We Had No Idea What We Were Missing Until We Tried Woodpecker

Like any other business, software houses are constantly in search of new clients. And, just like lots of organizations operating in the digital space, we thought we had just the right balance in our omnichannel approach to reaching out to potential customers. Newsletters, banner ads, remarketing, blog posts and more — we thought we had every base covered and were doing everything possible to create more leads. 

After getting to know the Woodpecker cold mailing platform and seeing the results that it brought, we now know one thing for sure. We were wrong. 

Within days, we saw the difference that cold emailing made to our lead generation efforts and now, 6 weeks later, we can say with absolute confidence that adding a tool like Woodpecker to your marketing toolbox is a must. 

What is cold emailing anyway? 

First, a few words for anyone who’s not familiar with cold emails. And don’t worry — it will take you about three seconds to get it. 

You know the concept of cold calling, right? Cold emailing is the same thing, with emails. 

That’s it. All you’re doing is reaching out to someone to start a conversation. But instead of dialing someone up and trying to speak with them by phone, you’re using email as a starting point. 

We can already hear you saying “Wait, why do I need a special tool for that? I can just send emails from my personal account or my business email.” 

Sure you can. You might send a handful of emails like that. But at a certain point — a point much lower than you think — you’re going to run into problems. More on that in a minute. 

For now, just know that cold emailing is a way to reach out to potential leads at scale in a way that looks like you took the time to write each email individually. Cold emails don’t look like something that came from a huge database of addresses and the recipient doesn’t feel like they’re one of a million people to get that particular message. 

Cold emails have the personal touch of a 1-to-1 outreach but offer the business value and convenience that you need when contacting a fairly large number of people. When done right, cold emails read like someone sat down and composed a message just for you. That’s a lot better than a “Dear Customer” mail sent to half the planet, right? 

Why a cold email tool is better than sending regular emails 

So let’s return to the “problems” that we mentioned when you try to send outreach emails from a regular email account. 

The problem you will run into is that regular email accounts are meant for regular email use. That means a mail here and a mail there, many of them sent to people you’ve exchanged mails with before and each with totally different content. They’re sent at different times of the day and night and generally show every sign that you composed each one individually for the purposes of correspondence with one other person. 

Now, contrast that to what spammers do. They send tons of mails at the same time. They sent mails to people with whom they have no message history. All the content in the mails they send is the same. 

For email service providers like Gmail, Outlook and others, doing these things is like yelling “I AM SENDING SPAM!!!” at them and their anti-spam tools will quickly go to work. 

When that happens, your emails are directed to Spam folders or, depending on the service provider, to “Marketing” or “Promotions” tabs or not delivered at all. In other words, they go everywhere but recipient Inboxes. 

Cold emailing tools like Woodpecker manage your campaigns to ensure the one thing you never get if you use a regular email account to send cold emails — high deliverability. This is the most important metric of all, since it doesn’t matter how much effort you put into crafting your message if it never gets seen. 

Platforms like Woodpecker have built-in measures that help you stay off spam radars and ensure delivery of your emails:

• Their Bounce Shield feature makes sure that you don’t exceed certain daily sending limits that will attract the wrong kind of attention. Even when you’re not paying attention to how many mails you’re sending out, Woodpecker has your back. 
• And it’s not just how many emails you send, it’s how often you send them. Again, Woodpecker monitors this as well and makes sure that you stay within the limits set by email service providers. 
• A “bounce” happens when an email is sent to an address that doesn’t exist. A high number of bounces is typical of spammers since they don’t verify that addresses in their database really exist. Woodpecker protects you here by verifying all addresses before any emails are sent. That means no bounces and no reason to trip spam alerts. 
• What could look more “spammy” than tons of emails sent from address that was just recently created? Woodpecker’s free Warm up & Recovery service automatically guides your account in a way that helps you to build a solid sender reputation that, when complete after about three months, will let you send more mails safely. 

Yes, they really did think of everything. 

Even more reasons

But the reasons to use a dedicated cold mailing tool like Woodpecker don’t end there. 

We were impressed with the analytics you have access to when you use Woodpecker. You can track who opened a mail, who clicked on a link you included in the mail and more.  

This is useful information since it tells you who’s ready for a follow up message and who isn’t or, on the other hand, which contacts might need another ping before you can move the conversation forward. 

Try that with Gmail.

We also noticed how much time we were saving with Woodpecker. Actually writing out each mail individually to each contact would take far longer than Woodpecker needs but the results are the same. Again, Woodpecker makes it look like you crafted each mail, when in fact you automated everything. 

The business side of cold mailing for software houses

Let’s turn to how cold email adds to your bottom line by doing exactly what it’s designed to do — enhance your lead gen efforts in ways other marketing channels can’t. 

In our experience using Woodpecker for cold emails, we noticed three clear and very welcome results on the business side of things:

• Ridiculous ROI. We can’t share the details, but let’s just say that when a tool that costs about $50 a month lets you close deals worth thousands of dollars, then you should use that tool. A lot. Any software house that isn’t investing in cold mails for lead generation needs a wakeup call, now. 

The nature of our business is such that a single client can spend significant sums addressing their digital needs. Spending a few hundred dollars a year on boosting your chances of signing more accounts is just a no-brainer. 

• More targeted, custom client searches. Cold mailing gave us an element of flexibility we didn’t really have before. When a company name or individual popped up on our radar while reading industry news, we did a couple of minutes’ worth of research, got an email address and added it to our Woodpecker database. It’s the perfect way (and really easy) to take a chance on someone you didn’t know about before. Who knows, maybe your pitch will fit their needs exactly? 

This kind of approach also allows you to target potential customers who seem like a good “fit” with your product or service, too. As you probably know from experience, getting that fit right from the start can result in better, longer relationships later. 

• Controlling the new deal pipeline. Too many clients at once is a good problem to have but it’s still a problem. With more control over the lead generation process, you can intensify or relax your cold mail efforts to match the capacity you have at any given time.

Everybody working at 110% right now? Dial your cold emailing down and turn it back up when your schedule says you have the time for new clients. 

The bottom line on a top-shelf product

Not only were we super-impressed by the results we got from using Woodpecker, but using it was a pleasure as well. It’s got a simple user interface and walks you through the process of setting up your campaigns. Reading the results in the analytics dashboard was easy too. 

Plus, on top of that, we’ve never seen a site with so many resources for users. If you have questions about how anything works or how to fix something, there are about ten different ways to find a quick answer. The Woodpecker blog, their help section, the chat function in the app, email to the support team, tons of video guides — Woodpecker simply will not allow you to be lost for long. 

Woodpecker is very effective at generating new business — just ask our Sales team — and ultimately that is the only measure that really counts. Still, in addition to the business results, we like using Woodpecker. 

That should count for something, right? 

And as if all of this weren’t enough already, as a Ukrainian company, Woodpecker gave Lvivity a 100% discount, for which we are very grateful in these difficult times. Thanks so much for that and for making an outstanding product that we happily recommend to all software houses and any business that wants more sales leads!