Whenever we're doing any form of cold outreach, especially for link-building, the number one goal is to get a good response rate because responses help us build relationships and ultimately get those link placements. Every campaign that you run, you will have a campaign response rate and this can help you gauge the success of your outreach. When you're first getting started, you maybe have a new domain or a new email account, you may see a response rate of around 10% to 15%. That's a good starting average. But of course, the more your email sender reputation grows and the more campaigns you build, that response rate will start to increase to between 15% to 25%.

And that is a healthy average. But of course, many users can see much higher responses with a well configured email account and strongly targeted outreach. Now, in this video, we're going to take you through some of the core steps that you can take to help boost your response rates. And the first step is to make sure that our email accounts are healthy and configured correctly. To do so, we're going to head over to settings and then select email accounts from the menu. On this page, you'll see all of your email accounts connected to Pitchbox. And against each one, you will have an MxRight score.

Now, MxRight is a free email health analyzer provided by Pitchbox and created by us. And it looks at the setup and configuration of your email. We want to see a score of A to A plus and anything less we recommend looking into the report. Now, you might be wondering why we actually need such a high score. Now, that really comes down to the changes that have happened in cold outreach over the last few years. Every email service provider is trying their hardest to prevent spam and phishing attempts. And some of the ways that they do that is actually looking at the setup of the email accounts that are sending messages to them.

So what that means for you is that if you have a low score, that could indicate maybe a problem or a misconfiguration with the email. And that means that your recipient email providers may not be able to verify your email account correctly. And the end result is that your message could go into the spam folder or it could be bounced entirely. So given that our goals to get into the inbox so that we're seen and we get responses, we really need that score to be as high as possible. Now, if you're unsure about a low score, we recommend selecting the icon just here and selecting See Full Report.

Don't worry if you're not overly technical, the report language is universal, meaning you can grab the URL and send it to your IT team or email account administrator, and they'll be able to make the necessary changes so your email is ready to use for outreach. Again, we find that email structured in a first name, last name, at business.com structure tend to get a higher level response. And that's because it's more associated with a person. Now, if you are using a look-alike domain as opposed to your primary business domain, we recommend making sure that that domain ending actually redirects back to your website.

For example, let's say we send cold outreach emails from getpitchbox.com. If one of my contacts decides to Google getpitchbox.com, we want to make sure it redirects back to our primary website. If it redirects to a non-existent site that can begin to degrade trust, so if we want to have full transparency, make sure you have all your redirects set up. Against each email account, you can also set up an email signature. Now, your signature is a really great way to build your professional identity. It tells that contact who you are, what your job role is, and which organization you're tied to.

Now, we recommend using this space to add as much information as you can. Here's an example of a signature we would not recommend because it doesn't tell your contact who you are other than your first name. Instead, add your full name, your job title, and the company that you are associated with. An optional step is you can link out to it or add any brand logos, but it's not necessary. And if your team prefer to use more HTML-supported formats, we do offer that via the section below. Now, just before you leave this page, there is one more tip that you can take, and it is optional, but it can help add a personal element to your outgoing communications, and that's actually to add a profile image with your outgoing email addresses.

Even if you're using an alias, it is possible to add an image, but we do so through a service called Gravatar. Now, you'll find the link to this website in the lesson notes below, but this is a service that allows you to attach an image to that email address, meaning that wherever your email address is used, that image will also follow. And again, it can help add a human element to your outgoing communications, which helps build trust and increases the likelihood of getting a good response rate. So let's say we have a strong list of websites. Our next step is to make sure that we're going to contact that site at the right and most optimal times.

Now, every campaign has a setting called Outreach Schedule. You can find it under the cog wheel and selecting Outreach Schedule from the drop down. Now, in this section, you can tell the system exactly when your communications should be sent. And this can have a really big impact on your response rate. Because again, our goal is to be in that person's inbox when they're in the office. Now, one thing to note is the target location you're going to be sending the communications to. For example, I know this is a campaign targeting sites in the US market, but my project time zone is aligned with the UK time zone.

So what this means is that if I want to target my audience between 8am and 6pm for the US time zone, I need to adjust my hours so that it's aligned. As you can see, I've adjusted my hours from 1pm to 11pm, which translates to 8am to 6pm for the US time zone. Now, if you're primarily targeting sites in a particular geolocation, you can change your time zone via the project setting so that you don't necessarily need to do that conversion. Once you're happy with your setup, just press save. Now, once we have the right list of websites, our emails are configured correctly, and we've adjusted our campaign to send within the most optimal times, we now want to work on the type of messaging that we're going to send.

And you can do that by coming over to templates and email sequence. Now, what we're looking at here is your email sequence, and it's a really powerful way to help you get engagement from your audience. You have your first attempt here, which is your first chance to get that person interested in your pitch. And then we have up to two follow ups. Now, follow ups are such a powerful way to keep your audience engaged. And we find that each attempt that you use can increase your response rate by up to 10%. For the most effective campaigns, we recommend using three outreach attempts and two at the very minimum.

Now, if you're looking to get a good response rate, we want to ultimately have that person be interested in what it is that we're saying. And there's a few ways that you can maximize this. The first is using a strong subject line that has personalization included, because this is the first thing that the person sees, and it's likely going to encourage them to open up your emails. If you would like a quick guide on how to write some engaging subject lines, we recommend checking out some of our blogs. To do so, head to our website, click on resources, and then select blogs from the menu.

In this blog, there are a range of tips to help you craft strong subject lines. We recommend taking a look. Now, when it comes to the template itself, we recommend using a range of different personalization fields. So these are different data sets about the website and the person that you can include in your message to make it feel that little bit more targeted. Now, in Pitchbox, we do offer a range of different data sets on the right that you can select to pull into your email template. The more personalized your message is, the more likely you are to get a good response rate.

And there are so many different ways your message can be personalized, either by directly referencing any recent blog posts or their website, by name, or by talking about something that's contextually relevant to their industry. And you can do that manually, or you can do it through the use of AI personalization fields. Once you're happy with your template, just select save at the bottom of the menu. And this will allow you to see a quick preview of what your message would look like with all the data filled in. This gives you a very good chance to spot any grammar mistakes or any spelling mistakes before you ultimately send your message.

If you're happy with the structure, you can go ahead and press save templates. Finally, once you have completed all of the above and you've launched your outreach, again, we want to make sure that we are getting a 15 to 25% response rate. But if you're seeing anything less than 10%, we recommend going back through some of the steps we chatted about today to make sure that your email accounts are still healthy, your messaging is targeted to the right time zone and to that right niche, and that your templates are clear, concise, and are highly personalized. But for more information on response rates or if you have any specific questions, we recommend touching base with our team via the support button below.

How to Boost Your Response Rate