Good Morning. According to a new survey from Slack, 71% of desk workers say that their productivity takes a nose dive in the late afternoon, around 3-6PM. Which makes us think… if they’re not focused on their work, maybe they’re waiting for our cold call. 🤔 

In today’s Follow Up:

• Google’s newest update on cold email 📩 

• Finding million dollar business ideas 🧠 

• A sales call tip 📞 

• Sales around the internet 🖥️ 

• Best of LinkedIn & a sales meme 😂 

Another Cold Email Update From Google

On October 3rd, Google released an update on their 2024 Spam policy, and cold emailers went crazy… 

If you missed the original update, here’s a quick refresher.

Google and Yahoo are enforcing new email policies in Feb 2024. Companies sending more than 5,000 emails/day will need to comply with:

1. Authentication: This means setting up SPF & DKIM records on your domain (sounds complicated, but takes 30 seconds to do). These tell the receiving email provider that your email address is legit.

2. 1-Click Unsubscribe: Companies are required to include a 1-click unsubscribe option in the body of their emails. 

3. Spam Rates: Domains with over a 0.3% spam rate (3 out of 1K emails reported as spam) will be put on Gmail’s do-no-fly list. Aka, sent to the spam folder. 

As you’d imagine, this caused panic in the sales world. Staying under 0.3% spam rate is difficult for any business, even if you’re manually writing the emails.  

But then Google released another update...

According to Google’s most recent update (as of writing this post), the new cold email requirements will only apply to businesses emailing personal Gmail accounts ending in @gmail.com or @googlemail.com.

This means these new email guidelines will primarily impact B2C companies rather than B2B.

So, if you’re a B2B sales rep emailing business emails, there’s no need to panic. At least for now…

Many experts speculate Google will push these same guidelines to business emails in late 2024, but nothing has been confirmed.

What To Do Next

If you’re a B2C sales rep (insurance, real estate, etc.) that uses cold email, or a B2B rep looking to get ahead of policy changes, here are some things to consider.

Monitor Spam Rates 🔎 

If your email is hosted by Google (60% of all business email), make sure to monitor your spam rates. Use Google’s Postmaster tool to see your email delivery data and catch issues before they become a problem.

Prospecting 👀 

High-quality prospecting will become more important than ever. Drill down on your ideal customer profiles, and only reach out to verified email addresses.

If you reach out to the Head of HR about your killer marketing software, don’t be surprised when they report you to spam.

Multi Threading 🔀 

Use multiple channels to contact your prospects. Experiment with new things like LinkedIn messages, SMS, or handwritten cards.

Ask yourself: If email went away tomorrow, how would I continue to sell?

Multiple Domains 🚩

Buying additional email domains with multiple email addresses will allow you to send more emails while staying under the radar.

Ex: Buy 1 new domain and create 2 email addresses under it.

If you send 35 emails/day from each email address, you can safely send 70 cold emails/day for each domain you buy.

10 new domains x 70 cold emails/day = 700 emails/day.

The more domains you buy = the more cold emails you can send.

Cold Email Masterclass 🧠 

We’re excited to announce the launch of our 2024 Cold Email Master Class!

Learn how to buy domains, set up cold email campaigns, and send thousands of cold emails per day.

Just refer 5 friends to The Follow Up, and get the 1 hour Master Class for free!

TLDR:

• Google & Yahoo’s New Spam Policy: New requirements will be rolled out in February 24’ and require bulk senders to authenticate domains, include a 1-click unsubscribe, and maintain less than a 0.3% spam rate.

• Google’s Newest Update: The new policy will only apply to emails sent to personal email addresses ending in @gmail or @googlemail, which will primarily impact B2C companies.

• What To Do: To meet the new requirements, monitor your email delivery data, focus on quality prospecting, multi-threading, and using multiple domains (when possible).

How Sam Parr brainstorms business ideas

You’ve dreamt up brilliant ideas, I’ve dreamt up brilliant ideas — but time and again, Sam Parr actually went the distance to make them real.  

Within a decade, he launched Hustle Con, The Hustle, Trends, My First Million, and most recently, Hampton — a private community for high-growth CEOs and founders. 

Here are Sam’s six steps to discovering the next big thing. We made a clean one-pager fit for saving to your desktop, or taping on the ceiling. 

Right above your bed. So every night, you can internalize this shit.

Checking in on LinkedIn 👀 

Working on MLK Day = Finding a louder voice…. 🤔 

Sales Meme of the Day

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