Transform Gmail into An Outreach Machine

You have an event, product or service you want to promote.

You then want to event, product or service to the people that you know.

Pretty common and standard so far, right?

The next question becomes “what is the best way to get an email to my contact list so that a person sees my email?”

There are about a thousand ways that you can do this, but I am going to focus on a simple tactic that handles the more important part of that question: “…so that a person sees my email.”

Getting Started

You probably already have an email account that you are using for personal or business purposes.

I will take a guess that it is probably with Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook. I know that Gmail has 1.2+ billion users so I am going to start here.

Deliverability

The first thing I want to share with you is the concept of “deliverability.” What deliverability means is “will the message get into someone else’s inbox?”

An extreme opposite is that the message goes into “spam.”

We often take this for granted because when we want to send an email, it just arrives at the persons’ email account that we sent it to. Now, if you’re are sending a message where you are promoting something, you have to worry about deliverability and also features like “Gmail Tabs.”

Gmail Tabs

A while back, Gmail rolled out “tabs.”  People that use this feature allow Gmail to automatically sort messages into tabs like “Primary,” “Social,” “Promotions,” “Updates” and “Forums.”

This is how I got to a “zero inbox” because 95% of my email I don’t need to read.

The consequence is that if you were to choose to use a service like Mailchimp and send to your list, the best deliverability can usually get would be having your message show up in the “Updates” tab.

More often your message will land in “Promotions” with the other thousand messages you get in a day.

Solution

I must have spent 20 hours trying to solve the problem of “how do I get my mass email message into the ‘Primary’ tab so people can see the message.

What you will need…

1. A computer – Windows or Mac (most advanced features require a computer and not a tablet or smartphone)
2. The Chrome Browser
3. Any Gmail account
4. Gmail Auto Follow-up by CloudHQ.com

First off, I use Gmail for my personal and business email. If you use Yahoo our Outlook, this hack isn’t going to work.

As a refresher, normally you would just send a message to a few people. An example is that I would send a message to Bob & Lee.

In this scenario, Gmail interprets the message as people personal and puts you into the “Primary” tab 95% of the time.

But, the whole point of this post is that you now want to send one specific email message to Bob, Lee and 180 other people AND have them see it.

This can be achieved by using a service called Gmail Auto Follow-up by CloudHQ.com. By using this in conjunction with Gmail (think of it as a plugin), Gmail will think that you are sending out personal messages. Even if there are 180 of them.

The great thing about this service is that it is free for up to 200 messages a month. Then it is only $14.99 afterward.

How does Gmail Auto Follow-up Work?

Let’s assume that you already have Gmail and are using Chrome to view Gmail.

With Gmail Auto Follow-up, you can upload your list from an Excel spreadsheet or from Google Contacts.

Then, Gmail Auto Follow-up will also give you the option of setting up a few follow-up messages that will go out to each person on your list until they (open, reply or unsubscribe).

This feature is great if you are promoting an upcoming event because you can send out the announcement today and schedule follow-ups for 3 days from now, and so on…

Now, to not look like “Spam,” the only downside is that Gmail + Gmail Auto Follow-up will only allow you to send about 500 messages a day. You can read more on this here for Gmail accounts and here for G Suite accounts.

So, if you have a big list, your broadcast might take 2 days to send to the entire list. But, Gmail Auto Follow-up will hand this for you and schedule the messages properly.

Next Steps:

1. Download the Chrome Browser in case you haven’t
2. Sign-up for a Gmail account
3. Sign-up for Gmail Auto Follow-up by CloudHQ.com