Mailshake Review — An Efficient Email Marketing Automation Solution

Engaging in manual cold email efforts can be incredibly time-consuming. The bigger your business gets, the more it becomes unachievable to handle extensive lists of leads, stuffed inboxes, large teams, and a whole lot of reports that need to be analyzed. 

Even if you manage to do all these things, how are you going to find the time to create compelling subject lines and personalize your email content? A modern business cannot compromise user experience and customer journey.

This is where email marketing software can make a difference. By using the right tools, you can streamline the majority of marketing processes — and have the time to pay attention to the smallest of details that your users will appreciate.

And that’s why Mailshake brings all the boys to the yard. This sales engagement platform offers efficient email marketing automation features, making it easy to charge up your cold email campaign.

Mailshake tackles the difficulties of cold email campaigns by automating the process of sending bulks of highly targeted emails and engaging with your leads. Before we check out all that it can do, here’s an overview of the tool and the company behind it:

Why You Should Trust Us About Mailshake

Email marketing software is our forte. The CEO of Sell Saas is Mathieu Picard, the entrepreneur behind AnyLeads — the immensely successful company that has helped industry giants like Google, Microsoft, Coca Cola, and The New York Times generate more than 10,000,000 leads.

Our results show that we know what we’re talking about. As for our goal, it is to help you find the best software for your marketing efforts. Our review of Mailshake is here to assist you in making an informed decision on whether it is worth your time.

Mailshake Pricing

Mailshake Pricing

Mailshake doesn’t offer a free version of the tool nor a free trial. You need to subscribe to one of the two available paid plans — the Email Outreach or the Sales Engagement option. 

The Email Outreach paid plan comes at the price of $59 per month. If you choose to commit to an annual subscription, you get a discount — $44 per month. The plan provides the majority of the tool’s essential features, including:

• Email personalization

• Email scheduling

• Automated email sequence creation

• Direct responding to leads

• Integrations

• A/B testing

With this option, you get 5,000 list-cleaning credits per month. This is Mailshake’s email verification feature. It enables you to remove all email addresses that are no longer associated with real people from your contact list.

To subscribe to the Sales Engagement plan, you need to contact the company and book a demo. This solution offers additional features, such as:

• Phone dialing

• Custom task creation

• Increased number of recipients

• Social selling

The Sales Engagement plan costs $99 per month. If you opt for the annual commitment, you can use Mailshake for the discounted monthly price of $75.

With this plan, you get twice as many list-cleaning credits as with the Sales Engagement solution. If you need more, you can choose to pay $10 per 5,000 contacts that you want to verify.

If you are not satisfied with the product, the company offers a 30-day refund guarantee.

Setting Up Mailshake

To start using Mailshake, you have to connect it to an existing email account. You can do so by following these steps:

1. Go to the Mail Accounts tab in the navigation menu on the left

2. Click on the pink circle with a + symbol in the bottom-right corner

3. Choose whether you want to connect to a Gmail account regularly or use an email alias

4. Connect to Gmail, Outlook, or a custom SMTP

5. Pick the account you want to use and allow Mailshake to access it

Note that if you are connecting to a custom SMTP, you need to input all the necessary information. This includes:

• Email address

• Full name that you’re going to use for sending emails

• SMTP host and port number

• SMTP username — which is most commonly your email address

• IMAP host and port number

• IMAP password and username — just like with SMTP, it’s commonly your address

Once you are done with this part, Mailshake will take you to the Tweak your sending calendar screen.

Mailshake Sending Calendar Setup

If you are just starting your email marketing campaign, you can choose the first option. It provides you with default settings for dispersed email sending, which is good enough for starting to warm up your IP and avoiding getting your emails labeled as spam.

If you are in the midst of your marketing efforts and need to cover more ground, you can pick the second option. If the template doesn’t provide the sending limit, timing, and pace that suits you, click the Customize button and set up the parameters in line with your business needs.

When you click on Next, you will be taken to the Tweak your signature screen. 

Mailshake Signature Setup

Set up the signature and click on Finish. You can connect other email accounts and overview them in the Mail Accounts tab.

Go to the Campaigns tab and click on the + symbol in the bottom-right corner. Name your email campaign and choose the account you want to send from. 

In the Recipients menu, you need to upload your list of contacts in the form of a CSV file. You can also import email addresses via an integrated tool of your choice.

You are now ready to start composing and sending emails.

Mailshake Features

Mailshake is primarily a sales engagement and email marketing automation tool, with a couple of additional features that can improve your campaign. It also provides a variety of integrations that can centralize your marketing efforts. We can group Mailshake’s features into the following categories:

1. Automation

2. Lead catching

3. Personalization

4. Email verification

5. Integrations

Mailshake Automation Feature

You can compose your emails manually or pick from one of the existing templates by clicking on the Choose Template button. You can also save the templates you create for later use. Once you’ve got your first email ready, you can automate a variety of actions.

Email Automation

Mailshake can help you streamline your campaign by creating specific email sequences. You can set up:

• Follow-up emails

• Drip emails

• Click-based emails

Mailshake Follow-Up Email Automation

Follow-up emails are essential for engaging with your recipients. They are sent as replies and follow specific timing settings. To set up an appropriate follow-up email, you need to:

1. Click on the Add Follow-up button below the email you’ve composed

2. Compose your follow-up message

3. Set up how many days later the follow-up email should be sent

You can also create additional follow-ups, each with its subject line and timing.

Mailshake Drip Email Automation

Drip emails are sent continuously as new emails, regardless of the recipient’s actions. If it is necessary, you can pause them for some time. To set up a drip email, you should:

1. Click on the Add Drip button below your email

2. Compose the drip email subject line and body

3. Set up the timing between drips

You can create additional drip emails and add them to the sequence.

Mailshake Click-Based Email Automation

Click-based emails are automatically sent whenever the recipient clicks on a specific link. This can be any link in your email, including the ones in your signature. To set this type of email up, you need to:

1. Click on Add On Click under your email

2. Compose the email’s subject line and body

3. Paste the exact URL in the top-most field

4. Set up the timing for the email

If you want the email to be sent as a result of clicking any of the existing links, enter the * symbol in the top-most field.

Email Scheduling

Mailshake provides a variety of options for scheduling your emails. Regardless of whether you’ve chosen a particular template in the Tweak your sending calendar menu, you can edit those settings later. 

Mailshake Email Scheduling

Go to the Campaigns tab in the navigation menu, and click on the Sending Calendar subtab. Click on Edit Rules at the bottom of your sending schedule.

In the following menu, you can set up some vital scheduling options, including:

• Days when the emails get sent — Choose the days of the week when you don’t want your emails to be sent. Just click on them and they will be blacked out

• Time of day for sending — You can set the exact start time and end time. Determine the best time for sending your emails and schedule them accordingly

• Max emails per day — Set up how many emails you want to send to your contacts daily. As we’ve ascertained earlier, this depends on how far into your email campaign you’ve got

• Sending strategy — Decide whether you want your emails to be spaced out during the day or sent out as soon as possible

You can also specify the minutes between each email sent, and minimum and maximum emails that Mailshake should send at a time. You need to set up the tool so that it doesn’t attempt to send a massive number of emails all at once. Bulk email sending should follow the rules set by different email service providers and their spam filters.

Campaign Management

Mailshake’s live campaign management feature enables you to edit a campaign while it’s already running. You can edit emails, pause specific prospects, and add new recipients by uploading additional CSV files.

Mailshake Lead Catching Feature

Mailshake Lead Catcher Settings

You can start setting up the Lead Catcher in the Options menu within the Campaign creation wizard. Here, you can specify the circumstances that turn a contact into a lead. The default condition takes into account anyone who responds to your email. You can change the condition and implement additional ones. Define what constitutes a lead according to a specific number of:

• Replies

• Clicks

• Opens

You can assign leads to specific team members. Once you’re done, go to the Campaigns tab and find the Lead Catcher subtab. Here, you’ll have a full overview of all the leads you’ve captured according to your settings. The names will be listed chronologically, based on specific campaigns and team members they’ve been assigned to. Click on a lead to:

• Reply to them

• Set their status as won, lost, or ignore

• Assign them to another team member

As soon as you reply to a lead, the Lead Catcher will automatically move to the next one, making it easy to deal with all of them in a sequence.

Mailshake Personalization Feature

You can personalize your emails in Mailshake by inserting text replacements. First, you need to ensure that your CSV is formatted properly and contains the information that you want to use when writing to a particular recipient. 

Mailshake CSV Mapping

In your CSV file, you need to specify what each column represents and map it in Mailshake accordingly. The most important columns are Name and Email. Map a recipient’s full name, and the tool can extract the first and last name according to your list. You can also add the Role and Company columns. Make sure to check the required boxes in the mapping screen, as shown above.

Mailshake Email Personalization

When you’re composing your email, click on the Insert button and choose any personal detail you want to use. You can do it manually by typing out any of the personalization categories — first, last, name, role, and company — within curly brackets.

You should also set up the appropriate fallback text in case any of your contacts are missing some of the information. If your CSV file doesn’t contain a person’s first name, the email can say “Hello there” instead of “Hello John.”

Mailshake Email Verification Feature

Mailshake List Cleaning

Whenever you upload a list of recipients, Mailshake will offer to verify all the email addresses. It will let you know how many list-cleaning credits you’ve got and how many you need to purchase if you don’t have enough. If you want to verify all the addresses, you need to check the first box, agreeing to buy the additional 5,000 credits for $10.

Mailshake will run the list cleaning process in the background because it can take some time. Once it’s done, you’ll get a report with the email addresses rated as ok, risky, and bad. A risky address has a higher-than-average probability of bouncing. A bad address is most probably not worth the effort. You can choose whether you want to clean just the addresses that were rated as bad or both the risky and bad ones.

Mailshake Integrations

Besides the email clients we’ve already mentioned, Mailshake can be integrated with three popular CRM tools: 

• Salesforce

• Pipedrive

• HubSpot

You can also integrate Mailshake with the Zapier app, providing you with access to over 2,000 tools to choose from.

How You Can Benefit From White-Label Email Marketing Software

It’s important to note that Mailshake lacks lead generation features. This means that the CSV lists of prospects that you import need to be manually created or generated by another tool.

You’re in luck — we at Sell SaaS have got just what you need. Among our products are three email lookup tools that can help you generate lists of leads. You can upload these lists to Mailshake — or any other email marketing automation tool that suits your business requirements.

With the enrichment data software, you can make the most of our extensive list of B2B domains. Find cold leads according to industry, location, and company size. Extract the list and use it with any email marketing software of your choosing.

Our email, phone & social media extractor extracts email addresses, phone numbers, and social media channel links from lists of domains. If you need to look for specific prospect information according to their first name, last name, and company website, you can try our email finder. Both tools require you to upload a list with the necessary information and enable you to export the results for later use.

Some of the other products we offer include:

The best part of our offer is that all our tools are white-label software. It means that you can brand them and resell them at a price that suits you.

When you partner up with us, you get 60% of all the profits. With every successful sale, you can reach up to earning 80% of the revenue as our Super Master SaaS Partner.