Sending cold email a.k.a outbound prospecting is a very predictable and efficient way to generate leads for your sales team and close more deals.
Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of software tools available to help you automate and scale your cold email prospecting - leading to the creation of an entire new category of software: the Sales engagement category.
These tools are different from traditional email marketing tools which were built to blast out thousands of emails per day to your marketing list. Sales engagement or cold emailing tools on the other hand are designed to send smaller volumes of highly personalised emails and follow ups to your prospects. These emails are sent from your work email and are built to improve the productivity of your sales team.
Infact, given the variety of tools available today, the real problem for a sales team is not being able to scale cold emailing. It is in picking the right tool that is just the right match for your requirements.
There are a variety of factors you need to consider when picking the right tool. Does it work with your email provider? Does it integrate with your existing sales CRM? Does it have sufficient reporting and analytics capabilities? Can it support the type of emails and customization that your team plans to do? Is the pricing model geared to your growth plans?
These are important factors to consider when you evaluate a tool. But it can be a very time consuming process if you evaluate every tool available.
Here, we have covered what are the most important things that you need to focus on before choosing the right cold emailing tool for your sales team.
We have chosen the 9 best tools out there in the market today and we have given an overview of what exactly each of the tools will offer you based on these 5 different criteria.
By the end of the article you should be able to decide which cold emailing tool will work the best for your sales team.
Table of contents
Criteria for choosing the ideal tool
Before jumping into the tools, let’s quickly discuss the important criteria you need to look in a cold emailing tool to choose one.
Import and Manage Prospects
Once you have the prospect list ready, you need a tool that allows you to import and manage prospects the way you want.
The tool that you choose should be the prospecting hub where you are able to manage your prospects effectively.
It should allow you to import your prospect lists from any source you need - be it your CRM, or tools like Google Sheets or CSV. It would be perfect if the tool can auto import prospects from any of these as well.
It should also easily allow you to organize and manage your prospects because not all prospects are equal. It should allow you to tag and create lists by grouping prospects based on certain conditions such as recently contacted prospects, bounced prospects, prospects who unsubscribed, and actively engaging prospects. You should also be able to avoid duplicate records in the prospect database.
Email Campaign Features
The tool that you choose should allow you to send highly personalized emails and automated follow-ups and keep a track of them. That’s the core functionality but beyond that the tool should be able to send emails at specific time frames and should also allow you to throttle your emails; which simply means that you can decide the number of prospects to contact from your list daily. The tool should also be able detect out-of-office replies, auto-replies and bounces. You need to look for the ability to A/B test if you want to optimize your campaigns.
Finally you should check if the tool allows you to connect to the email server you use like Gmail, SMTP, IMAP, or Outlook so that you can send emails from your own email account to ensure great deliverability rates.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Salespeople generally waste a lot of time in keeping the CRM up to date with all the prospects’ data. Isn’t it better to have a tool that has seamless integration with your CRM so that you can create automated workflows that will save you a lot of time?
The tool should allow bi-directional syncing of prospects with your CRM so that all the prospect data is up-to-date in both the systems. It should allow you to manage campaigns to your prospects directly from within the CRM and also automatically record all the email engagement metrics for the prospects back into the CRM.
Reports and Dashboards
Email campaigns in sales are generally data driven. You will need a tool which allows you to benefit from the full extent of the data that you have at your disposal. Without having these analytics, you’re basically driving on the dark side.
Your tool should allow you to compare the performance of various campaigns and also check the performance of each individual step in a campaign so that you can get unique insights that you never even expected and will help in improving the performance of your campaigns constantly.
If you have a team, then the tool should allow you to know how your team is performing, with good team reports. And if you need real time notifications of your prospects’ actions then the tool has to provide live feed reports.
Pricing
Each tool has different pricing plans and each offers different features under different plans. But there are some parameters based on which the tools are priced. It can be based on the number of users or seats taken, number of contacts that you want to reach out to, or the number of email credits. Depending upon the volume of people in your organization, you have to choose the one that fits your needs and also generate high returns.
9 Best Cold Email Tools To Generate More Leads
Klenty is a sales engagement platform that can help sales teams automate the entire process of reaching out to prospects by sending personalized emails and automated follow-ups at scale.
Here’s a quick overview of what Klenty offers your sales team that can make them super productive.
Read more to know how Klenty can help your sales team grow.
Import and Manage Prospects
Klenty is the perfect tool when it comes to managing prospects. You can import prospects into Klenty however you want to. You can create manually or use a csv file. Or you can also auto-import prospects by connecting with Google Sheets or a CRM. Klenty allows you to manage these prospects with ease by creating lists and unlimited tags. It also provides a variety of custom fields with which you can personalize your campaigns and also has duplicate detection functionality.
Email Campaign Features
Klenty and email outreach go hand in hand. You can create multiple campaigns for multiple prospects based on your requirements. You can include any number of steps in a campaign to follow-up on your prospects. It has other important features like forward email detection, delivery window, email thread and throttling. It has useful features A/B testing and mail merge that allows you to send the same email to multiple contacts in a single click. You can also engage with your prospects via calls and tasks making it a complete sales engagement platform.
You can connect Gmail or Outlook with Klenty to send emails from your account to ensure better deliverability rates. If you’re not using Gmail or Outlook, you can use SMTP and IMAP to add your email account to Klenty.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Klenty provides native integration with the most popular CRMs such as Pipedrive, Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho, and Freshsales with a wide range of functionalities without the use of Zapier at all. With all these CRM’s you can create fully automated workflows using triggers and actions, saving you a lot of time and increasing your sales reps productivity. Other tools that Klenty integrates with are Slack, Calendly, and Zapier.
Reports and Dashboards
With Klenty, you can analyze the overall performance of your sales campaign as well as the performance of every individual step involved in the campaign with Cadence Reports. You can also track the performance of your team members with the Team Reports. Along with this, you also get live-feed reports to stay updated on your emails’ open, click or reply rates in real-time. Apart from these you also have Prospect Activity History, which allows you to see all the actions the prospect had with your emails.
Pricing
Klenty’s basic plan starts from $30/user/month that includes most of the native CRM integration and email automation functionalities. If you are looking to create fully automated workflows with your CRM then their $60/user/month plan will fit you. But if you’re a large organization with multiple seats, then the $100/user/month is ideal. Klenty allows you to send emails to unlimited contacts in all of their plans.
Send Cold Emails and Follow-up Emails at Scale with Klenty
Try Klenty free for 14 days. No credit card required
Prospect.io is a sales automation tool that helps you find leads and reach out to them using emails and follow-ups.
Here’s an overview of what Prospect.io has to offer:
Read ahead to check out if Prospect.io can help you.
Import and Manage Prospects
Prospect.io allows you to import prospects from a CSV file and a CRM but not from Google sheets. You can manage your prospects using lists, tags, smart segments and custom fields with which you can send personalized emails.
Email Campaign Features
With Prospect.io, you can launch complex drip campaigns to connect with your prospects. Before starting a campaign, Prospect.io allows you to validate the emails of your prospects using their email validation feature. The tool also offers other email automation features like mail merge, auto-reply, bounce detection, open & click tracking, delivery window, etc. But Prospect.io doesn’t provide you A/B testing to optimize your campaigns and you cannot detect the forwarded emails as well.
You can send emails from your own account by integrating Prospect.io with Gmail, Exchange or Outlook where everything is automated. You can also connect your email to your own SMTP server to send emails.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Prospect.io provides native 1-way integration with CRMs like Pipedrive, Close.io, Hubspot, and Zoho with which you can choose to create a new deal in the CRM based on events happening in Prospect.io. It provides bi-directional sync with Salesforce with which you can push data from Prospect.io to your salesforce account and vice versa automatically. It also integrates with Slack and Zapier.
Reports and Dashboards
Prospect.io allows you to analyze the performance of your salespeople with the help of team reports. You can also derive insights on your sent emails by tracking open, click, and reply rates with Prospect.io’s campaign reports. You also get live-feed and template reports.
Pricing
Their pricing starts from $79/month for 250 email credits. If you wish to have advanced CRM integrations to create automated workflows, then you need to check their $129/month plan with which you get 1000 email credits per month. While there is no free trial, they give you a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you cancel within a month, you can demand a full refund.
Woodpecker is a follow-up automation tool that helps B2B companies with cold email outreach and inbound lead nurturing.
Here’s a run-through of what Woodpecker can offer your sales team:
Read more to explore if Woodpecker can be a good fit for you.
Import and Manage Prospects
You can import prospects into Woodpecker from CSV or Google Sheets. It is also easy to manage these prospects with lists and tags. There are some default custom fields for personalization like a company name, but you can add your custom ones too.
Email Campaign Features
Woodpecker offers most of the basic email campaign features such as Mail merge, open and click rates, reply detection, auto-reply and bounce detection, and delivery window that are required to run campaigns effectively. But one prominent feature that they lack is A/B testing. They also do not provide a template library.
Woodpecker allows you to send emails from Gmail, Outlook, and Office365. It also allows you to connect to your IMAP server for sending emails.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Woodpecker has native CRM integration with Pipedrive using which you can synchronize your prospect data from Woodpecker to Pipedrive in order to manage the customers without any hassle. It can also be integrated with other CRMs like Zoho, Close.io, Base, and Salesmate via either Zapier or PieSync. Woodpecker also integrates with prospecting tools like LeadFuze and Uplead.
Reports and Dashboards
Woodpecker provides a deep understanding of your campaign performances by generating detailed reports. Apart from this, they also provide an agency dashboard to organize your lead generation agency workflow. But you cannot track open or click rates in real time because they don’t provide live-feed reports. It’s also difficult to keep a tab on your prospects’ actions to your emails as Woodpecker doesn’t come with prospect activity history functionality.
Pricing
The pricing starts from $40/month for one account. If you’d want to experience CRM integration features, then you can check out their $50/month plan. They also have an enterprise plan for which the price is discussed based on your business needs.
Send Cold Emails and Follow-up Emails at Scale with Klenty
Try Klenty free for 14 days. No credit card required
Mailshake is a sales engagement and automation software that can be used for cold outreach and generate leads.
A quick overview of what Mailshake is capable of:
Let’s see if you can generate more ROI from your efforts using Mailshake.
Import and Manage Prospects
With Mailshake, you can import prospects from Google sheets or from CSV files. It allows you to manage your prospects by creating lists and custom fields. You can also make sure that the same prospect is not included in multiple campaigns with their duplicate detection feature.
Email Campaign Features
Mailshake makes your job easy by optimizing your campaigns with the A/B testing feature. You can also engage your prospects via phone and social media from within the campaigns. Other important email campaign features include Mail merge, open and click rates, reply detection, auto-reply and bounce detection, delivery window, email threads, BCC emails to CRM, default email signatures, customize unsubscribe link, and set time zone. But some of the features that Mailshake miss out are forward email detection and template library.
With Mailshake, you can send emails from Gmail, Outlook,Exchange or Office365. Or you can also connect to your email provider via SMTP server to send emails.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Mailshake integrates with CRMs like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. No matter which CRM you’re using, the integration works essentially the same way - events happening within Mailshake are pushed to the CRM. You can also establish connections to third-party applications by creating zaps via Mailshake-apierZ integration. It also integrates with Slack which makes communication easier.
Reports and Dashboards
Mailshake provides you detailed reports on your campaigns so that you can make the right decisions without any confusion. But you can track neither the email engagement data in real time nor your team performance.
Pricing
Mailshake’s pricing plans start from $59/month with all the email personalization and cadence features. If you’re looking for a full-fledged sales engagement platform, you can check out their $99/month plan. You also get to clean your email lists for better deliverability if you pay $10 per 5000 recipients.
Yesware is a sales productivity platform used to send cold emails and follow-up effectively.
An overview of what Yesware can offer you:
Yesware says, “Win more business with the easiest to use sales software”. Let’s see how they do it.
Import and Manage Prospects
Yesware allows you to import prospects only from CSV files, not from Google sheets and CRM. With Yesware, you can create lists and tags to organize these prospects into different buckets. You can also add custom fields to personalize your campaigns.
Email Campaign Features
Yesware provides a variety of features to manage email campaigns in a smooth way. Some of the features are Mail merge, open and click rates, reply detection, auto-reply and bounce detection, delivery window, email threads, default email signatures, and set time zone. But you’ll fail to experience A/B testing with Yesware.
You can connect Yesware with Outlook or Gmail to send emails to your prospects from your work email.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Yesware has native integration with only Salesforce CRM which automatically syncs your email data to Salesforce without any manual entry. If you are using any other CRM then Yesware may not suit your needs as it does not have an integration with Zapier as well.
Yesware is also integrated with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to increase your sales productivity. You can even track how Yesware campaign recipients are engaging with content that is sent via emails (PDFs, eBooks, etc.) with the help of Yesware-DocSend integration.
Reports and Dashboards
Yesware generates template reports which will help you to track how your email templates are performing. You can also get an overview on email engagement metrics such as open, click, and reply rates with their live-feed reports. Although you get an understanding of templates and email engagement data, you cannot track your prospects’ actions to your emails.
Pricing
If you’re just looking to run email campaigns and track their performances, you can take a look at their $12/month and 25/month$ plans. But if you want Salesforce and other integrations to increase productivity, then you can check the 55/month$ plan.
Reply.io is a sales engagement platform that helps salespeople to send personalized cold emails.
A quick overview of Reply.io features:
Read more on these to see how Reply can suit your needs.
Import and Manage Prospects
Reply allows you to import prospects from CSV and CRM but not from Google sheets. You can create lists and tags to manage your prospects. It also lets you create custom fields for better personalization.
Email Campaign Features
You get to experience most of the essential email campaign features like A/B testing, open and click rates, reply detection, auto reply and bounce detection, delivery window, default email signatures, set time zone, BCC emails to CRM, and customize unsubscribe links. But you don’t get to send the same to multiple prospects because Reply doesn’t come with a mail merge feature and you cannot detect forwarded emails as well.
With Reply, you can send emails from Gmail, Outlook or Exchange. You can also connect to other email providers via SMTP/IMAP servers.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Reply offers native integration with CRMs like Pipedrive, Salesforce, Close.io, Base, and Copper but with very limited functionalities. It also integrates with lackS to bring all your communications together in one place.
Reports and Dashboards
Reply’s detailed reports and analytics will help you to track your team’s progress and the performance of your campaigns as well. You can also keep a tab on your prospects’ activities and follow-up accordingly. Reply doesn’t provide live-feed reports.
Pricing
The pricing plan starts from $70/user/month with which you can contact 1000 people. For more contacts you have the $90/user/month plan which allows you to contact 3000 people. Their $120/user/month plan allows you to contact 30,000 people per month. If you have multiple sales teams in your organization, then you can have a look at their business plans which varies from $200/month to $500/month.
Send Cold Emails and Follow-up Emails at Scale with Klenty
Try Klenty free for 14 days. No credit card required
PersistIQ is an email automation software that helps salespeople to launch personalized email campaigns for lead generation.
An overview of what PersistIQ is capable of:
They claim that sales is hard but PersistIQ is easy. Is that so? Read ahead to know more.
Import and Manage Prospects
PersistIQ allows you to import prospects via CSV files. You cannot import them from Google sheets. Once you import the prospects’ into campaigns, it’s easy to manage them using custom fields, lists and tags.
Email Campaign Features
It helps you to run your email campaigns effectively by providing features like A/B testing, open and click rates, reply detection, auto reply and bounce detection, delivery window, default email signatures, set time zone, Email thread, BCC emails to CRM, and customize unsubscribe links. But it lacks certain features like mail merge and forward email detection.
You can connect to your email provider via SMTP/IMAP server to send emails.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
PersistIQ integrates natively with Copper and Salesforce CRM . It has bi-directional sync and allows you to create advanced workflows to automate your tasks. But if you want to connect PersistIQ with any other CRM or other applications then you will need to use Zapier.
Reports and Dashboards
With PersistIQ, you get live information regarding the emails sent to your prospects. You also get insights on your campaigns, templates used, and your eam performancet which will help you to ramp up your productivity.
Pricing
PersistIQ’s pricing plans start from $49/seat/month with which you can send 300 emails per day and experience the Copper CRM integration. The other plan is priced at $129/seat/month with which you can send 600 emails per day and you also get to use Salesforce CRM integration.
Quickmail is a sales engagement platform used for sending personalized cold emails at scale.
An overview of what Quickmail has to offer:
Read on to know more if QuickMail can help your sales team
Import and Manage Prospects
It’s easy to import prospects into QuickMail from CSV files and Google Sheets as well. But you can’t sync prospects from CRM. QuickMail helps you to manage and organize prospects by allowing you to create lists and tags.
Email Campaign Features
QuickMail offers many features to maximize the performance of your campaigns. Some of the features of QuickMail include open and click rates, reply detection, auto reply and bounce detection, delivery window, default email signatures, and customize unsubscribe links. But it doesn’t allow you to experience mail merge, A/B testing, and forward email detection.
You can connect QuickMail with Gmail or Outlook to send emails and follow-ups.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
QuickMail doesn’t have native integration with any of the CRMs. But you can connect it to a CRM using Zapier.
Reports and Dashboards
You can track the email engagement metrics with QuickMail’s live feed. QuickMail also generates team reports with which you can get some insights on the performance of your team members. Since QuickMail doesn’t provide prospect activity history, you cannot keep track of your prospects' actions to your emails.
Pricing
With QuickMail's basic plan priced at $49, you can send upto 500 emails per day per inbox. While the other plan which is priced at $69 lets you send 1500 emails per day per inbox.
Mixmax is a cold emailing tool that can be used to automate outbound campaigns using emails and follow-ups.
Here are the highlights of what Mixmax can offer
Check further to know more about how Mixmax can help you.
Import and Manage Prospects
You can import your prospects from CSV or google sheets and start running campaigns in Mixmax. It’s easy to manage your prospects with Mixmax using lists, tags and custom fields. But you cannot detect any redundant records in your prospect database because Mixmax doesn’t provide duplicate detection functionality.
Email Campaign Features
Mixmax comes with a basic set of cadence features like Mail merge, Reply detection, Open and click tracking, auto-reply and bounce detection, and set time zone which helps you to send personalized emails and follow-up on your prospects easily. Features that Mixmax lack are A/B testing and forward email detection.
You can connect your Gmail account with Mixmax to send emails.
Integration with CRMs and other tools
Mixmax provides native integration with Pipedrive and Salesforce. You can connect with any other CRM either directly using the API because they do not have Zapier integration.
It is also integrated with tools like Greenhouse, an application tracking system and recruiting software and other tools like SMS, Giphy, Dropbox, and Typeform.
Reports and Dashboards
You can only get updates on your emails in real-time with Mixmax’s live-feed reports.
Pricing
Their pricing plans start from $12/user/month. If you want to have basic email tracking and personalization, you can try out this plan. If you’re a small-medium organization currently growing, you can check out their $65/month plan. But if you expect complete workflow automation, CRM integrations, etc., then you can check their enterprise plan which will be priced according to your business needs.
Send Cold Emails and Follow-up Emails at Scale with Klenty
Try Klenty free for 14 days. No credit card required