The Death of Open Rates

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Good Morning! Apple unveiled their new iPhones yesterday, and spoiler alert: they still can't make cold calls for you. But they will have larger screens so at least you can see your prospect's annoyed face in higher resolution when they decline your FaceTime pitch. But on a serious note… have you ever tried a cold FaceTime call? If so, we want to hear how it went. 📱 

In today’s Follow Up:

• The death of open rates 👀 

• Asking about budget 🗣️ 

• Never say this in a negotiation 🤝 

• Sales jobs, LinkedIn & a meme 😂

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The Death of Open Rates: Gmail's New Email Tracking Pixel Policy

Google has been messing with our cold emails a lot this year.

Starting in February, they cracked down on bulk senders and suspended domains with a 0.3% spam rate (3 out of 1K emails reported as spam).

And now, they’re back at it again. But this time, they’re targeting open tracking pixels.

According to Repy.io, between August 20th and 24th, open rates tanked for millions of emails sent with an open-tracking feature on their platform.

What are open tracking pixels…

For many years email sending tools have been sneaking invisible 1x1 pixels into our cold emails. When someone opens the email, the tiny pixel loads, which lets the sending tool know that the email was opened.

It’s been working for years and allows us to confirm that our prospects are in fact opening our emails and choosing to ignore them…

But that may be changing.

What’s Happening with Google?

As of late August, Google started flagging emails with a tracking pixel and showing this warning on emails sent with one.

As you can see, this warning makes our cold emails look suspicious and makes it very easy for prospects to mark the email as spam.

As we learned earlier this year, if enough recipients mark our emails as spam, Gmail will put us on their do-not-fly list. And that’s not a list you want to be on.

So, What Now?

Every selling environment changes eventually, and the best salespeople learn how to adapt.

As email open tracking becomes less effective, here are some ideas on what to focus on instead.

Keep it simple

One of the best things you can do for your email deliverability is send in plain text.

This means removing extras like images, links, and open tracking.

Save the images and links for response emails, not your first cold email. Effective emails only require the basics.

Reply rates are #1.

Open rates don’t matter if you’re not getting responses.

Switch your focus from open rates to reply rates, which is the metric that really matters. Get personal, get relevant, and ask for a response.

Change up your channels…

There’s never been a better time to test out new channels and creative campaigns. Social channels like LinkedIn DM’s and Twitter DM’s. Or creative campaigns like Brex’s legendary champagne campaign.

Remember, in sales, it's not only about how many doors you knock on; it's about how many conversations you start.

When things change, focus on the metrics that matter.

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Sales Around The Web 🗞️

🗣️ 8 Things you should never say in a negotiation (according to experts).

🤝 A new study found that at least 43% of sales and finance leaders think their forecasts are off by at least 10%.

🖥️ How experts are optimizing their LinkedIn and using it for B2B lead gen.

👀 Why the middle manager role is becoming more toxic, and why many middle managers want out of their job.

Checking In On LinkedIn

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Sales Meme of the Day