to give up after being ghosted on the 4th call. 

But it has also been proven that 50% of sales are scored after 5 touches. So, these salespeople also might call it quits a while too soon. 

Reaching a prospect takes on average eight attempts. In 2007, this average was 3.68 (HubSpot)

It’s getting more and more difficult to reach out to customers over time. This could be explained by many reasons such as a fierce competition, lots of distractions and options for the prospects, and more. 

Anyway, the stat calls you to be more persistent in your follow up efforts today, given that it has a lot more attempts than it did in the past. 

Sales follow-up statistics about follow-up timing

Timing your follow-ups based on data allows you to reach out to your prospects at the most optimal time and it boosts your chances of getting your email or call engaged with and ensures you get a positive outcome.

Here is what data says about sales follow-up timing.

The odds of reaching a lead decrease by 10 times after the first hour of contact. After the first day, the odds decrease by 400 times (Insidesales.com)

This statistic indicates that timing is crucial in the follow-up process, as the chances of reaching a lead decreases significantly as time goes on. 

It implies that you should act quickly and follow up with leads as soon as possible. It means that you need to be responsive and available to customers — because waiting too long to follow up can decrease the chances of success.

Following up with web leads within 5 minutes makes you 9 times more likely to engage with them (Invesp)

The more time you let go by before following up with your prospects the less chance you have in closing them. This statistic joins the one above in that you need to act quickly and engage with leads quickly.

Salespeople who contacted prospects within an hour of receiving a query were 60 times as likely to qualify the lead as those who waited 24 hours or longer to contact the prospect (Invesp)

Here again, you need to act quickly and follow up with prospects as soon as you receive a query, in order to increase the chances of qualifying the lead and making a sale.

On average, you get a 25% email reply rate if you follow up within 24 hours of the initial outreach (Yesware)

Follow up within 24 hours of the initial outreach, in order to increase the chances of getting a reply and making a sale. Doing so lets you reach out to your prospects while they still remember you and are potentially interested in hearing more.

Best time to send sales emails to prospects are 9 and 11 AM and between 3 and 4 PM (Nerdy Joe)

This stat teaches us that sending emails at the right times of the day can increase the chances of success. 

Your prospects are busy professionals who will not be checking their emails at all times. And not sending your emails around the times they could potentially check their inboxes could see your emails lost in a swamp of emails in their inboxes. 

You need to be aware of the best times to send emails to your prospects. Doing so will help increase the chances of getting a reply and making a sale.

Tuesday and Thursday sales emails have the highest open rate compared to other weekdays (Nerdy Joe).

We conducted a study on the best days and times to send sales emails and follow up on them. We found that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send emails if you want the best results. 

People are generally busy on Mondays dealing with company duties, setting up their week, having calls, etc. Tuesdays offer you a better chance to catch their attention with non-business emails. 

On Thursdays they are already deep in the week, eliminating a good deal of their to-dos and much more likely to read proposals and make decisions. Fridays are no good because people are focused on getting things over with to enjoy their weekend. 

The best times to call are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6:45 to 9AM and 4 to 6PM (ZoomInfo).

As it is for email, making calls at specific times of the day will also increase the likelihood of you getting replies from your prospects.

And according to ZoomInfo, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6:45 to 9AM and 4 to 6PM are the best time and days to call your prospects. 

Sales follow-up statistics about the role of technology in sales follow-up

The use of sales tools such as CRM and automation tools for streamlining the sales follow-up process can also help improve the results you get. Here is what figures say about that. 

Companies that use automation for sales follow-up see a 10% increase in sales productivity (Hootsuite) 

Data from Hootsuite revealed that the average company sees 10% increase in productivity when they automate follow-ups. This implies that automation can help streamline and optimize the follow-up process, making it more efficient and effective. 

Since it is an integral part of the sales process, sending follow-up emails or voicemails can quickly become a repetitive task and a time-consuming one. You can automate it along with other repetitive tasks such as scheduling appointments and tracking customer interactions. 

This can help you free up time for salespeople to focus on more important tasks such as building relationships and closing deals, which can then lead to an increase in sales productivity.

Companies that use CRM are 29% more likely to exceed their sales quota (99firms)

Using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can help you exceed your sales quotas easily. 

Your CRM system can help you manage customer information, track customer interactions, and analyze customer data. 

This will help you better understand your customers’ needs and preferences and tailor your follow-up touches accordingly and increase the chances of making more sales.

Companies that use marketing automation software see a 451% higher chance of qualifying a lead (GrowthMarketingGenie)

Marketing automation software can help you to automate your marketing efforts that require lots of touches, such as lead generation, email marketing, and lead nurturing. 

Automating these tasks (requiring many follow-ups) will help you accomplish them more effectively — and efficiently reach and engage with potential customers.

Sales follow-up best practices for success

Here are a few ideas on how to improve your sales follow-ups to get more results.

Set follow-up reminders

Especially if you are a big sales team or working for a big company targeting many prospects a day, it can quickly become a pain to remember all your prospects. 

Think about not getting a sale because you forgot. Or maybe the customer said they’ll get back to you, but didn’t and you forgot to follow-up. 

By setting reminders, you’ll ensure that you don’t let leads slip through the cracks.

Use data to tailor messages

Data informs you on what the best practices are and how to sell in the ways that work. 

Also you can refer to your own data (from your CRM) to learn from the previous touches you have had with customers you or other sales people in your team closed to understand what could possibly be the reason they are silent on you and how to revive them. 

By using data to personalize your follow-up messages, you’ll increase the chances of the recipient engaging with your message.

Use multiple channels for follow-up

It can also be that the channel you’re using to target your prospects is just not getting their attention at the moment or that they receive many requests on that platform. 

By using a variety of channels, such as email, sales call or cold calling, and social selling, you’ll increase your chances of reaching the lead and eventually getting a reply from them.

Follow-up with a purpose

Instead of just sending a generic message and asking them to come buy, have a specific goal in mind for each follow-up, such as scheduling a meeting or getting more information about why they are silent (objections and concerns). 

It will help you center your follow-up approach around a specific goal and be more meaningful and impactful. It will also help you come up with a clear call to action you can ask your prospects to take. 

Key takeaways

• High performing sales teams always follow up. You need to consider follow-ups as an integral part of your sales process or sales strategy. Data show that only 2% of sales are close with a single touch. Meaning that most, if not all, of your customers will require follow-ups before committing to your business. 
• You will need follow up to have meaningful conversations with high quality leads. Maintaining a good cadence and being persistent in your follow-ups can also help make difference between whether you close the deal or lose it to your competitors.
• Unless the prospects completely disengages or says no, you can still follow-up to maintain the conversation going on until they are ready to buy. You can use these sales follow up stats to prepare your sales training materials and achieve better sales success.
• Automation is also an excellent way to approach sales follow-up. By automating sending follow-up emails or scheduling follow-up calls, you get to focus on more important tasks such as building relationships with customers and closing more sales. For cold calls, you can set reminders.

If you are here looking for a great startup marketing agency, we’re taking a strong guess that either you just launched your startup and looking for an agency to help you confirm product-market fit…

…And grow an active customer base, or your startup is currently not growing at the rate you wish, and so you are looking for a marketing team to help you fill your pipeline with hot leads. 

We got you. In this post, we will be discussing the merits of the 15 top startup marketing agencies and will guide you to make an informed decision and work with the company that best serves your unique needs and pain points.

But first, let’s get clear on the pillars of startup marketing. 

15 best startup marketing agencies for lead generation

Now that you know why lead generation is essential for your startups, let’s take a look at the 15 best startup marketing agencies for lead generation.

1 – Nerdy Joe

At Nerdy Joe, we specialize in helping businesses grow by generating high-quality leads that convert into paying customers.

Our team of experienced marketers uses proven strategies to attract and engage potential customers through cold outreach strategies such as cold email and email marketing.

We work closely with our clients to understand their unique needs and tailor our services to deliver the results they’re looking for.

What sets us apart from other lead generation agencies is our unwavering commitment to quality. We believe that generating leads is only half the battle — the real challenge lies in converting those leads into loyal customers for you. 

That’s why we focus on generating leads that are not only interested in your product or service but are also more likely to make a purchase.

We understand your business is different and unique, which is why we always offer customized lead generation solutions that are tailored to your specific needs. 

Whether you’re a startup or an established business looking to expand, we have the expertise and resources to help you achieve your goals. 

So if you’re tired of wasting time and money on ineffective lead generation strategies, our team of experts is here to help you take your business to the next level by generating high-quality leads that convert. 

Why Nerdy Joe is the best startup marketing agency for you

There are a couple of perks and approaches that make us a unique lead generation company for your needs. Here are the main reasons you need to consider Nerdy Joe. 

We care about your brand image: we will represent you in the best way possible by creating meaningful campaigns and cold emails that are representative of your brand

Log into your Twitter account and type cold email into the search to see what most of the so-called “cold email gurus” are preaching on the platform. You will find Tweets like the following:

Caught what’s wrong with that? They’re all preaching to send thousands of emails to only get a few replies and clients closed.

They imagine scenarios like sending 1000 cold emails per day, and at the end of the week, you have at least 100 replies and 10 booked calls or clients closed. 

This could work. We are not claiming that it won’t. But here is a quick question for you. How would you like your brand or company to be represented? Or, what startup marketing agency would you choose?  

• A: One that builds huge lists of thousands of people and blasts them with generic emails and hopes to convert a reasonable percentage of them. 
• B: On that builds a well-researched list of 30 prospects and crafts personalized, relevant, and compelling emails to reach out to them and close a good deal of them.

B, yeah? That’s what we figured.

The thing is, the A agency could get you results too. Because it’s easy to believe that cold outreach or lead generation success is a matter of volume. The more cold emails you send, the more likely you are to close clients. 

But that’s the best way to damage your brand and your relationship with prospective clients. Here are some well-known issues attached with targeting huge prospects lists. 

• ESPs and ISPs will flag your email and IP addresses as spammers.  
• They’ll kill your company’s reputation, and you’ll get a bad rap on social media. 
• The quality of the leads you get will be subpar. 
• Your domain will face severe deliverability issues.

Imagine waking up on a Thursday morning to 200 Twitter and LinkedIn notifications about how your company’s cold emails suck. 

We avoid this by being super-specific in who we target and creating personalized messages to very short prospect lists, and guess what? It works, and we are able to drive measurable business growth with it. 

A significant part of our strategy development is to spend time learning about your ideal customer profile (ICP) in and out before we send a single email.

We want each recipient to feel like you know them and wonder why you didn’t cross their paths months ago.

Honestly, we don’t want to send 1000 emails per day for a week to get you 4 sign-ups or meetings booked at the end of the week.

Our ideal scenario is that we send 20 emails, get 15 replies, 10 positives, and get you 4 sales-qualified leads or sign-ups.

Now, don’t get this wrong. By personalization, we mean we make each email relatable and timely. We don’t just add [[First name]] and other variables to the email subject lines. 

Just for some context on how this works for us, here’s an example of a reply we received as we reached out to a VP of Marketing who has historically blocked or reported SPAM to anyone who’s sent him a cold email.

Here’s another example where we pitched a Head of Marketing, and here’s the response. 

Contrary to what these gurus suggest, most of our cold email marketing campaigns are run towards 10 or 15 people, not 1000. That’s why most of the responses we get are:

• “Wow, such a nice email.”
• “Your email is well-done, partener”
• “Thank you for the nice words and compliment.”
• “Love your cold emails. Wanna write for us?”
• “Let’s catch up next Thursday.”
• “Love your email. Can you follow up on the 25th?” 

We believe the best marketing approach is the one that promotes trust and relationships. That’s why we always put in the extra work and patience it requires. 

You might wonder where we get information about each prospect or member of your target audience we use for personalization.

• We listen to podcasts your potential customers have been on.
• We read blog posts they wrote. 
• We read their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts.
• We read discussions on forums they’re in.

Using the data we collect, we craft first lines and icebreakers customized to each individual.

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

Here’s what he replied 1 hour later.

Here is another successful example from a similar strategy.

As you can see from both screenshots, the cold emails sent to the prospects were so compelling that they couldn’t help but acknowledge it before offering to hire us.

We are unwavering about data quality: we do the prospecting, list building, and everything manually.

First thing, it’s not that we are a bunch of people from the Victorian era trying it at marketing. We could easily sign up for a data intelligence tool like LeadsEngine, ZoomInfo, or Lusha, and they’ll quickly scrape up the net to build us lead lists, including 1000s of targets. 

And it could work. It does work for some people. But we know the level of data accuracy and customization it takes to cut it into someone’s inbox with an unsolicited cold email and get their attention. 

That’s why we do not rely on data intelligence tools. In most cases, such tools only compile technographic and demographic data from companies. For example, using these tools, it’s easy to find data regarding companies that: 

• Are in the healthcare industry, 
• Have 1000 to 1500 employees,
• Are series A-funded companies,
• They sell to eCommerce companies,
• Are in the U.S,
• Use financial technology,
• Use HubSpot or Salesforce as part of their tech stack.
• Etc.

It can even tell you that the company has a ping pong table at the office. You get the idea. Anyone with enough experience in the digital marketing industry can look at a company and guess those.

The thing is that this type of data can’t serve anywhere near strong personalization. You can only use it to devise poor first lines like:

So instead, we want quality data that we can use to create personalized emails that make the prospects feel like we know them and everything about their day-to-day and more.

So, we seek and make use of psychographic data and other types of data.

How do we do that? Glad you asked. 

Upon signing a new client, the first thing we do is ask about their ICP.

We ask questions like:

• Which type of client has the highest lifetime value?
• Which type of clients is easiest to close?
• Which type of clients churns the fastest?
• What are the top 3 objections you hear from prospective clients during sales calls?
• Why did you start your company? 
• What pain points were you trying to solve?
• Etc.

By getting them to answer these questions, we can pinpoint precisely who we should target and why — and it gets easy to do it manually. And this type of information makes the difference between: 

“We’re targeting series A tech companies,” 

And 

“Our ICP is a CTO at a software company selling to DevOps, and his main pain points are lack of organization, time management, and team collaboration. He often refers to XYZ podcasts to get insights as to how to manage his team efficiently.” 

Once we have a clear understanding of who the ICP is, we proceed to manually build our list, and that’s what we use to run our lead generation campaigns.

We care about your ROI: so you pay us for the results we get for you, not for the number of emails we send

There generally are four types of startup marketing companies:

• Those who’ll charge you based on the number of emails they send or the number of contacts they put in your list.
• Those charge you a monthly fee and promise you’ll get the best B2B leads ever but never deliver on their promise.
• Those that call everyone who’s downloaded an ebook or PDF  a LEAD and charge you for that.
• Those that charge based on the number of QUALIFIED leads they generate for your sales team.

To be fair, it’s only the last type of company that truly cares about your ROI and brings you great results. 

As a startup, you mainly care about your ROI, and chances are that your main point is that you need more leads to sell to, and that’s why you were looking for a startup marketing company in the first place. 

So, given this, our value does not revolve around the number of emails we send or the work we do, but rather the results we deliver.

Because of this, our experts only make sense of success and lack thereof with metrics that matter — not vanity metrics like open rate, bounce rate, clickthrough rate, etc.

Metrics we lead with include: 

• Number of positive replies
• Number of meetings booked
• Lead to close rate.

For instance, if you want to work with us to increase the customer base for your SaaS product, we’ll report:

• The number of new sign-ups you get. 
• The number of positive replies we get.
• The number of demo calls we book for you.
• And the number of new clients we get for you.

If you’re a B2B company selling to accountants, we’ll only charge you for the number of appointments we set for your sales teams. 

Our offering varies depending on your company’s overall goal and what outcome matters the most to you.

You don’t have to sign retainer agreements and contracts: You are free to stop your subscription based on satisfaction

It’s a common service type for most B2B lead generation and startup marketing companies. Most companies will ask you to sign a 3 to 6-month contract before you start working together.

They’ll explain it by saying they’ll need to do some testing and that the purchase journey is long. 

That means that you pay every month for the results you are supposed to get — even when you don’t get them.

So, this makes you invest a lot of money, and at the end of the day, you may not have anything to show for it. That’s why our services are subscription-based. 

We promise to offer you results exactly from the first month, and you’ll have to choose whether to continue to pay and get the results or whether you want to stop working with us — depending on how satisfied you are with our service and your budget. 

That means that even before the get-go, you know exactly what you are paying for. We eliminate the stress that comes with long-term and binding contracts and let you decide.

Here are the benefits you can enjoy from this. 

• Flexibility: A retainer contract usually requires you to commit to a fixed period of time and payment, regardless of your satisfaction with the service. In contrast, you are free to choose when to subscribe and when to stop. It’s all based on whether you are satisfied or not, which means that you won’t have to stay committed while you are not getting the results you want. 
• Risk mitigation: If you are dissatisfied with the service, you can stop the subscription without incurring financial and legal consequences. You take on less risk than with a retainer contract. 
• Accountability: The system rewards us for maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction. We know you have the option to stop your subscription if you aren’t satisfied. The opposite is true with a retainer contract since the provider is already obligated to pay for the service regardless of your satisfaction.

Pricing

Our marketing service’s pricing is crystal clear. We have three plans:

• Silver: It costs $499/month and only gives you two warm LEAD.
• Gold: This is the plan we recommend, as it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It costs $999/month and gives you 6 hot and sales-qualified appointments or LEADS.
• Platinum: This plan is for mid-level to enterprise companies willing to fuel their sales team with up to 15 sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.

Our email marketing pricing includes the following:

• The tech stack we use to build your prospect list and send and monitor your campaign.
• A complete list of prospects that fit your buyer persona and ICP.
• The campaign setup fees.

2 – Crowdform

Crowdform is one of the best digital marketing agencies. It is a digital product agency that launches ventures from scratch and partners with various companies to build digital products for their clients in the web3, cryptocurrency, gaming, and blockchain industry.

They have worked with various notable firms such as Sony, RedBull, Pura, HomeOffice, Inshur, Red Deer, and others. 

They are a design-led company that focuses on startups and help them develop digital products — websites and digital apps – through advanced technologies. They ensure that the developed products are easy to use and address users’ pain points.

Some of the services they offer include:

• Product strategy
• Product design
• Product development 
• Product growth

There is no pricing detail about their service, but you can contact them to get a quote.

3 – SeeResponse

SeeResponse is a digital marketing agency that focuses on helping B2B startups to generate qualified leads and grow their sales pipeline through a series of custom marketing strategies such as email marketing, outbound lead generation, marketing automation, and demand generation. 

They partner with startups to drive traffic, generate qualified leads, and grow your business. Some of the services they deliver for startups include:

• Build a fast, functional, and well-designed website that makes the brand visible
• Build apps to drive traffic and grow your business
• Run targeted marketing campaigns across various channels 
• Set up email drip sequences to move your audience through the buyer’s journey
• Automate tasks and processes through marketing automation tools.

If you want to partner with them, you can call them, send them an email, or fill out the form on their website. 

4 – WEBITMD

WEBITMD is a digital growth agency that provides marketing, sales, and technology services for businesses.

They have partnered with various businesses that range from venture-backed startups to large enterprises.

Some notable organizations they have partnered with include Amazon, Google, Meta, HubSpot, Shopify, and more. 

Their goal is to create brand awareness, increase qualified leads, and drive revenue to grow their business. They operate through an all-in-one sales and marketing approach known as “The Growth Stack” to deliver measurable results and accelerate business growth. 

Here are some of the services you get from this approach.

• They use email marketing campaigns such as email sequences and templates to build trust and nurture leads.
• They set up intelligent workflow and automation to scale through the client’s journey.
• They measure your lead’s activities and identify when they are ready for sales.
• They improve the sales process.

There is no pricing information about their services. But you can give them a call, send them a message, fill out a form, or book a meeting to get in touch with them.

5 – WebFx

WebFx is a digital marketing agency that provides various marketing services such as content marketing, lead generation services, paid ads, SEO, and others to grow businesses. 

They have partnered with various companies and have generated over 7.5 million leads for their clients. Although their general focus is on digital marketing, they can also help startups to grow their business. 

If you want to partner with WebFX, you will have to contact them and request a quote from their website.

6 – Write2Market

Write2Market is a tech public relations firm that provides lead generation and digital marketing services for startups and other companies.

They optimize the sales pipeline and ensure that various marketing efforts achieve measurable results. 

They specialize in the healthcare, tech, and retail industry while generating qualified leads and accelerating the sales funnel for their clients. Here is a quick view of how they work.

• They evaluate their client’s pain points at each stage of the buying cycle.
• They create a clear call to action that attracts, nurtures, and closes deals for their prospects.
• They improve their sales pipeline and measure their results.

To get their pricing details, you can call, email, or fill out their forms.

7 – Tuff Growth

TuffGrowth is a growth marketing agency that executes holistic and efficient marketing strategies to grow startups. They create customized growth marketing plans for each startup to help them scale their business.

They also have an in-house marketing team to help businesses in case they are short of in-house marketers or freelancers. 

They execute their systematic approach on different marketing channels to discover new opportunities and achieve measurable growth. Here are some of their processes:

• They perform foundational research and analyze your existing funnel.
• They set up clear goals.
• They identify and tests underperforming marketing strategies and end up with the most effective one.
• They evaluate results.

TuffGrowth offers three pricing plans for their services, and includes;

• Growth plan, which costs $12,500 per month
• Lean plan, which costs $25,000 per month
• Full plan, which is a custom plan and is available on request. 

8 – Ironpaper

Ironpapper is a B2B growth agency that provides B2B marketing, lead generation, and content marketing services for B2B companies, especially startups.

They generate qualified leads and nurture sales opportunities for their clients. 

To do this, they implement various strategies to improve lead generation rates. Some of these strategies include:

• Account-based and inbound marketing strategy to attract and convert qualified leads
• Content and engagement strategy to build post-conversion
• Full-funnel analytics to gather data from users across the funnel
• Retention strategy to improve customer acquisition and retention
• Behavior-based email marketing to send targeted messages

You must call or fill out their contact on their website to know about their pricing details. 

9 – Transcend Digital

Transcend Digital is a digital marketing agency that helps various brands, including startups, to build an online presence and achieve their goals in the digital space. They have worked with several firms, including Total, Tara, GoSnow, Fyxt, and more. 

They work on business objectives to craft solutions that boost ROI and improve customer retention. They also rely on their technological and analytics expertise to solve their client’s pain points and deliver measurable results. 

Depending on their client’s software, they integrate tons of software to help them produce scalable results. Some examples of CRMs they integrate with include HubSpot, Shopify, Salesforce, and so on. 

You have to contact them to get their pricing details if you want to work with them.

10 – Klicker 

Klicker is a digital marketing agency that offers inbound marketing and lead generation service for businesses. Although they work with businesses of any size, they give startups special attention to help them off the ground. 

They utilize advanced technologies and implement effective strategies to help startups drive traffic, generate leads, and close deals.

Some of the services they offer include content strategy, brand development, drip marketing, email marketing campaigns, drip marketing, and more.

There is no information about their pricing, but you can contact them to get a quote. 

11 – Digital Uncut

Digital Uncut is a digital marketing agency specifically for startups. They are a data-driven agency that enables startups to scale effectively and achieve measurable results.

On their website is a 5-step approach that shows how they work for their clients. Some services they offer include SEO, Digital PR, web development, data analysis, consultancy, and more. 

If you want to work with them, you have to contact them and know their pricing details. 

12 – Enventys Partners

Enventys Partners is a product development firm and marketing agency that works on new product ideas from scratch and scale them to the market.

They have worked with over 600 businesses and launched over 2,500 products to the market.

 They also focus on crowdfunding and e-commerce marketing which allows them to test the product’s market demand and find funds to scale it to commercial success. 

There are no pricing details on the company’s website, but you can contact them to request a quote.

13 – BAMF

BAMF is a LinkedIn marketing agency that provides LinkedIn influencer and lead generation services for businesses.

Although their primary service is LinkedIn, they also offer growth hacking services to help startups and businesses grow effectively and boost their revenue. 

They specialize in providing their services to B2B SaaS founders, sales leaders, agencies, and consultants. Here is a quick look at how their LinkedIn marketing service works.

• They write ghost content for their client’s profile
• They connect with relevant prospects that interact with the content
• The message prospects and book meetings with them. 

To get their pricing details, contact them on your website. 

14 – GrowthRocks

GrowthRocks is a growth-hacking marketing agency that helps startups and other companies to achieve sustainable growth.

They are a data-driven digital agency that uses different experimentation and cost-effective tactics to grow a business.

Their main goal is to increase customer acquisition, improve customer retention, and generate more revenue. Some of their processes involve discovering new customer acquisition channels, generating leads,  optimizing marketing campaigns, and more.

 You have to contact them to get a quote if you want to work with them.

15 – CB Web Design

CB Web Design is a web development agency that helps businesses, including startups, with all their web development needs. They ensure that your website is efficient in terms of form and functionality.  

Although the agency primarily deals with web development, they also help their clients with marketing strategies such as paid search. They use paid search (Google Adwords, retargeting, or paid social campaigns) to generate B2B leads at a faster rate. 

If you want to know about their pricing details, you must fill out a form on their website.

What are the benefits of working with a startup marketing agency?

Working with a startup marketing agency provides numerous advantages. Some of these include:

1 – Marketing expertise

One major advantage of hiring a startup marketing agency is to have expertise in different areas of marketing. As a startup, you may not yet be familiar with different aspects of marketing or understand how it works. 

However, a good startup agency consists of experts who have real, hands-on experience in creating an effective online marketing strategy that can propel your brand to new heights.

Since they have mastered the art of marketing, their expertise can give you advantages over your competitors and ensure that you stay at the top.

For instance, if you are a startup looking for ways to generate leads, you can hire a lead generation agency that already knows the rudiment to help you scale faster and achieve the desired results.

2 – More time to focus on business needs

Most entrepreneurs are busy with one task or the other, thus prompting them to have less time to manage the marketing side of their business effectively. 

With the support of a startup marketing agency, entrepreneurs can better focus on more urgent matters that require their attention, such as the products or services they offer.

Consequently, this allows the marketing agency to take full responsibility for the brand message and amplify its growth to customers. 

3 – Expand the business

Traditionally, the urgent need of a startup agency is to expand the business. But that would require you to hire your marketing team. This can be costly and takes time, especially if the hires are new on the job. 

However, a startup agency doesn’t have to go through the process. They already have a customized marketing strategy that can help to scale up your business. 

By strategies, this doesn’t mean they already have a bunch of keywords to add to your webpage and hope for the best. Instead, they already have analytics that measures the effectiveness of each strategy. 

They have learned what can scale up your business and prevent it from falling. Unless you hire experts as your marketing team, which may turn out to be expensive, a startup marketing agency is the best shot to scale your brand. 

In some cases, you can also hire a cold email agency to perform outbound lead generation and reach prospects that can contribute to the growth of your business.

Three tips for choosing the right startup marketing agency

As a business owner, you have to consider some factors before choosing the right startup agency. Here are some tips to get started.

1 – A proven track record

Most startup marketing agencies claim to have an effective track record. However, you can’t just believe what they claim outrightly without any proof. 

Just like you review an employee’s work history before hiring them, you must apply the same principle to a startup agency. 

This ensures that you do not get crickets in the long run. Hiring a startup marketing agency with a proven track record enables you to get the desired results you aim for.

2 – Industry

Choosing the right marketing agency directly correlates to the industry of your business. In fact, you should avoid an agency that is too generic. Good agencies tend to be industry-specific. This ensures you will have a good fit that can accomplish your goals. 

For instance, if your company is a tech startup seeking to generate leads through email marketing, you wouldn’t make the right decision if you select an agency that primarily works for the retail or e-commerce industry.

Instead, you can hire a B2B SaaS agency that can implement some SaaS email marketing strategies and achieve your goals.

3 – Price

A common true principle is that “you get what you pay for.” When it comes to marketing, the return on investment is often determined by how much you are willing to invest. 

Going for the cheapest service may result in little or no return on investment, which can affect your business growth. 

Also, going for an expensive agency may affect your ROI. What matters is to find a business that fits within your budget and can achieve your marketing objectives.

Why brand storytelling and lead generation should be the top priority for your startup marketing strategy

Let’s discuss brand storytelling and lead generation and why you need them to establish and grow your business. 

Startup storytelling

Every business needs to connect with its audience and engage with them on a deeper level. This is where brand storytelling appears in the picture. 

Brand storytelling is the cohesive and coherent narrative that weaves the facts together and evokes your brand’s emotions. 

As a startup, your customers need to connect with your brand and relate to your solution so they can buy. You should tell them the story behind your brand and why it exists across all communication channels. 

Wrap up the message to stir people’s imagination and elicit an emotional response from them. For instance, you can tell a story about your startup’s history, value proposition, and more. The story must be woven creatively such that people see your value and differentiate you from the competition.

Brand storytelling isn’t just a nice-to-have tool for your startup. You need to implement it to enhance your business’s visibility, stand out from your competitors, and generate revenue. 

Outbound lead generation

In addition to brand storytelling, there is a need for startups to include outbound lead generation as a part of their marketing strategy. It is a process that is essential for getting yourself into general conversations and gaining brand awareness. 

As a startup operating as a new entity in the market, you probably don’t have customers, and you can’t sit around waiting for inbound strategies such as content marketing and SEO to take off. It’ll take too much time and budget you probably lack already. 

Generating leads helps you to identify people that may be interested in your products/services and convince them to become paying customers. It is a process that identifies who your target audience is and the problems they aim to solve, and you reach out to them with your solution. 

You do this by creating cold emails and crafting engaging campaigns that educate and build relationships with the target audience. Lead generation ensures that you acquire new customers to grow your business. 

We are that startup marketing agency you’ve been looking for

If you are looking for an agency that will use paid advertising, Search Engine Optimization, social media marketing, and content marketing to boost your sales, Digital Uncut, CallBox, and the others on this list are suitable lead generation agencies for you. 

But if what you’re looking for is:

• An agency that charges you for results, not tasks.
• An agency that doesn’t require you to commit to a contract.
• An agency that does not waste your time and that’s affordable.
• A group of experts that care about your company’s reputation and relationship with prospects.

Nerdy Joe is the startup marketing agency you’re looking for. 

Finding someone’s email address is the first step to reaching out to a client or potential employer or even reconnecting with an old friend. 

In this post, we will explore several methods for finding email addresses and how you can do it for yourself.

Let’s get started. 

6 ways to find someone’s email address for free

Here are six surefire ways to find someone’s email address online. 

Google it

This may be basic and not be effective for most people trying to find people’s personal email addresses. If that’s the case for you, we suggest that you move on to the next method. 

Googling your recipient’s email address works well, especially if they are popular with a common name.

The trick is simple.

Simply type your target’s “name + email” into the Google search box and hit enter. Here is an example for Rand Fishkin, CEO of Spark Toro.

Here are other combinations you can use to bring up a person’s email address:

• [name] + email
• [name] + email (or) email address
• [name] + contact
• [name] + contact (or) contact information (or) contact me
• [name] + “company they work for”

Keep in mind that Google might not always bring up the answers in the search snippet as it did above.

So, check the first few pages that pop up in the search results. These might be helpful in finding the actual email address. Here is an example. 

We searched for “name + contact details,” and here is what Google showed us. 

Obviously, the email address we are looking for is not immediately displayed there. But by simply clicking on the first link to check the page that comes first, we are able to find the email address. 

Here is what we found first. 

Then we scrolled down the page and found this as well. 

Use email lookup services to find and verify email addresses

There are several email lookup services or tools available online that can help you find email addresses. These tools work by scraping the internet for email addresses associated with a specific company or domain (based on the domain availability status). 

However, it’s important to keep in mind that these tools can be less accurate than other methods and may not find all available email addresses. Also, some of these tools may require a paid subscription.

Our favorite email lookup tool is Hunter.io. Here is how you can use it to find someone’s email address. 

Hunter.io

Head over to Hunter’s Email Finder and paste your target’s name and the url of the company they work for. Like below: 

Hit the “Enter Button” or click on “Find” to find their email address.

Hunter verifies the email address automatically and gives it a score out of 100 to tell you how verified the email address is. You’ll also see the different sources they used to pull out the email address. 

The best thing about Hunter is that even if it fails to bring out the email address of the person you are looking for. It will still show the email format they use at their company, and if you know your target’s name, you can easily guess it. 

For this, you’ll need to use Hunter’s Domain Search tool or the chrome extension. We will be using the Domain Search tool. We put in our website url and hit the enter button.

Here is the result. 

You can see the formula we use at our company is “name @ domain dot com”.  If you’re looking to learn more about Hunter’s features and use cases, check this Hunter review.

Voila Norbert

VoilaNorbert is also another email lookup tool we recommend for finding someone’s email address. It works in pretty much the same way as Hunter.io. It asks for information about your target; you provide the information it asked for, and scrape the internet to bring you their email address. 

See it for yourself. 

Guess a personal email address and verify it

Every company has an email pattern they use for all their employees. And the most common email formula companies use is “first name @ company dot com. Just like us, ibrahim @ nerdyjoe dot com. 

According to a survey by Hunter, 49% of companies use that pattern. So, make it a rule of thumb to start your guessing with that pattern. 

That said, here are other patterns we’ve also found that companies use mostly — and which you can follow for your email address suggestions. 

Patterns	i.e
first @ company dot com/co/io	ibrahim@nerdyjoe.com
last @ company dot com/co/io	litinine@nerdyjoe.com
flast @ company dot com/co/io	ilitinine@nerdyjoe.com
first.last @ company dot com/co/io	ibrahim.litinine@nerdyjoe.com
firstlast @ company dot com/co/io	ibrahimlitinine@nerdyjoe.com
lastf @ company dot com/co/io	litininei@nerdyjoe.com
f.last @ company dot com/co/io	i.litinine@nerdyjoe.com
firstl @ company dot com/co/io	ibrahiml@nerdyjoe.com
lastfirst @ company dot com/co/io	litinineibrahim@nerdyjoe.com
last.first @ company dot com/co/io	litinine.ibrahim@nerdyjoe.com

In most cases, your target’s company email pattern will fall anywhere between the patterns we suggested. But once you have created all the combinations, you will need to verify the email address to ensure your guess is correct. 

Bear in mind that depending on the name of your target, they might cut it or readjust it in the email. For example, names like Robert could get cut and give “rob@company.com” or “bob@company.com”. 

Someone named Edward could use “ed@company.com” Vladimir could become “vlad@company.com” or Ibrahim could use “ib@company.com”. You need to be aware of these potential formats on the personal level — based on your target’s name. 

Verifying the guessed email address

There are two ways we suggest that you verify the email address’s correctness. You can use email verification tools or search google sheets.

• First way: Hunter’s Email Verifier

Head over to Hunter’s Email Verifier tool, choose Bulk verification, and paste the email addresses you guessed. 

Launch the verification and watch it verify your email addresses. 

Here is the result.

Of course, only the correct email addresses will come out as “valid”. And you can move on from there. 

• Second way: Google Sheets

Most people don’t know this, but Google Sheets is fit with a feature that allows you to ensure that an email address is correct. All you have to do is paste the addresses into a spreadsheet and use your mouse to hover over it. 

Google Sheets automatically identifies the email address associated with an actual profile and makes it pop up. 

Use social media to find personal email addresses

Social media platforms can also be a valuable resource for finding email addresses. Many people list their professional email addresses on their LinkedIn profiles, and some may even include it on their Facebook or Twitter profiles. 

Here is how you can find them on each platform.

LinkedIn

To find someone’s email address on LinkedIn, try searching for their name and the company they work for, and then visit their profile. If they have made their email address public, it will be listed on their profile page. 

Let’s try to find the email address of our good friend Irana Maltseva, working as part of the growth team at Aura. 

So here is the search query I used to find the prospect’s linkedin profile. 

The result.

Now, the next step is to click to view her full profile and check out the contact information. 

Here is the result. 

Although this may not be the professional email address she uses at Aura, it can be an effective way to reach out and get a response. So, depending on whether your target took the time to professionally set up their profile, you can find their personal email address or the one they use at work. 

Here is an example from a perfectly set up profile by Vladimir Blagojević at FullFunnel.io.

Twitter

Twitter is a popular social media platform and can be used for a variety of purposes, including networking and finding new contacts. It’s also a good place for you to find the email address of your targets.

Here are a few methods you can try:

• Search Twitter for the person’s profile and check their bio

Many people include their contact information, including their email address, in their Twitter bio. This is often the easiest place to find an email address, as it is prominently displayed on their profile.

Here is an example from Mark Golbridge.

• Look through the person’s tweets (with Twitter Advanced Search)

Sometimes, people will share their email addresses in a tweet. This can happen when they’re promoting a new product or service or when they’re looking for new contacts. Searching through their tweets for keywords like “email” or “contact” may reveal their email address.

But because their email addresses could get scraped by marketers using bots to send them unwanted emails, they hide them. Using Twitter Advanced Search features will help you dig them up. So, go to Twitter Advanced Research.

In the “Words” box, type in “email at”.

Then scroll down to “Accounts” and put in the name of the company your target works for. Let’s assume you’re looking for the email address of someone working at Ahrefs. 

Next, click on the search button and get your results. 

• Reach out to the person directly/Tag them in a Tweet

If you’re unable to find an email address using the above methods, you can always reach out to the person directly. You can send them a direct message on Twitter or mention them in a tweet and ask for their email address. 

image source

Or if it’s a company, they’ll probably direct you to their support team.

Facebook

Facebook is also a good place to find someone’s email address. It includes an “About” section where users can put their personal details and contact information.

Most people add their email addresses as part of their contact information, and you can easily access them. 

Simply log into your Facebook account and search for your target’s name. Go to their profile and click on “About”, then “Contact information”. Look here how we found Neil Patel’s email address easily. 

Important note: 

When searching for someone’s email address on social media, it’s important to be as specific as possible in your search terms.

For example, instead of searching for “John Smith,” try searching for “John Smith at XYZ Company.” This will help to narrow down the search results and increase the chances of finding the correct person.

It’s also important to consider the privacy settings of the person you are trying to reach.

Some people may have their social media profiles set to private, which means that you will not be able to view their email addresses even if they have them listed on their profiles. In this case, you may need to send them a message and ask for their email address.

Last but not least, while social media can be a useful tool for finding someone’s email address, it’s not a guarantee.

It’s important to keep in mind that not everyone will have their email address publicly available on social platforms and that some people may not want to share it.

Check out relevant online pages

You can also check some online pages that are about your prospect to find their email addresses. Here are the top online pages you need to consider.  

Website

Go to your target’s website and look for their email address in the above folder or the one below. If it’s a company website, head over to their about or career page, where they could potentially list everyone working at the company’s contact detail.

Bio pages

If your prospect has a bio page, that can also make finding their email address an easy task for you. You can find their bio pages by simply searching it into the Google search box. Type in their name + bio, and the trick is done. 

Here is an example for Rand Fishkin. 

And here goes the email inside. 

Author pages

The author page on your prospect’s blog or website, linked from their name anywhere on their blog or website, is another easy place to start.

In some cases, this page can be very detailed about the person and include lots of valuable information.

Subscribe to their personal newsletter

Subscribing to someone’s newsletter is one of the easy ways to find their email address. You subscribe to their newsletter, they send you their next email, and that’s it. In most cases, the automated welcome email is all you need to get their email address. 

So, if your target has a newsletter, this adds to the many ways you can find their email address. Find their newsletter, subscribe to it, and get their email. 

Why you need to outsource list building

If you are looking for someone’s email address, chances are that you are looking to reach out to them for email marketing or outbound lead generation purposes. 

In these cases, it could also mean that you are not simply looking for the email address of a single person.

Chances are that you are building a prospect list for your cold email campaign. Here are the reasons why you may want to outsource it all (list + lead generation/email marketing).

Lack of time or resources (It will cost you a lot)

Finding someone’s email may be easy. But building a high-quality email list can be a complex and time-consuming process for you. Even if you find it fun, soon enough, it’ll become daunting, and you’ll find yourself wasting important hours building lists. 

It requires a lot of effort to research, identify and target the right audience and then acquire and manage leads.

Outsourcing list building allows you to focus on other important areas of your operations, such as product development, marketing, and sales, while still building your list.

Expertise (we have it, you don’t)

An outsourced list-building service will have more experience and expertise in acquiring and managing leads than your in-house team — We will be more able to build you a higher quality and more targeted list.

They will have specialized tools and methods for finding and targeting the right audience, and they may also have a better understanding of compliance and legal requirements for acquiring and managing leads.

Cost-effectiveness (We will cost you less)

Outsourcing list building can be more cost-effective than hiring an in-house team or building the list on your own.

Take Nerdy Joe, for example. Working with us means you choose a specific product you want (i.e., x number of leads). We charge you for exactly that, and you get your results. 

If you have an in-house team, it means you will have to pay out salaries, which can be more costly for your business. Outsourcing eliminates the need to pay for employee salaries, benefits, and other overhead costs associated with an in-house team. 

On top of that, outsourcing can provide business access to specialized tools and technologies that would be cost-prohibitive to purchase or maintain in-house.

Scalability

Outsourcing allows for the list-building process to be scaled up or down depending on the needs of your business. 

For example, during a busy season, you may need to acquire a large number of leads quickly, while during a slow season, you will need to scale back the list-building efforts. 

Outsourcing allows you to adjust the list-building process as needed without committing to a long-term in-house team (and still paying huge salaries). It’s like we said, you choose what you want, we charge you for it, and give it to you. 

High-efficiency

Outsourcing list building will allow you to focus on your core business activities and operations, while the outsource team will provide you with a high-efficiency list-building service. 

We will take care of the whole process of building and maintaining the list, which will free up time and resources for your business.  As a bonus, we also keep up with the latest techniques, trends, and technologies in list building, which will benefit your business in the long run.

Why you need to work with Nerdy Joe for list building and lead generation

The best thing about us is that we are your one-stop shop list building and lead generation service. 

We talk with you to discuss and understand your product and its target market. Then we identify the personas, build quality email lists, reach out to them, and market your product for you. 

The way we work, when we hand you over the prospects (or to your sales team), all you have to do is sell — we already took care of all the marketing.

Here is specifically what you get when working with us.

Specify the results you want, and pay for it — not for the jobs to be done

Most outbound lead generation services don’t charge you for the results or the ROI you get. They:

• charge you for the jobs to be done, meaning you pay them to send X amount of emails per month. 

e.g., You pay $500, and we’ll build a list of 250 prospects per month.

• charge a flat fee per month to do lead generation for you, and they’re vague as to what the results will be. 

e.g., You pay $3,000, so the outbound lead generation service provider can run lead generation campaigns for you, and the results are just a matter of “it depends.”

• Etc

At Nerdy Joe, we know that there are jobs to be done to get your company leads. To be fair, that’s part of every agency’s lead generation process. We don’t just charge you for the job.

Instead, you pay for the ROI (return on investment) you get.

That means that we charge you by the number of meetings we book for you or the number of high-quality leads we send you instead of the number of prospects we add to your campaign list.

Our goal is to fill your pipeline with quality leads so that your sales teams can spend less time on monthly emails and more time on closing deals. 

We think like this because it is evident to us that every business looking to increase sales cares more about filling their pipeline with quality leads than the number of emails their sales teams send per month.

As simple as that.

When you start working with us, our outbound lead generation experts only lead with metrics that matter:

• Number of meetings booked.
• Number of “YES” and positive replies.
• Lead to close rate.

Not the usual open rate, clickthrough rate, bounce rate, etc.

Our emails aren’t mass-produced — they are personalized

If you’re frequent on Twitter, you’ve probably read one of these before.

• “Send 1000 cold emails a day.”
• “Use ChatGPT to flip some personalized first lines.”
• “Buy 10,000 contact data from LeadsEngines and send 1000 emails a day.”

Granted, doing this could bring you some results. The things that there’s a big difference between the quality of leads you will get and that of someone who sends emails that are personal, relatable, and timely.

Personalization and relatability make people reply to you even when your timing is not great.

Here’s an example of where we reached out to a Global VP of Marketing, but the timing wasn’t great. Still, she took the time to reply and communicate an appropriate time when it makes sense to touch base.

Personalization is what makes people who are averse to cold outreach reply to your cold email.

Here’s an example where we reached out to a VP of Marketing who has historically blocked or reported SPAM to anyone who’s sent him a cold email.

Here’s another example where we pitched a Head of Marketing, and here’s the response. 

Contrary to what gurus suggest, most of our outbound lead generation campaigns are run towards 10 or 15 people, not 1000. That’s because we believe that the best sales strategy is to build trust and relationships. 

All our data is manually built — we don’t use bought or scraped information

We don’t build our campaign data manually because we’re old school or like working hard.

We simply don’t use client data or purchase data when running outbound lead generation campaigns because this data is rarely accurate. 

For example, using ZoomInfo or Lusha, it’s easy to find prospect data using filters like the following: 

• Company is in the crypto trading industry, 
• 50 to 500 employees,
• Raised capital,
• Based out of Austin, Texas,
• Uses AWS for hosting and Magento.

Now, as much as you want to personalize your cold emails, what can you do with this data?

So, instead of relying upon this type of data, we go one step further and ask questions like the following:

• What does your ideal customer look like?
• Which category of clients has the highest lifetime value?
• Tell me about one client you closed in an easy way.
• Tell me about the category of clients that churns the fastest.
• Tell me about the top 3 objections that constantly pop up during sales calls.
• Etc.

We use the answers to these questions to identify your ICP and buyer persona. 

And you can tell this type of information makes the difference between: 

“Our target is series A crypto trading companies,” 

And

“Our ICP is a VP of Partnership at a crypto trading company, and his main pain points are that he struggles to close partnership deals with influencers, he does not know how to reach out to influencers. He often refers to TikTok and Gumroad’s blog to get insights as to how to influencers think.” 

Once we have a clear understanding of who the ICP is, we proceed to manually build our list, and that’s what we use to run our lead generation campaigns.

No long-term commitments 

Unlike most outbound lead generation services that require you to commit to a 3 to 6-month retainer, working with us means you get results starting from Month 1. And if you’re happy, you can renew your subscription.

Nerdy Joe is a subscription business, and you only renew your subscription if you’re satisfied with the service. 

You know exactly what you get 

Nerdy Joe’s offerings and pricing are clear — you choose a plan based on your budget and needs, and you know exactly what you get at the end of the month.

• No “it depends on a lot of factors.”
• No “Your account manager swallowed the key to his office and couldn’t work.”

If you have product-market fit and are solving a problem that most people have, it is almost everything we need to get you results.

But if you’re still figuring out who your solution is best for, then we’re probably not going to be of help.

Key takeaways

• Social media platforms, search engines, email lookup tools, and directly asking for an email address are all effective methods for finding email addresses. You can also use either a contact form or an opt in form to collect email addresses from people.
• Be sure to use multiple methods to increase your chances of success. Also, it’s important to be specific and professional in your search terms and to respect the person’s privacy when asking for their email address.
• Outsourcing list building can be a cost-effective and efficient way for you to build a high-quality list and increase conversions. By outsourcing list building, you can save time and money, improve ROI and lead generation, and do cold outreach more effectively.