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Cold outreach efficiency starts to plateau when you attempt to do it at scale. That’s why an automated delivery system is essential for successfully acquiring leads.
Outreach software helps businesses and individuals connect with potential customers, start conversations, and build strong business partnerships without the tedious manual effort. And because communications are automated, you can do it at scale with ease.
In this guide, I'll show you some of the best outreach tools out there to help you start conversations with cold contacts, automatically follow up, and track your results.
Let’s dive in.
What is Outreach Software Used For?
Outreach software helps you connect with cold prospects and start a conversation by automating the process of sourcing and messaging new leads.
Sales teams can use outreach software to streamline and centralize communications with your prospects to minimize the time it takes to find new business.
Some outreach tools are designed to improve the success of your cold email outreach, while others are best for LinkedIn and cold calling. Additional outreach software solutions – such as QuickMail – combine different channels and help you create powerful multichannel outreach campaigns.
4 Best Outreach Software to Connect with Cold Prospects
1. QuickMail: Personalized cold outreach with automatic follow-up emails
Omnichannel cold outreach tool built to help you and your team scale while maintaining excellent deliverability
QuickMail’s outreach software can help you send personalized cold emails to prospects and automatically follow up if they don’t reply.
Here are a couple of the key features that make QuickMail a powerful way to grow your pipeline:
Add unique personalization to every email, even at scale
Integrate with Aircall to make cold calls and add multi-channel touchpoints
Automate LinkedIn communications and create an omnichannel outreach strategy
Run AB tests to find your best-performing email templates
Bring as many team members as you need to help manage campaigns, and only pay for new sending inboxes
Email Outreach Features to Boost Your Reply Rates
QuickMail has everything you need to send fully personalized sales outreach to every person on your list.
You can use attributes in your email templates, which bring in data from your prospect list and personalize emails as they’re being sent. No two prospects will ever receive an identical email from you, as there are multiple ways you can personalize every outreach email you send.
If someone doesn’t reply, you can send them a friendly reminder using automatic follow-ups.
Our data shows that 55% of replies to campaigns come from follow-ups, so it’s an essential step.
You can add as many follow-ups as you want, and even mix in cold calls and other tasks to give you the best chance of getting a response to your outreach program.
Scale By Adding Inboxes, Not Duplicating Campaigns
Most outreach software works best for a single user or small team. QuickMail works perfectly for these types of customers, but it's also designed to scale as you grow.
You can add as many team members as you need to QuickMail to help you manage campaigns, and you only pay for new inboxes that you send emails from.
If you want to increase the send volume on an outreach campaign, you won’t need to copy and paste every template into a new campaign. Instead, you can add new inboxes to the campaign and rotate the volume between them using QuickMail’s unique inbox rotation feature.
It’s a powerful way to increase your campaign volume without going through the pains of campaign management on most other platforms.
Deliverability Tools to Help You Land in the Primary Inbox
Your outreach will only get results if your emails land in your prospects’ inboxes.
You can use MailFlow, a free email warm-up tool that natively integrates with QuickMail, to show email service providers that you’re a trustworthy sender and improve deliverability.
Plenty of deliverability tools are also baked into QuickMail, such as deliverability reports & automatic deliverability testing which will allow you to see how well your emails are inboxing.
Whenever you send an email, you’ll know it won’t land in the spam folder.
QuickMail gives you a powerful way to scale up your outreach without facing challenges around personalization, automation, or deliverability.
Pricing: Plans start at just $49/mo
G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 (80+ reviews)
Capterra rating: 4.8 out of 5 (25 reviews)
What customers on G2 and Capterra say about QuickMail:
“By send volume - we book 4X more meetings in QuickMail than our previous platform.”
“The inbox rotation tool is a game-changer. Combined with the native inbox management, replying to large volumes of replies is a breeze.”
“Quickmail is an excellent tool for professional cold emailers who want to tap into the granularity Quickmail offers. The functionality offered allows the user to select detailed sending times and allows the emailer to have a nice split of new prospects and follow-ups.”
Key features:
Send personalized email outreach to prospects at scale
Automatically follow up if someone doesn’t reply to boost your reply rates
Add multichannel steps to your outreach such as cold calling and extra tasks for your team
Manage campaigns for multiple clients at once in an agency dashboard
Get your first positive replies for free - start a free 14-day trial.
2. MixMax
Run lightweight outreach campaigns directly from your Gmail inbox
MixMax is an outreach tool for Gmail power users who need to send cold emails at scale. Once you connect it to your inbox, you’ll have access to the platform inside your Google Workspace account, and you won’t need to learn how to use a new platform.
You can import prospects from a Google Sheet, and then set up and start your outreach campaigns from the campaign builder inside your inbox.
There are also tools like an integrated calendar system, the ability to embed polls into emails to get replies from interested prospects, and email tracking to help you assess your results.
The main downside is that everything runs inside Gmail. That means it can be hard to use for large or growing sales teams. If you want to use cold email as an important growth lever for your company, you’d be better off using a standalone sales engagement platform like QuickMail.
Pricing: Subscription plans start at $65 per user per month for personalized outreach sequences and custom branding
Pros:
Easy to get started as it works in your Gmail account
It connects with your calendar and lets you insert meeting booking links into your emails
Add surveys to emails to boost engagement with your warm sales leads
Cons:
Users on Capterra say that you can’t hide the MixMax branding on some of the features
Some customers on G2 say that you can’t easily edit sequences once they’re running
No email warm-up tool included to improve email deliverability
3. Pitchbox
Influencer outreach platform for PR and brand marketing teams
Pitchbox is outreach software for reaching out to influencers and content creators that you want your company to partner with. It’s ideal for PR teams or link builders who need a central platform to manage their campaigns.
You can run your prospecting process inside the platform, and it integrates with all of the major SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs so you can connect your data from those tools with Pitchbox. It even has built-in email finder tools to help you identify accurate email addresses.
Once you know your prospect list, you can create your outreach email templates and schedule your emails to be sent.
If someone doesn’t reply, Pitchbox can send an automated follow-up email to get your prospect’s attention.
It’s an excellent all-in-one outreach platform, but will only be effective for anyone in a link-building, PR, or content outreach role and isn’t a great fit for sales reps or business development.
Pricing: Plans start at $550 per month for 5000 outreach emails, 3 users, and 5 email accounts.
Pros:
Features specifically designed for link-building and PR outreach
Includes a whole suite of prospecting, cold email, and CRM tools to help you manage the entire outreach process
The central dashboard shows you a clear overview of everything going on in your outreach campaigns
Cons:
Users on Capterra mention that the pricing is expensive for the features included
Customers on G2 report that the prospecting tools can be difficult to use
4. Salesloft
All-in-one outreach tool for large companies
Salesloft’s outreach software combines prospecting tools, pipeline management, and deal analytics to help companies with large sales teams grow their deal flow. It competes with products like Outreach.io that are also aimed at large companies.
You can create multi-step, multichannel outreach cadences across email, phone calls, and LinkedIn. You can also add unique personalization to your email templates to boost your reply rate.
Once you’re talking to your prospects, you can track each deal inside the platform.
Salesloft shows you data like the number of times you’ve interacted with a lead, the estimated deal size, and even logs the transcriptions of your calls.
It’s a great outreach tool for large companies, but it will probably be overkill if you only have a few sales reps.
Pricing: Available after a demo.
Pros:
Supports team collaboration, so you can easily see what other team members are working on
Create and share email templates that different team members can reuse in their own email cadences
Lets you add almost any custom field to a cadence, allowing for deep personalization
Cons:
Users on G2 say that it can be difficult to filter through your prospects and deal
Customers on Capterra report that the Salesforce integration can be slow to sync data
4 Powerful Outreach Tools for Multichannel Sales and Campaign Management
1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Upgrade your LinkedIn account with new features for prospecting and an increase in InMail limits
LinkedIn Sales Navigator has a range of benefits. If you’re using LinkedIn regularly for prospecting or recruitment outreach, it’s essential.
Firstly, it increases your InMail limits to 50 per month. You can use these to send messages to key prospects whose attention you need to catch.
It also gives you additional ways to identify prospects. For example, you’ll have access to more filters to narrow down your LinkedIn searches, and you can set alerts for buying signals that companies are showing.
A final benefit of Sales Navigator is that it adds an extra level of protection to your account. Your account is less likely to be restricted for running too many searches or connecting with too many people in a short space of time.
Pricing: From $99.99 per account per month
Pros:
Send InMails that land at the top of your prospects’ LinkedIn inboxes
Smart lead recommendations that suggest prospects based on people you’re already targeting
Add notes and tags to LinkedIn profiles to save key information
Cons:
Expensive if you need it on multiple team accounts
Doesn’t include any automated outreach features, you need to run the process manually
2. Zopto
Run automated outreach campaigns on LinkedIn
Zopto is a LinkedIn lead-generation tool. LinkedIn is notoriously difficult to run outreach on, but Zopto says that their cloud-based outreach software can help you avoid your account being restricted for running automation.
You can use the platform to build prospect lists based on LinkedIn profile criteria or prospect actions, such as someone viewing your profile.
Once your list of prospects is ready, you can create targeted, personalized outreach messages to automatically reach out to those prospects. You can add automated follow-up messages to each campaign and automate the process of viewing profiles, liking posts, or endorsing someone’s skills.
Like with any LinkedIn outreach tool, make sure to use it with caution – you don’t want your account to get restricted.
Pricing: From $195 per account per month. All pricing plans include the same features, but higher plans let you add more accounts.
Pros:
Gives you a way to automate your LinkedIn outreach, which can be time-consuming if done manually
Lets you grow your network or send outreach messages on autopilot
Cons:
G2 users warn that you always need to be careful as it’s not approved by LinkedIn
There’s a hard cap on the number of actions you can take per day due to LinkedIn’s rules
3. Aircall
Quickly make cold calls to prospects using a power dialer
Aircall is a cold call outreach platform to help you connect with prospects who you’re struggling to reach via email or LinkedIn.
You can upload a list of prospect records, including their phone numbers, and then easily run through the list using Aircall’s power dialer. If someone doesn’t pick up, you can use the voicemail drop to automatically leave a voicemail, and move on to the next person on your list.
It’s an excellent way to improve cold call productivity and have conversations with more prospects.
You can also connect Aircall with QuickMail. That means you can use a power dialer to call your prospects directly from your QuickMail campaigns. In addition, if you make notes on a prospect profile in QuickMail or Aircall, the notes are synced between the two platforms.
Pricing: From $30 per user per month for unlimited calls, 3 users minimum.
Pros:
Powerful way to automate the time-consuming parts of cold call outreach
Apps for desktop and mobile mean you can make calls wherever you are
Native integrations with QuickMail (and other sales tools) so you can add cold call steps to your cold email outreach campaigns
Cons:
Users on G2 mention that because it’s internet-based, calls can sometimes cut out if your internet connection isn’t reliable
Some Capterra customers mention that the onboarding isn’t intuitive and it takes time to figure out the platform
4. Close
CRM to manage your outreach pipeline, follow up with leads, and make calls all from one place
Close is a CRM to help you and your team organize your outreach efforts.
You connect it with your tools – like QuickMail – and when a prospect replies, a new record will be created in your Close CRM. Your team will know who needs to be replied to, where each lead is in the sales process, and any other details you choose to add.
You can use the platform to send emails to warm leads, store email templates to reuse, and set up multi-step sequences to re-engage leads who stop replying.
Pricing: From $59 per user per month for basic CRM features. For full email sequence capabilities and multiple pipelines, pricing starts at $329 per user per month.
Pros:
A CRM is a vital part of any effective sales outreach strategy, as it keeps all of your leads organized
Powerful search system to easily surface past conversations with leads or clients
Customizable, so you can make it fit your unique needs
Cons:
Not made for cold outreach, so you’ll need to use a platform like QuickMail for sending cold emails
Users on G2 highlight that the call function can be unreliable if you don’t have a high-speed internet connection
3 Outreach Best Practices to Boost Your Reply Rate
Even if outreach tools help you identify and reach out to prospects, they won't automate the entire process for you. You’ll still need to put in time and effort if you want to get results.
Here are some best practices to follow to help you get the best results from your outreach, no matter the tools you use:
1. Your prospect list is a critical ingredient to success
No matter how good your email templates or cold call script is, it won't matter if your prospect isn't a fit.
Keep your prospect lists focused only on people who are an excellent fit for your product or service. Even if you send fewer emails, a higher-quality prospect list means you'll see a better response rate and overall conversion rate.
2. Personalize beyond the surface level
To stand out in a busy inbox, you need to show your prospects that you've done your research.
Find ways to personalize your emails beyond what other cold emailers are doing by adding personalization such as a custom opening line, as well as doing the essentials such as addressing them by their first name, using their company name, and making sure the call-to-action works for someone in their position.
3. Automate repetitive tasks with Zapier
Outreach can be tedious if you need to manage the entire process manually.
Use a tool like Zapier to automate tasks like sending data between your outreach tool stack. For example, you can connect Zapier with QuickMail to create helpful workflows, such as automatically creating a new CRM record for every prospect that replies to your outreach campaign. You'll save hours of manual work every week once you're set up.
In Summary: Outreach Software to Connect with More Leads
The outreach software we’ve looked at can help you connect with cold prospects across cold email, cold calls, LinkedIn, and help your team stay organized.
Depending on your company, use case, and requirements, different options will be best.
If you want to run omnichannel outreach campaigns that get replies, then QuickMail is the right option for you.
If you want to run cold email campaigns that get replies, then QuickMail is the right option for you.
After connecting your inbox, you can start creating personalized email campaigns that run on autopilot. All you need to do is keep track of the replies and move your prospects through your sales process.
