20 Best Automated Cold Email Software (Pros, Cons, Pricing)

With an average ROI of 3,800%, cold emailing is by and large the most trusted and effective way to reach out to prospects. However, you have to use the right approach to witness such incredible results. Moreover, manual emailing can take away a significant chunk of your time as a sales professional. That’s where cold email software comes in.

If you are new to using automation and don’t know how to proceed, don’t worry. We’ll show you how you can use tools to automate the task of email outreach effectively.

First, let’s look at the basics of cold emailing and the top 20 cold email software.

What Is Cold Emailing?

Cold emailing refers to the practice of sending cold emails. A cold email is an email you send to a recipient with whom you don’t have any prior contact. The recipient doesn’t even anticipate receiving an email from you. It is similar to cold calling but is not very intrusive and a preferred mode of contact for most salespeople. 

Is It Legal To Send Cold Emails?

Don’t confuse cold emails with spam emails. Spam emails are sent at once to thousands of emails without research and bothering about the email address validity. On the other hand, you do cold email outreach to qualified prospects, which means you research and make the email relevant to the recipient. Moreover, before sending cold emails, the addresses are verified. 

The clear-cut fact is that it is entirely legal to send cold emails as long as you meet the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act. It is a regulation for sending B2B and B2C messages, including cold emails. 

What Is A Cold Email Outreach Tool?

Cold email outreach tools enable you to carry out cold email outreach with ease. It helps you send cold emails more effectively by automating the process for you. It facilitates sending follow-ups and provides features like personalization, tracking, preloaded templates, etc. Most cold email outreach tools also automate other parts of the sales process, such as finding emails of prospects. 

Cold email software companies also choose to name their software as a sales engagement platform or sales automation tool, indicating that cold email is also a part of it. Also, when best automated cold outreach tools use the term multi-channel outreach, it always has email as one of the outreach channels.

17 Best Cold Email Software

Here are the 17 best cold email tools for you,

1. SalesBlink

SalesBlink is a sales outreach automation suite that can take you from outreach to closing at lightning-fast speed. It automates the sales process and makes the most tedious tasks super easy to reduce your workload to a great extent. SalesBlink not only automates cold emailing but takes care of most of the other aspects of the sales cycle. It will hand-hold you throughout, right from finding prospects to reaching out to them through campaigns to closing deals with them. Therefore, it is one of the best cold email outreach tools.

Outreach

You can use the campaign builder or the pre-built campaign templates to create personalized outreach campaigns. You can even carry out multi-channel outreach with SalesBlink, including email and LinkedIn(manually via Task).

Closing

There is an in-built meeting scheduler, for the closing stage.

Apart from all of the above, you have two free tools:

• free email subject line generator
• free sales commission calculator

Pros –

• Uses BlinkGPT to generate sales sequences & email templates
• User-friendly
• Fairly priced
• Offers free trial

Cons –

Nothing specific

The monthly paid plans are: 

Scale- $29/month

Growth- $99/month

Business- $199/month

You get a discount of 15% if you choose yearly billing.

Customer rating –

Capterra – 4.7/5

G2 – 4.6/5

2. Folderly

Folderly is an all-in-one email deliverability platform that aims to locate, solve and prevent email deliverability issues. It helps businesses to build robust email infrastructure, increase email deliverability, and boost outcomes through cold email marketing. Folderly offers solutions to various business needs, from email deliverability testing to complex domain audits.

Folderly’s distinguishing feature is automatically generated senders, which ensure an accelerated increase of sender score and mailbox security. A set of technical procedures allows you to improve and maintain domain reputation. With Folderly you can run inbox placement tests through the most popular email service providers, monitor your domain health, blacklists, and receive insights on IP information, DNS settings, and sender score. Folderly’s email template analysis dashboard allows you to create HTML or plain text emails and instantly check them for spam triggers.

Pros –

• Choose what you need: get your new domain ready for email outreach campaigns with Basic Email Warmup, or ensure that each of your emails land to the Inbox with Folderly Premium
• GDPR- & CCPA-ready solution that ensures data safety
• Seamless integration via API and SMTP with all popular email service providers and any custom providers.

Cons –

• No free trial 

Pricing – Folderly offers two packages based on your business goals with discounted rates for annual billing. 

• The Basic Warmup plan is $49/mo, and it allows you to get a new domain ready for successful outreach campaigns. 
• Premium subscription costs $200/mo and includes multiple features that make each of your emails land in the Inbox. 

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.9/5

G2: 5.0/5

3. Woodpecker

Woodpecker aims at helping B2B salespeople reach out to prospects in such a way that the messages seem to be coming from a human. It is possible to automate follow-ups and schedule them.

With Woodpecker, you can detect replies, track campaigns with email open, replies, clicks, and bounces. It lets you perform A/B testing email templates to assess what resonates with the recipients better. The tool prevents collision by preventing one prospect from being contacted with different email addresses. 

Pros –

• Easy to set up
• User-friendly interface
• Offers free trial

Cons –

• Can’t send email attachments

Pricing – There is a free trial of 14 days that lets you send up to 150 emails. The subscription plan starts at $32 per month per user for this cold email software.

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.5/5 

G2: 4.6

4.  Reply.io

Reply.io is a multichannel platform for automated outreach that aims at fetching the best conversion rates. It facilitates drip campaigns with automated follow-ups and enables tracking the campaigns’ open, click, reply, and email bounce rates. There are readily available email templates for you to use. There is a feature to validate the email list to send emails only to valid addresses and keep your sender reputation intact. You can integrate this tool with other platforms such as Slack, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and much more. Hence, it is one of the best cold email outreach tools

Pros –

• Has Chrome extension
• Multichannel outreach

Cons –

• Targeted at advance users
• Expensive

Pricing – You can sign up for a free trial of 14-days with all the features of the tool. The plan starts at $70 per month for three email addresses for this cold emailing tool. 

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.6/5

G2: 4.5/5 

5. Mailshake

Mailshake is a sales engagement platform that lets salespeople run personalized campaigns and reach out to prospects via email, phone, and social media. You may use dynamic variables to tailor and send emails in bulk for your campaign. It is possible to schedule follow-ups automatically based on opens, clicks, and replies to emails, which will help reduce manual work considerably. Using the platform, you can perform A/B testing to get better results. You can reach out to prospects through other channels as well such as phone and social media. However, you can manage everything from one dashboard. The advantage is that you can integrate Mailshake with other tools like Salesforce and Pipedrive. So, it is one of the best cold email outreach tools

Pros –

• Easy integration
• Intuitive interface

Cons –

• Lacks prospecting features

Pricing – Though Mailshake doesn’t have a free trial, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Their subscription plan starts at $39 per user per month for this cold emailing software. 

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.7/5

G2: 4.7/5

6. Lemlist

Lemlist is yet another email outreach tool that helps automate and personalize cold emails in bulk with custom variables. You can personalize images and videos easily. The tool lets you insert screenshots and logos as images in your email and add dynamic landing pages. The tool also provides an email warmup feature so that your new domain has high email deliverability.

You can schedule automated follow-ups and perform A/B testing for email templates efficiently with this tool. Additionally, it is possible to measure campaign performance by tracking opens, clicks, replies, and bounces. What’s more, is that you can monitor recipients and validate email addresses before running the campaign. 

Pros –

• User-friendly
• Value for money

Cons –

• Frequent UI changes

Pricing – There is a free trial of 14-days inclusive of all the features. The subscription plan starts at $29 per month per user for this cold emailing tool. 

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.6/5

G2: 4.3/5

7. Overloop

Overloop aims at making cold outreach easier. It helps you in all aspects of prospecting, which includes finding emails, building segmented lists of prospects after research, reaching out to them using personalization, and managing them in a CRM solution of your choice. 

The tool has an email finder and an extension to verify those email addresses. It lets you build multi-step campaigns easily and set automated reminders for multi-channel outreach. You can use custom variables for personalization. Additionally, you can track email opens, clicks, bounces, and replies. Additionally, the tool lets you monitor the performance of your sales team and that of each individual. 

Pros –

• Simple interface
• Free trial

Cons –

• Lack of cold calling features

Pricing – Their subscription plan starts at $39 per month per user

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.8/5

G2: 4.8 /5

8. Mixmax

Mixmax is your go-to cold email software if you are looking for an-inclusive email outreach tool. There is no need for any technical knowledge to use this tool as it is quite easy to set up. Scheduling emails and follow-ups are easier with Mixmax, as you can use this tool from your Gmail account, there will be no unnecessary back and forth. There is smart personalization to make your outreach more effective. Also, prospects can book meetings with you using your calendar link based on your availability. In addition to that, you have email tracking software and real-time alerts for measuring the performance of your campaign. 

Pros-

• No need for technical skills
• Works with Gmail
• Offers free trial

Cons- 

• Extension slows down the browser

Pricing – The paid plan starts at $9 per user per month

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.5/5 

G2: 4.6/5

9. SmartReach.io

You can get emails delivered straight into the recipient’s inbox with SmartReach.io. It is a tool that meets all the email outreach requirements that you can have. The main highlights of this tool are the deliverability features. You have email verification and SPAM check to ensure that the sender’s reputation and email deliverability remain intact. There is also a domain warm up feature that helps build the sender reputation of your new domain. As warming up your domain can be a time-consuming and long-running task, getting a tool to help you can be of great help. 

The tool enables automated scheduling of emails and follow-ups along with personalization. You can track the progress of the email campaign and the open, reply, and click rates right from your dashboard. A/B testing of email sequences is another feature that helps you improve the campaign further. 

Coming to integrations, you can integrate it with Gmail, Office 365, and tools like Mailgun and Sendgrid. 

Pros –

• Unlimited campaigns
• Easy to use

Cons –

• Limited contact list filters

Pricing – The basic subscription plan starts at $24 a month per user. You have a free trial of 14 days that lets you use all the features of the tool. 

Customer rating –

Capterra – 4.7/5

G2 – 4.9/5

10. Klenty

Klenty is a sales engagement platform that helps in automating cold email outreach. It personalizes emails and automates follow-ups. You can auto-import prospects with CSV or Google sheets of a CRM. Also, the email campaign features include mail merge, A/B testing, and email detection. In addition, it gets you to report such as cadence and team reports and one that has prospect history. You can integrate Klenty with CRMs like Salesforce, Pipedrive, Hubspot, Zoho, and Freshsales. 

Pros –

• User-friendly interface
• Easy integrations

Cons –

• Limited email sending

Pricing – The subscription plan starts at $30 per month per user. There is a free trial of 14 days that offers all the features of the cold emailing tool. 

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.8/5

G2: 4.6/5

11. SalesHandy

SalesHandy is an email tracking and outreach automation tool. Though it is a full-fledged application, you can even use it as a Gmail or Outlook extension. Using the tool, you can create emails with the help of email templates and automatically schedule emails and follow-ups. The tool also offers to track individual links so that you can see who clicked them and decide what your strategy for the next campaign should be. Then, there is the mail merge feature that is helpful for mass outreach. Overall, it works well as a cold email automation software. 

Pros –

• User-friendly interface
• Reasonable pricing plan

Cons –

• Supports only email outreach

Pricing – The subscription plan starts at $9 per user per month, but this has limited features to offer. As the features increase, the price of the plans also increases.

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.5/5

G2: 4.5/5

12. Autoklose

Autoklose is a sales engagement platform with a B2B database having more than 28M prospects. It doesn’t limit itself to just being an outreach automation tool making it more useful for salespeople. It automates drip campaigns, schedules automated follow-ups, personalizes emails, leads, tracks email opens, bounces, replies, and clicks to measure the campaign’s performance. 

Pros –

• Feature-loaded
• Free trial

Cons –

• Not so easy UI

Pricing – The subscription plan starts at $49.99 per month per user. A free trial of 14 days lets users enjoy all the features of the cold emailing tool. 

Customer rating –

Capterra : 4.5/5

G2: 4.6/5

13. QuickMail

QuickMail is an automated cold emailing tool having exceptional deliverability features. Targeted at sales teams that focus on maintaining high email deliverability, this tool enables easy outreach. 

It lets you upload prospects seamlessly, carry out effective outreach by creating campaigns and follow-up sequences. With QuickMail, you can personalize emails effortlessly and ensure deliverability thanks to the features it has to offer. The tool automates the whole process for you, and the entire sales cadence is on autopilot. It is also possible to integrate with other tools you use for sales. 

Pros – 

• Offers in-depth training
• Value for money

Cons – 

• Difficult to set up

Pricing – The paid plan starts at $59 per month

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.8/5

G2: 4.7/5

14. Outreach

Outreach is a cold email outreach software that enables you to reach out to prospects across multiple channels. The tool works well for sales teams using the outbound approach for selling. Personalize outreach, get assistance for cold calling tasks, and connect with LinkedIn prospects. With Outreach, you get an insight into reps’ performance thanks to the in-depth analytics provided. 

Pros – 

• Enables prospect management
• Offers lead scoring 

Cons – 

• Complex user interface
• Absence of prospecting feature

Pricing – Not disclosed on the website

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.5/5

G2: 4.3/5

15. SalesLoft

SalesLoft is the perfect tool for sales engagement. You can create email templates and save them for future use. You can track email opens, replies, and clicks to understand where your campaign is heading to. 

The tool provides an insight into the sales activities and the tasks the sales team has to do. This way the team head can view the team’s performance. It also ensures that they attend to prospects on time. Additionally, it is easy to integrate SalesLoft with other CRM tools. 

Pros – 

• Has simple user-interface
• Easy to organize prospects

Cons – 

• Fewer integrations
• Poor email text formatting

Pricing – Not disclosed on the website

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.3/5

G2: 4.5/5

16. Snov.io

With Snov.io it is possible to find leads easily from the massive database, reach out to them by email and manage them using a CRM. The cold email marketing software helps you with prospecting, outreach, and deal management using CRM. Build campaigns and automate email sending at scale using the platform. It is also possible to track performance using analytics. You can even keep an eye on inbox engagement using the tool’s Gmail extension. 

Pros – 

• Has an easy-to-use interface 
• Provides versatility

Cons – 

• Fewer native integrations
• High pricing

Pricing – The paid plan starts at $33 per month 

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.6/5

G2: 4.5/5

17. Yesware

Yesware is one of the best cold email marketing tools that makes outreach easier for you. You can import prospects from CSV files and create email campaigns. Yesware offers mail merge, open and click rate tracking, reply detection, and much more, making it a go-to tool for outreach. 

It is even possible to link Yesware with Gmail or Outlook to send emails straight from your official email address. You can also integrate it with Salesforce CRM to make work processes seamless. 

Pros – 

• Offers real-time email tracking
• Easy to use
• Reasonably priced
• Offers free trial plan

Cons –  

• Complicated analytics

Pricing – Its paid plan starts at $15 per month per user. 

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.3/5

G2: 4.4/5

18. Close.io

Close.io is a cold outreach tool that helps reduce the time spent on manual tasks such as sending emails to prospects. With the help of the tool, you can see how you interact with prospects from one place and plan accordingly. It is a complete CRM that is extremely useful for sales teams as it helps automate the workflow with follow-up email reminders and much more.

Pros –

• Offers a free trial
•  Easy to use
•  Easy to integrate
•  Simple setup

Cons –

• Doesn’t work well with HTML emails

Pricing – The paid plan starts at $29 per user per month.

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.7/5

G2: 4.6/5

19. Smartlead.ai

Smartlead.ai is the new entrant in the world of cold email software. Uses the power of AI to enable cold email outreach complete with personalization. Moreover, you can use it to warm up your email account automatically and improve sender reputation. It is also possible to auto-rotate inboxes using the tool.

Pricing – The paid plan starts at $24 per month

Pros –

• Offers a free trial
•  Has plans for all kinds of sales teams and businesses
•  Provides custom CRM
•  Customer support is good

Cons –

• A few bugs need fixing

Customer rating –

Capterra: Yet to be reviewed

G2: 4.9/5

20. MailRush.io

You can use MailRush.io for outreach. It helps with automating follow-up emails, and tracks email opens and replies. In addition, it warms up your email to ensure that you always land in recipients’ inboxes. There is also email validation so that you don’t send emails to invalid addresses.

Pricing – The paid plan starts at $19 per month.

Pros –

• Easy to use
•  Value for money
•  Offers free trial

Cons –

• Customer support needs improvement

Customer rating –

Capterra: 4.2/5

G2: 4.1/5

7 Best Practices Of Cold Emailing

Cold emailing aims at getting emails read by the targeted prospects. Though results may vary, there are certain best practices to follow while sending cold emails. Here is a list of a few of them,

1. Consider segmenting your mailing list

Instead of blasting emails to thousands of prospects, you should consider segmenting them into smaller groups. Use a few criteria and divide your list into manageable chunks so that you can personalize emails and make them sound relevant to a particular group. For example, you can segment lists based on industry and send emails relevant to the prospects belonging to each industry. It would not be pleasant for someone in the finance industry to get emails about construction software. Therefore, segmentation is a must if you want to get good results from your campaign. 

2. Use a striking subject line

If you don’t want your email to end up in the trash folder, you have to write catchy introduction email subject lines because most people open emails based on the subject line. Personalize the subject line with the name of the prospect or their company. Take a few minutes to research the person you are reaching out to. You can use that information in the subject line so that your email seems relevant to the recipient. 

3. Keep the email short

As no one has the luxury of the time these days, your emails have to be short and to the point. They have to be compact to retain the interest of the reader. This way, you will be able to get a higher number of responses. 

4. Personalize your email

Image Personalization in your email is essential because no one would bother to read emails that sound too generic and boring. You have to make the email relevant to the prospect, use their name a couple of times, highlight a mutual connection if you have any, compliment them, focus on their interests, use visuals like images and videos and mention their pain points. 

5. Add a CTA

Every cold email must have a CTA. It can be anything relevant, such as requesting an in-person meeting, picking a time for a product demo, asking to accept an invite to an event or a webinar, or asking to download resources that add value to the prospect.

The CTA tells prospects what specific action they have to take after they finish reading your email. Craft the whole email in such a way that the reader implicitly performs the CTA. Ensure that your CTA is clear to the prospect because if you make it too confusing, the recipient will abandon your email. Also, make sure that you don’t have more than one CTA in an email by any chance because the reader will get overwhelmed with multiple CTAs and not act on even one of them. 

6. Be compliant with different regulations 

Many regulations govern email marketing, and you need to comply with them. For the US prospects, you have to comply with the guidelines of the CAN-SPAM act, and for Canadian prospects, there is the CASL that you have to pay attention to. As per both laws, you have to reveal your complete contact information, including your address. Additionally, recipients can opt-out of your emails if they don’t wish to hear from you. If you use a 3rd party service for your email campaigns, you have to follow the guidelines correctly. 

7. Be persistent with follow-ups

You have to follow up and be persistent till the prospect hints you to leave the track or if you feel that they are not worth pursuing. The biggest problem is that most salespeople withdraw after making 1 or 2 follow-ups, but the truth is that the prospect says a ‘Yes’ after a series of ‘No’.

How To Choose The Ideal Cold Email Software?

There are so many cold emailing tools that it is difficult to make a choice. However, there are certain features that you have to look for in your cold email tools. 

1. Personalization 

Personalization is one feature that all cold email software must have. Unless and until you personalize your email, it is not likely to resonate with the recipient. All the cold email automation tools let you personalize emails, but the extent of personalization varies from one tool to another.

While some tools offer only text personalization wherein you can add dynamic variables for the recipient’s name and their company’s name, and so on. Other tools offer image personalization and let you embed personalized videos into emails. The bottom line is that the level of personalization of your email decides how well the recipient will engage with it. So, this is one feature that your tool should have. 

2. Ability to track emails

Email tracking is essential to measure the performance of your email campaign. It has to track the email open rates, clicks, bounces, and replies. These metrics make it possible to gauge how your campaign fared and what changes you need to make in your future campaigns to get better results. For instance, if you notice that the bounce rate is higher than usual, you must check whether your contact list has too many invalid addresses.

Note: Email verification is another feature that you should look for in your tool as it is essential for your email deliverability and sender reputation. 

3. Automation of campaigns

Ideally, cold emailing tools must reduce your workload and take care of the time-consuming tasks like creating contact lists, personalizing emails, automating sending emails, and scheduling follow-ups and drip campaigns. If a tool provides you with all the desirable automation features, you should go for it. 

4. Integration with CRMs

It is a tedious task to keep the CRM updated with all the prospect’s data. Hence, it is best to have a tool that integrates with the CRM solution you are currently using. It would help you save a lot of time. 

Choose The Best Cold Email Software For Your Team

There is no doubt that cold emailing software helps simplify the task of reaching out to prospects through email. Though many tools are available, not all provide you with all the features you want for your outreach. After knowing what the top 20 email outreach tools offer, it is easier to pick the one that suits your needs. 

You can thank us later for making your hunt for the best cold email platform easier!

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