How to increase email deliverability and deal flow - almost on autopilot

Many people have posted about their struggles with outreach campaigns and email deliverability.

I want to share some information that might be able to help. But before I do that, let me say that what I will discuss has been tried and tested for email campaigns in different industries, countries, and continents.

Most of what I am about to say may sound obvious. But it is what enabled us to find:

• 30 qualified deals a month for a brokerage firm in the US
• 50+ investment opportunities a month for a PE group out of the UK
• 21 hospitals for sale in the Middle East on behalf of an international healthcare group from South Africa

Believe it or not, we didn't use fancy tools or complex setups to achieve these results.

All our deal origination systems focus on two core aspects: simplicity and efficacy.

So, how do we make sure emails get delivered?

Let's start with a clean setup. We do not use complex tools or buy emails from cheap sites to save a few bucks.

• Godaddy for our domains
• Microsoft or Google for our emails
• Apollo.io for lead lists + Google maps
• Instantly.ai for email outreach

That's it. Nothing more.

Things you may want to consider when setting up campaigns for maximum deliverability:

• Domain reputation and how old it is (and where you bought it)
• Reputation of email service provider's IP (don't work with crap ones)
• SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
• Progressive warm-up of the emails
• Links/images in the email copy, including pixels (don't use them)
• Spam worlds and un-personalized messaging
• Clean lists with no bouncy emails (clean lists or get leads directly in Instantly.ai)

But there is more:

• Write relevant messages that don't make people mark emails as spam
• Include accurate subject lines that aren't clickbait or misleading
• Include an easy-to-click 'unsubscribe' button
• Don't spam
• Clean the list regularly, even after the campaign has started
• Don't send more than 30 emails/day per address
• Keep the warm-up on
• Disable the tracking to increase deliverability
• And lastly, conduct some testing on the messaging that lands better with the target audience

For those having issues with deliverability to/from Outlook: What has helped us is switching more emails to Google. We also haven't seen a huge drop even when sending from our Outlook accounts.

Other than this, Instantly helps us with the Inbox Placement feature. It helps by automating placement tests, providing insights into blacklists, spam triggers, and email health, allowing us to optimize campaigns and improve deliverability while spending less time on manual tasks.

Our deliverability was always solid, with open rates above 50% and reply rates between 5% and 10% across different industries, countries, and continents.

We used a few basic tools and simple steps. Nothing too fancy.

I honestly believe the technical side of things is less important than the strategic one. Many miss out on the goal because they spend too much time clicking buttons instead of understanding what type of messaging will make a motivated seller respond to their email.

I think you will agree that business owners respond differently depending on their social and economic background.

To clarify, you can't use the same strategy to reach out to a medical clinic and a plumber.

You can't use the same strategy to reach out to a US-based owner or someone in the Middle East.

And this is where I might be able to help you.

If you want to avoid all these problems and have an experienced M&A team take of your deal origination, then I may be able to help you.

If you want to focus all your time on high-ROI activities like negotiating and closing deals while having someone else oversee the lead generation process, then this post is for you.

We help search funds, entrepreneurs, and PE/VC groups generate qualified leads in the form of motivated sellers.

Would you like me to share a brief video on how we can help? Comment or send me a DM and I will share it with you.