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Zoho is a household name for cloud-based productivity and collaboration business tools. Some of their most popular products include
These services are affordable and super efficient in streamlining business operations.
But, are they any good at cold emailing?
This blog post includes detailed PROs & CONs of using Zoho for cold emails. I will answer if you should use Zoho services for cold emails and, if yes, how to do that.
NOPE.
Zoho isn’t a good idea for cold emailing because ZOHO DOESN’T PROVIDE ANY COLD EMAIL TOOLS.
But, you can integrate many apps and software with Zoho to send cold emails with high deliverability. To learn how to use Zoho for cold emailing, jump to the next section.
And to get a detailed idea of why using Zoho for sending cold email outreach isn’t a good idea, read this section.
A cold email campaign includes uploading an email list (of potential customers) and sending them cold messages in bulk. This is why every cold emailing software has the option of uploading a lead list.
But Zoho products such as the CRM or Zoho Mail don't have a prospect list (of cold contacts) uploading option.
It means COLD prospects are a big NO-NO for Zoho products.
Once you get a reply from the cold prospect, then, you can carry forward the conversation using Zoho CRM.
It’s the best product to track a lead in the sales funnel, as it provides detailed contact information for the sales team.
When it comes to Anti-Spam policy, Zoho has very strict guidelines. You can’t send an email to contact if you have:
If you send an email to a lead, only if you follow the below guidelines:
Zoho’s terms of use directly say NO to sending emails to cold leads. Once you manage the first step of the conversation, only then can you use the Zoho campaign to send emails to your warm leads.
Like other popular cold email marketing platforms, the Zoho campaign is also designed for HTML based email body.
Marketers can create amazing HTML email templates using Zoho. These emails are mostly filled with images, colors, headings, and text. It is perfect for sending emails to consenting B2C customers.
However, we all know HTML emails are a red flag 🚩 for cold emails. Sending HTML emails with images and colors alerts spam filters, eventually landing the cold messages in the spam.
This is another major reason why Zoho isn’t a good idea for sending cold mail.
Zoho Mail is undoubtedly one of the most popular (and many of our favorite) Zoho tools. Many business owners use this platform for official email communication within or outside their organizations.
This is why it’s quite understandable that you are tempted to send cold emails from Zoho Mail directly.
But, unfortunately, that’s not a good idea for cold email marketing. This software was built to target personal and normal business email usage. Therefore, it doesn’t come with any email performance tracking dashboard.
In simpler words, you can’t track open rates, reply rates, click-through rates, or any other important metrics of your cold campaigns using Zoho Mail.
You can track warm email campaigns on Zoho CRM, but that’s not the same.
The best way to send cold emails using Zoho Mail is to integrate with a cold emailing tool like Smartlead, where you can track
Zoho campaigns or Zoho Mail are good for sending bulk emails to a warm lead list. For small businesses, these services are, in fact, excellent options to save money and run the business.
But, are they good for contacting cold prospects?
One of the primary rules of successful cold email campaigns is personalization. Personalized email messages assure a stable open rate, reply rate, and click-through rate.
Sending the same email to a large group of people is a cold emailing suicide. To avoid that, personalization is a must. But Zoho products can’t help with that.
For personalization at the bulk level, you need a tool like Smartlead that provides the SPINTAX feature.
This feature lets you use similar words within brackets so that the AI can create different emails by randomly choosing a different set of words.
For example:
{Hi | Hello | Hey}
{Let's jump on a call | Are you free tomorrow? | Keen for a demo ?}
It’s a great tactic for creating “different” versions of the same CTA or text. Personalization using spintax pushes the email provider into thinking you’re sending a different email to different people.
This is way better than sending the same email to 1000 cold leads.
Now that you know we can’t send cold emails from Zoho directly, let's jump into finding alternatives.
Yes, you can use Zoho to send cold emails. But, only by integrating with other tools.
Zoho Mail is an email service provider like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. It’s an email hosting platform where you can see your email conversations.
You can send cold emails using Zoho Mail, but it can’t be more than 10 to 20 messages per day. To send 100 or 1000 emails per day from Zoho Mail, you need to integrate it with cold emailing software.
To understand this process, let’s take an example—Smartlead.
Smartlead is a cold email automation tool that lets you send thousands of cold emails per day to your target audience without compromising deliverability.
#1 Setup Your IMAP Settings on Zoho Mail
Open Zoho Mail and navigate to Mail Accounts:
Zoho Mail ➡️ Settings ➡️ Mail Accounts
Now, click the email address (you want to connect with the cold emailing tool) from the left listing.
Next, go to IMAP Settings under the Mail Accounts section and click on the “IMAP Access” section.
#2 Set the SMTP & IMAP Settings on the Cold Email Tool
Go to the cold emailing tool you are using and navigate to the “Email Accounts” tab. Now, click on “Add Account” and type in your email address & password.
Next, fill up the other pieces of information as shown in the below image.
The SMTP Host changes based on your location. You need to copy it from your “POP3 Out” SMTP setting, as shown in the below image.
#Test Your Connection
The last step is to test your connection by clicking on the Test Connection Button.
By now, you must have received an email in the Zoho mail account you connected with the cold emailing tool.
Hands down, Zoho CRM is a very compatible platform for sales and marketing purposes.
Zoho CRM provides
As great as Zoho CRM is, it doesn’t allow contacting cold leads. To do that using this platform, you need to integrate it with cold emailing software.
There are many cold email tools in the market that provide native integrations with Zoho.
Zoho is a good option for CRM, email service, etc. But, you need to subscribe to cold emailing software to ace a cold emailing campaign.
Smartlead is built specifically for cold emails. It warms up your email address before sending personalized mass emails, ensuring high deliverability and success.
Curious how Smartlead does that?
Keep reading!
Google has banned the use of any AI-based automated email warmup tool for Google accounts, but that doesn’t stop Smartlead.
Its unique algorithm is built to imitate a humanized sending behavior that ensures a good sender reputation. The warm-up feature guarantees your emails land in the primary inbox, not the spam folder.
Smartlead also “manually” moves your email messages from the spam folder to the primary inbox and marks them as important messages.
It takes around one month to warm up an address before starting to send bulk mail from it.
Sending personalized emails is crucial for cold campaigns. Different emails for different people send the message to ESPs that you are a genuine email sender, not a robot or spam.
For basic personalization, you can add custom fields, such as your recipients’ first name, last name, company name, and opening lines in the lead list (in .csv format).
For advanced personalization, use Smartlead’s spintax feature. Thanks to this feature, you can provide similar words in brackets like below so that the AI can use random words and create different messages for different people.
Following up is an extremely important cold email practice. It will take more than 5 follow-up emails to bag a response from a potential lead.
While it’s easy to follow up 10 to 20 leads, it’s an impossible job for bulk prospects.
This is where Smartlead can help you. All you need to do is create sequences of email messages.
A/B testing is an email marketing tactic in which marketers create two or more versions of the same email and send it to smaller groups of prospects. This is to check which version works better before sending it in bulk.
It’s a test drive before launching the campaign full-scale. This is why it’s an important feature in a cold emailing tool.
With Smartlead, you get this feature in all pricing plans.
Zoho is undoubtedly an efficient service provider for businesses and offices. It has become even more popular with the rise of remote work culture, almost as an alternative to Google Workspace.
However, it’s not the best tool for cold emailing. If you want to increase ROI with cold emails, it’s better to shift to a dedicated cold emailing tool.
You can check out Smartlead, for instance.
Ciao!
Ensure your emails always reach your lead's inbox by using unlimited sender accounts leveraging AI personalization, and implementing email warm-ups.This way, you can concentrate on sealing the deal without worrying about email delivery issues.
Here's how to do it
1Sign-up for Smartlead.ai
2Upload your lead list.
3Start sending emails
P.s. You can also use our pre-built templates available in the app.
Join us to elevate your outreach!
Founder, StackOptimise
Smartlead's combination of automation, unlimited inboxes, and easy campaign management has completely transformed how we run cold email campaigns.
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Founder, Cold Email Hackers
We have about 15 companies and we use Smartlead for all of them.
Founder, DutchSave Media
One of the things I love about using Smartlead is the deliverability feature. If they landed in the bounce or spam folders, we could resolve this quickly.
Co-Founder, Growth Today
I want to continue to use Smartlead to make operations more seamless - the plan is to bring more clients here and build more SOPs.
Founder, FueltoFly
Smartlead listens to the agencies and customers and builds according to what people want, that has really made things easier for us.
Founder, OutboundSync
We build an infrastructure product, and OutboundSync communicates with Smartlead itself. I love the webhook and API. They're really well done and keep getting better.
Founder, Axoleads
With SmartDelivery, you can put all of that in the hands of the tool. It ensures your emails land in inboxes, and by running a simple test, you can see if you're hitting the mark.
Founder, Claygen
Deliverability is the cornerstone of cold email outreach. You could have the best email copy in the world, but if no one is seeing it, it's useless. I really love the feature where you can actually give client accesses to your clients.
Co-Founder, Cymate
I do not want to switch to another software. Pick a solution you trust, stick with it, and keep refining your copy.
CMO, Avalanche Capital
Managing large volumes of emails through multiple inboxes used to be a logistical nightmare. With Smartlead, the process is seamless. We book thousands of discovery calls through cold emails. These campaigns are generating leads at a scale we never thought possible.
Founder, Growth Engine X
We came for the unlimited inboxes, and we stayed for the API. 1.5M cold emails/month, 7,767+ inboxes managed.
Head of Community & Ecosystem, TxtCart
You cannot replace having 10,000 touches with potential clients. When you have that much distribution and reach, you really start to see incredible results. The simplicity of Smartlead made all the difference. It doesn't require you to be a technical wizard.
Founder, Hyperke
Smartlead has been a game-changer for us. It increased our appointment volume, improved ease of use, and offered valuable features. 80% increase in appointments/month, peak of 276 appointments in a single month.
Founder, Kinetyca
Smartlead has been our cold email backbone from day one. The platform evolves constantly, keeping pace with how deliverability and personalization need to work today. 21% overall reply rate, $175K in 4 months for multiple B2B clients.
Founder, Reachflow
Smartlead is centered around deliverability and constantly evolving. Their API is not like any other platform. Smartlead covers all our needs. The focus on core features like deliverability and API integration is unmatched.
CEO, Halfwarm
Our approach to crafting conversational emails led to reply rates that many of my peers thought were unattainable.
Co-Founder, letstrike
We've grown on zero capital, zero marketing, purely cold emailing - and that's the story we love to tell. The best approach is no approach if you can't handle domain meltdown. The second best is something like Smartlead that's built from the ground up for deliverability at scale.
Founder, Fenixtal
Smartlead's white-labeling and automation let us punch above our weight. The 12M euros sales potential? That's what happens when you combine human creativity with Smartlead's precision.
Co-Founder, Digital Creativs
Nine out of 10. Ninety percent of our clients are on Smartlead unless they come in with an existing setup. That's the default.
Co-Founder, BuildingReach
At the end of the day, you have to take a bet on one tool or another. It was a no-brainer taking that bet on Smartlead. We had to even turn down the volume of our marketing campaigns - Smartlead was capable of driving more volume than our sales team was able to fulfill.
Founder & MD, Prospectiv
Since starting the business in January of this year, we've already generated $200K in sales exclusively from cold email. Smartlead has been central to our operations and has exceeded our expectations.
Founder, Growthlynk
There's so much stuff built on top of it. I would be dead if I had to rebuild it with another tool. I can manage hundreds of senders easily. I can send hundreds of thousands of emails.
Founder, Corebits
The platform's HubSpot integration, real-time Slack updates, and advanced campaign customization have been game changers for our business and our clients'.
Founder, Apex Ascension
From day one, we've never used anything else.
