The Startup’s Guide to Cold Email Automation: 5 Tools to Drive Real Signups

Getting new clients to sign up for your startup's services can be quite challenging due to either poor visibility or a lack of market momentum and customer trust. Cold emailing significantly bridges that communication or visibility gap, giving more room for client trust. 

But what's even better? Cold email automation. 

Cold email automation aims to make the entire email marketing process seamless, driving conversions and signups for startups. The problem is, some startup owners still complain about poor and ineffective email automation, possibly because they chose the wrong email marketing automation tools.

In this article, we'll be highlighting Instantly and four other email automation tools in detail. We’ll cover their practical features and main strengths to help you decide the best tool to grow your startup, save time and effort, and increase sign-ups through cold emailing. 

Comparison of Some Email Marketing Tools

Tool	Top Features	Starting Price
Instantly	450M+ B2B Leads, AI CRM	$30.00/month
Apollo	Sequencing	$49.00/month
Snov.io	Email Drip Campaigns	$29.25/month
Reply	Multichannel Outreach	$49.00/month
Close	Built-in CRM	$35.00/month

1. Instantly

Instantly is an easy-to-use tool that combines tailored and efficient cold emailing automation, a robust B2B database of over 450 million leads, and an AI-powered CRM that drives customer action. With this, you need not juggle multiple tools. Instantly does both lead sourcing and campaign launching, while also managing replies, all from a single dashboard.

Generating leads, researching client needs, running campaigns, and actively following up are highly demanding tasks that take up a lot of time when done manually. Instantly integrates all these functions simultaneously, creating room for more efficiency and productivity in your team. Pricing starts at $30/month when billed annually, along with a 14-day free trial.

Key Features of Instantly

• Substantiated B2B database: With Instantly's 160M+ contacts, generating leads and prospects for marketing campaigns is made effortless.

• Automated Outreach: Instantly does all the work of scheduling, launching, and even testing campaigns, giving you more time to focus on other important tasks.

• Hyper Targeted Filters: With Instantly's Hyper Targeted Filters feature, you can rest assured that your cold email marketing campaigns are getting to the right audiences.

• AI-powered CRM: This feature identifies prospects' needs, personalizes outreach, and automates follow-ups according to their needs, ensuring the entire cold email marketing funnel is utilized.

• Unified Inbox (Unibox): Instantly allows you to manage all your replies in one convenient place.

• Deliverability Tools: Instantly employs email warmup, amongst other strategies, to ensure your emails are trusted by Email Service Providers (ESP) and not moved into spam folders.

2. Apollo

Apollo provides email sequencing, ensuring startups are well in touch with their prospects and customers. It also offers an enormous prospecting database and is useful for tracking leads, automating outreach, and following up on outcomes. Pricing starts at $49/month with features like contact enrichment that enable startups to add to their existing prospect database and also allow for multichannel engagement.

Pros of Apollo

• Apollo has a comprehensive lead database for reliable enrichment 

• It has flexible sequencing and scheduling, making outreach faster and simpler 

Cons of Apollo

• The contacts available can sometimes be outdated, making outreach difficult

• The platform's advanced features are inaccessible on the Basic plan

3. Snov.io

Snov.io has a suite of features that enable email finding, verification, and drip campaigns. The platform helps startups automate outreach and keep their prospect list clean by filtering out unnecessary data. Pricing starts at $29.25/month when billed annually, with access to an unlimited number of follow-ups and campaigns. 

Pros of Snov.io

• Snov provides built-in email verification that makes it easy to find quality leads

• The drip campaign builder makes outreach much more efficient

Cons of Snov.io

• Email integration challenges can sometimes delay campaigns

• Some features might go missing at times, making your process complicated

4. Reply

Reply.io is a multichannel outreach tool that blends emails, calls, and social platforms for outreach. It’s an effective tool for startups that want to diversify their marketing strategies and try other marketing channels aside from cold emailing. The starting price is $49/month per user, which will allow you to send unlimited emails and automate outreach with email sequences.

Pros of Reply

• Multichannel capacity allows startups to reach wider audiences.

• AI-powered messaging suggestions help to speed up your outreach process.

Cons of Reply

• The larger your team, the higher your subscription costs 

• The initial setup process can be taxing and time-consuming.

5. Close

Close is a CRM tool with built-in cold email and calling features. It is ideal for startups that want to streamline their sales processes, boost productivity, and drive revenue. It is a typical example of a sales-first platform, as it encompasses the entire sales process. Pricing starts at $35/month per seat and includes advanced lead and activity filters, unlimited contacts, and leads.

Pros of Close

• It’s a sales-first platform that combines both outreach and CRM 

• Close has multiple integrated communication features all in one hub

Cons of Close

• The platform's features can be fairly limited and might require additional tools

• Occasional call recording feature failures can disrupt your process

Scale Your Outreach, Multiply Your Sign-ups with Instantly 

The efficiency of manual outreach is simply not up to par when compared with the capabilities of automation. These cold email automation tools easily help startups source prospects, reach them using strategic tactics and patterns, and also actively follow up to ensure conversion and retention of customers. 

Each tool mentioned offers its own unique blend of features and pricing, but Instantly stands out for its all-in-one approach. From lead generation and CRM, to automation and active follow-up, Instantly covers it all. No obstructions in your marketing funnel, just conversions and signups all the way.