A simple and affordable Lemlist Alternative

So, once you scrapped LinkedIn with us, and then do your email search with an enrichment software, what comes next is of course set up your email outreach (and for those you didn't succeed in getting the email you can add them to a LinkedIn outreach tool, we will talk about that later), there is plenty of Lemlist alternatives out there, some are too expensive and too complicated.

That's why we wanted to present you with what we think is the best Lemlist alternative, it is called Emelia.

What is Lemlist and why do we propose Emelia as a Lemlist alternative?

First things first, Lemlist is a sales engagement tool, as email marketing specialists, we tried every software available on the market for years for email outreach, Lemlist used to be a straightforward cold outreach tool, but now it does too many things, cold email outreach of course, but also cold calls and Linkedin outreach, they have a warm up feature that has flaws, and it starts to look also like a crm software now 🤯

The platform has become too complicated, it has too many unnecessary features, like personalized images, that are not good for deliverability and that we think make your email marketing look cheap now, it is kind of has-been, and we want a clear and user-friendly interface, to launch our email sequences faster and at scale

And worst, it is now too expensive. Whether you are a lead generation agency or a cold outreach specialist, you know that you need to connect multiple email accounts, and paying 59$ per account becomes impossible.

For all those reasons, a lot of people are looking for some Lemlist alternative, people want to do email marketing campaigns easily, launch campaigns fast, and don't burn their ROI by paying a fortune for the software.

Lemlist vs. Emelia: Comparisons of features

Cold email outreach at scale

Emelia enables users to do cold emailing at scale with their multi-sender feature, you can select as many mailboxes that you want, even from different domains of course, and do big campaign that will be dispatch between all the different email account, not every cold email software offer that and so it allows you to do send personalized mass emails with a good deliverability.

It manages the follow up accordingly, each email account has is own signature and his own tracking domain, if one mailbox got an issue it transfer to an other what's next to send.

So you don't have to duplicate campaign over different mailboxes, don't have to split your list, etc..

Not a lot of Lemlist alternatives got this feature, and of course, but we will see that later, to connect a lot of mailboxes you need a pricing that allows you to do so.

An awesome customer support team

Emelia got a excellent customer support, as they are specialists in cold outreach they can give you tips about your cold email campaigns, they are very reactive if you have an issue, if you need a video call for something they are available to do so.

And what's make Emelia also a great Lemlist alternative is that the software is evolving fast according to what their users are asking. Try to ask Lemlist something 😅

Lemlist's pricing vs Emelia's pricing

While the basic plan of Lemlist is 59$, for one mailbox connected, the first price for Emelia is 20$ (or 19€), so it's 3 times lower.

But most important, it's when you want to scale, because let's be honest, you are not going to crush to cold email game with one mailbox, you need to connect several.

While Lemlist keep 59$ per mailbox, Emelia is only 9$ per additionnal mailbox, and it decreases with the number.

So either you manage multiple email addresses for your clients, or you want to scale your own email outreach, Emelia is the best Lemlist alternative to lower the overall cost of your outreach.

There is a free version of Emelia for one week if you want to test a free trial.

User friendly interface

Emelia is one of the simplest email outreach tool on the market, you don't have settings somewhere hidden, have to changes pages all the time.. the UX is clear, you have one dashboard when you connect, then -> everything you need to set up to launch your campaign is on ONE page ! The campaign page, you have four sections and that's it.

On the dashboard you have a look on all your campaigns at a glance, filter per mailbox if you manage multiple clients, you can do an email search for a specific prospect

The mail editor is simple, you can add variables or spintext with ease, you can create templates and reuse them easily, you can test your email of course.

Last round of email verification

It's important to lower your bounce rate of your cold emails, and you need to use email verification software (depending of the mail enrichment software you use of course) before sending email.

But Emelia has something that no other cold email tool has, a built in email verification thanks to all the data they have.

Let's explain how email verification tools works and how Emelia is a complement to this:

Software like Zerobounce or other, what they do is that they "ping" the server to know if there is a good chance the email exist, but they don't really send an email to be sure, would be to expensive and to technical to manage at scale

What Emelia does is that they save the email adresses who bounced from cold outreach campaigns of their other users. As they have send to millions of email addresses, they know for sure if there will be a bounce, because it bounce for an other user with a real email sent.

More precise email reporting analytics

Email tracking is import when it comes to email marketing, you need to know the results of your cold emails, a lot of Lemlist alternatives are about flattering the user, they have a way to calculate their statistics to show it in a positive way.

First of all, you got to know that the statistics of your cold outreach is not 100% accurate, replies are accurate of course, but clicks and opening can be wrong, both ways, what we mean by both ways is that sometimes you can have a opening, but in fact it is the mail software of your prospect, or his fire-wall, that opening the mail. And sometimes you don't have a opening because your prospect got something that block the tracking. And it goes the same for the clicks.

The tracking is here to give you an overview of the performance of your email marketing, and Emelia gives more accurate statistics than others best lemlist alternatives.

For us, the most important statistic is the opening rate, to know if you have an issue with your deliverability. Above 70% is top ! Above 50% is good. Below 50 it start to be not that good. Below 30% ...? Or you contact list is s*** or you have a real deliverability issue.

We will talk about deliverability just below.

Some other key features

• Import contacts form Google sheets.

• Import as many custom variables as you want to personalized email campaigns.

Tips to enhance your campaign performance

Improve your email deliverability with email warm up.

Email warm up is the process to increase your sender reputation in order to avoid the spam folder. The way it works is that it create fake interactions between your mailbox and other mailboxes, automated conversations, so providers will consider your mailbox as legit when you will send your cold outreach.

As Emelia doesn't have a warm up feature, you will need to use a email warm up tool, we recommend to use Mailreach.

Mailreach is a "pure-player", they do email warm up, they do only that, and they do it well, very well !

While some Lemlist alternatives have a warm up feature, and you can think that's great to have all-in-one, the fact is than most of them have does not provide a very good service. We won't get into the specifics to explain technically why, but that's a fact.

What about email tracking ?

Email tracking is the core of every outreach tool, especially for cold emails, you want to know who opened your email, who clicked on your links. We got it.

Just know, than every tracking can lower a bit your deliverability, and we know a lot of real experts in cold email outreach that deactivate tracking just to maximize their impact, even if they can not see it.

Because basically, bounce rate is not the tracking which gives you this information, the reply rate either, it is just the cold email software that read your mailbox.

The tracking is for opening and clicks. For the click you can replace the link tracking by adding an UTM to your link, like https://www.scrapia.io/?utm_source=mail you will be able to see it then in your google analytics, but it is not a tracking link.

And about the opening ? Globally, opening rate is here to give you an idea of your deliverability (yeah some can argue than open rates tell you if you subject line is good.... we don't believe too much about that (unless you cold email subject line is really bad)

So if you know your have a good deliverability, the open is not necessary. But well, we know you want to track directly, it is easier, we got it ! Just know if you want to withdraw tracking you can do it here.

Email tracking with personalized tracking domain

Ok so know that you still want to track, and we get it (even if in the future we think you will have to withdraw it anyway), tracking domain is something you need to know about.

Email provider prefer when it is the same domain that send the email than the one who track it.

By creating a personalized tracking domain you will improve your deliverability. And it takes only few minutes to create one.

Your just need to go where you have your domain name, go into the DNS Zone, create new entry, a CNAME, call it track for example and set the target at emelia.link.

Even if on Emelia it just say "recommended", know it is HIGHLY recommended.

What is spam triggering words ?

Do you know about them ? You got to know that your email are being read by email software or email providers, and more and more with AI.

So, when you email looks suspicious, malicious, it can trigger spam filters. We don't say that using one spam triggering word will make you end up directly in the spam folder. Deliverability is always a combinations of elements, the tracking, the spintext, the warm up of your mailboxes, etc...

But those words, if you abuse of them, if they are without context, can lower your deliverability.

Here's a few diverse examples of words to avoid.

Use automatic follow ups wisely

While follow up emails is of course necessary for your email sequences, your email scheduling can have an impact on how your prospect will perceive your message.

If you are comfortable with being "aggressive" and send follow ups every couple of days, you can do so, just keep in mind that if you are too pushy, the prospect can be more tempted to report you or set you as a spam, and that's the worst thing that can happen for your deliverability.

So if you choose to work that way, think about leaving a way out of our cold email sequence, like an clear unsubscribe link.

Avoid heavy cold email

The success of your email campaigns relies a lot on your deliverability, we don't say that an attachment or an image will get you directly in the spam folder, but on your overall sending volume, for sure you could avoid spam filters if you keep your email light.

If you need to send a file, it is better to give a proper Google Drive link or other trusted software, than to put an attachment.

Use SpinText in your cold email campaigns.

Here's how it looks at the end, I'll explain after

Ok so Spintext is about creating different version of sentences, but with the same meaning, just to not send all the time the same email, because when your will have found the email that works for you, you will want to scale your sending, but providers with time will understand what you do

If you do like 3 variations, 20 times in an email, it is exponential, it will create millions of combinations, so you will never send the same email twice.

It used to be time consuming to do a proper cold email with spintext, be sure all the combinations always make sense. But now you can just ask chatGPT to add Spintext to your original cold email.

Tips about email outreach in general

Look professionnal, don't use a classic gmail account.

Cold emailing is to address profesionnals, and you need to be profesionnal too. Running campaigns from a classic @gmail account is not good. First of all, you wont look profesionnal for your prospect, the reply rates will be much lower, for sure.

Second point, the limits and the restrictions for a non paying gmail account are low and you can be blocked often.

If you don't have the budget to start with a Google Workspace account or Microsoft, they're is some alternatives like Namecheap, you can buy a domain and then they give you a mailbox for free for two months, then it is only 12$ a year.

Or OVH also, you can have one mailbox with a free forever plan for each domain you buy.

Your cold email must have only ONE call to action

A common mistake when newbies starts running campaigns, is that they don't know how they want, or can, convert the prospect. So they try to send the prospect to their website, but they also ask a question and give their calendar to book a call.

Ok maybe not all those 3 in the same time, but you get the idea. You cold email outreach must have only ONE goal. You need to choose if you want to engage a conversation by email, make him sign up to your website or book a meeting.

If you want to try different things, do a different call to action at each follow up, but not all in the same email.

And keep in mind that the call to action need also to be simple. For example if you want to engage a conversation, don't ask "Please share your exact requirements." (Yes we took that from a real email we received 😅), ask something simple like a yes/no question. Or give two choices, like "Do you prefer I call in the morning or in the afternoon" ?

Don't spam multiple people from the same company

We saw that too often, if you try to contact 20, 50-100 person from the same company, you will just end up being ban after just few email.

So if you really have something to sell to a big company, find the 2-3 right people and right a real personalized email ! Or you can do some cold calls directly ! Sometimes old fashion marketing processes works the best ! We love automation tools, but when they make sense.