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Why Half-Assed Emails Kill Your Brand

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Do you want to achieve predictable revenue growth for your company’s sales in 2015?

One of the easiest and most certain ways to do that is to learn to build and deploy effective outbound email campaigns. Research from Marketing Profs, Inside Sales and countless other sources will all tell you that outbound email is still the most powerful tool for generating revenue.

As an email expert for B2B sales, I’m a big fan of outbound email, but only when it is done the right way.  In fact, screwing up your cold email campaigns can actually be brand suicide and tarnish your company’s reputation as an obnoxious spammer.

B2B companies selling premium services and products need to make sure their marketing and sales efforts signal their high quality.  In other words, if you’re selling to people in the C-suite you better be sure your outbound email campaign makes you feel like a specialty brand like “Whole Foods” instead of something generic like “Wal-Mart.”

Outbound Email

Why People Screw Up Their Outbound Email Campaigns

The most common reason that people send out terrible email campaigns is that they’re desperately hurrying and looking for a “silver bullet” solution.

I see this scenario all the time. Sometimes it’s because businesses are in a hurry to make their revenue numbers to appease investors and board members, or maybe they’re trying to hit targets in order to raise a new round or not run out of cash.

While I’m glad these companies are looking at cold email as a predictable way to scale their sales revenue, they regularly sabotage their outbound efforts by trying to cut corners.  Oftentimes these companies don’t have a clear picture of which prospects their emails are targeting, and so they also don’t really understand their sales prospects’ needs either. The result is usually building subpar untargeted prospect lists and crappy cold email copy; neither of which will lead to a successful outbound email campaign.

How to Avoid Ruining Your Brand with Bad Outbound Email Campaigns

Before you go wild blasting out thousands of cold emails from an untargeted list you bought from Data.com please consider these 3 basic questions:

  1.     Which personas are you targeting? (What are their titles, what industries do they come from, and what’s their revenue size?)
  2.     What are the pain points of each of these personas? (What annoys them and what do they fear?)
  3.     How can you solve these peoples’ problems? (What benefits does your product or service offer them? List out the benefits from each of your value propositions.)

These 3 questions are the difference between running a successful outbound campaign that can generate dozens of sales calls and having your domain blacklisted as a spammer. If you can’t take the time to answer them, you shouldn’t be doing outbound.  Otherwise you’re just sending your prospects irrelevant and uninteresting emails, and that’s a waste of your time and theirs.

3 Outbound Email Tips That Will Get You Dozens of Qualified Leads

1. Research Your Prospects Before You Even Build Your List

Answering the 3 questions above is the first step to understanding how to create an effective outbound email campaign that your prospects will actually respond to. The more research you do, the better your outbound emails will be.

Some tips for your outbound research to get started:

  • See what your competitors are doing. Check out their website, read their blog and sign up for their email newsletters from an alternate email account.
  • Research at least 3 real examples from your prospect list on Linkedin. What do these people have in common?
  • Talk to your existing customers who fit your prospects’ buyer profiles to better understand their needs.
  • Check with Google and popular news sites to see what’s trending or hot in your industry right now to see what people care about.

2. Build a High Quality Laser Targeted List

The best outbound email campaigns build highly targeted lists that have less obvious commonalities. Instead of just grabbing a list from Data.com based on titles, industry and company size you might want to try to find other ways you can group your prospects together.

Here are a few ways I recommend for building better lists:

  • Do a Linkedin job search to see which companies that are hiring for specific roles similar to your product or service and build your list from there.
  • Search for lists of speakers or attendees from relevant conferences and events.
  • Have an intern, Odesk worker or SDR visit the websites of your existing targeted list and search for client or partner logos to expand your list.

3. Don’t Send the Same Lame, Generic Template to All Your Prospects!

Please, please, please do NOT send everyone the same identical email!

Ideally you should write unique email campaigns for each of your unique buyer personas from your list of prospects. However, if your prospects are similar enough you might be able to differentiate the copy enough with enough custom inserts built into the email copy.

Every cold email you send should have it’s own unique benefits, and only focus on one main value proposition per email.

All I Want for Christmas is A Cold Email that Doesn’t Suck!

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Have your cold emails been naughty or nice this year?

Most of the cold emails I see use the same stale and outdated formula: who’s the right person to talk to, and all the stuff their product can do.

The problem with these untargeted emails are that they are too long, too boring and too self-focused. My email critique this week focuses on 2 cold emails that rock. These emails are exciting, unique, and both have a response rate of 6-7%.

Here are 5 tactics taken from Adam Semien’s cold emails for Edgecase that will make your emails get better open and response rates this winter.

Pay attention if you want your emails to make it on my nice list!

adam good cold email 1

Cold Email Takeaway # 1: Write an Eye Catching Subject Line

“ Subject: Help finding a v-neck shift dress​ ”

Creative subject lines have the best chance of getting your cold emails opened. This is how you set yourself apart from the sea of emails in your prospects’ inbox.

Writing subject lines that ask to connect to the right person or promise to double your prospects’ business are gimmicky and turn readers off.

This subject line got a 38% open rate because it’s interesting but still relevant to the product. Don’t be afraid to do a little social engineering to get your prospects’ attention as long as you can connect it back to a sales conversation in a natural way.

Cold Email Takeaway #2: Focus on Your Prospects’ Biggest Problem

“ When I browse {{company}} site, I can sort through your dresses by an array of filters, but a lot of the criteria listed doesn’t matter to me as a shopper. “

Your prospects don’t care about your product; they only care if your product or service can solve their pains. Do your homework before you start a cold email campaign so you understand each buyer persona’s pain points.

This sentence is amazing because instead of saying something direct like, “{!Company}’s site has a poor user experience that is costing it e-commerce checkouts,” it conveys the buyer’s problem through a quick anecdote. And this is much more powerful and relevant to the prospect. Making your prospect think about their problems is the first step in convincing them that you might be the one to solve them.

Cold Email Takeaway #3: Give Your Prospects A Taste of Their Dream Solution

“ This is where Edgecase can help. Edgecase helps retailers create a simple and engaging product discovery experience that drives CVR and keeps your shoppers coming back.”

Instead of trying to list all the features of their product, Adam starts getting into the solution of how Edgecase can now solve the prospects’ pain points. This sentence could be improved with social proof and specific statistics from client case studies, but it’s still pretty good. It gets the point fast and demonstrates what Edgecase service does and how it will benefit the prospect.

I would potentially change “engaging product discovery experience” to something more tangible and spell out “CVR” as to make everything crystal clear though.

prospect

Cold Email Takeaway #4: Have a Conversation With Your Prospects, Not a Monologue!

“ I’m looking for an oversized sofa (at least 4 seats) for my living room, that’s dog and kid friendly, not leather, and has a modern look. “

Bad cold emails throw a bunch of facts at their prospects. Great cold emails start a conversation. I like Adam’s email because it’s engaging, conversational, and highly relevant to most e-commerce companies (the details of this sentence can be changed to fit different industries). I would probably make it a little bit shorter and more condensed, but overall I like the conversational tone.

Using a conversational tone instead of a salesy one makes your emails more human and trustworthy. The more personalization you add to your cold emails, the higher chances you have of getting a response.

Cold Email Takeaway #5: Demonstrate Your Value With Social Proof

“ {!Client X, Y & Z} have bought into Edgecase’s approach of humanized product discovery and after reviewing your site, I’m sure we can help you too. ”

Interacting with a stranger is scary and risky, so you have to build enough credibility to remove their doubts. Even if you can offer them amazing services, how do they know you’re not a crook or weirdo? Case studies and testimonials are great at breaking down your prospects’ skepticism by demonstrating that you can drive results for other companies.

Make it easier for your prospects to say yes to talking to you.

The more tangible the results of your case study are, the better. Including specific numbers or statistics in your case study sentence makes this even more credible. (Remember this sentence should be true, and not falsified or you risk your reputation if caught!)

Thanks again to Adam Semien, the Director of Market Development at Edgecase, for writing this awesome email and sharing it with us! …Happy Holidays!

scary santa

How Linkedin’s InMail Policy Change Affects Your Outbound Sales

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In January Linkedin is changing their InMail policy. In case you haven’t heard already, here are the changes:

“InMail credits will be returned for every response, rather than for no response: InMail messages that get any response (Reply or Not Interested) from a recipient within 90 days will be credited back to you. If you don’t get a response within 90 days, however, the InMail credit will not be replaced.

More monthly InMail credits: Each month you’ll get 15 InMail messages (versus 10 before) so you can reach more people.

InMail accrual: Unused InMail credits will continue to accrue for 90 days so you can choose the right time to reach out.”

Why has LinkedIn recently reversed their original policy for InMail credits to give refunds for responses instead of for unread messages like before?

Isn’t it obvious? Linkedin and everyone on the platform are damn tired of all the lame spam InMail clogging up their Linkedin inboxes.

linkedin inmail policy change ahead

Why Linkedin’s Inmail Policy Is Changing Now

Originally Linkedin made people pay for their InMails only based on performance (you pay for a Inmail credits and only use them if you get a response), which encouraged people to reach out to anyone. This was a reasonable strategy of monetization for Linkedin in its earlier days when they needed to engage more people on their platform, but over time it created a low bar for substandard untargeted messages that spammed all our Linkedin inboxes.

Linkedin has reached enough critical mass in their platform where they can begin to start thinking about how to regulate quality, and so they’re making the first steps to disincentivize InMail spammers. Instead they will now be rewarding InMail senders who actually do manage to solicit responses, and penalizing the spammers by making them pay for every message that doesn’t get a reply.

Linkedin is increasing the number of monthly InMail credits they give you to make this initial change somewhat smoother and to fight backlash against the change in policy. They’re introducing a rollover plan to let companies that are sending more effective Linkedin messages accrue credits as another incentive to take the time and effort to create more thoughtful InMail.

How Linkedin’s Policy Change for Inmail Will Affect Your Outbound Sales

While response rate is usually somewhat of a vanity metric for regular cold email, if you’re paying for every InMail message that someone doesn’t reply to, your response rate really matters.

If you were relying on Linkedin’s Inmail messages before to reach your prospects you probably need to rethink your outreach strategy.  Here’s some economic-based strategies for how your outbound sales strategy should confront this new policy change:

  1. If you had a good response rate to your InMail messages before, you should actually ramp up the volume of InMails you are sending. their strategy because it will now be cheaper for them to connect with customers than before since they won’t be paying for responses.
  2. If you were sending InMails, but getting a low response rate it’s time to rethink your strategy before it becomes a huge loss leader for you.
    1. If you want to get a better response rate, you probably need to become way more targeted and selective with who you’re targeting on Linkedin, and take the time to craft much more personalized and targeted messages.
    2. You should also think about simplifying your messages to solicit a basic response rather than trying to get someone on the phone. You can do this by asking an intelligent but easy to answer question like: “I really enjoyed your post on cold emails. What do you think about the new change in Linkedin’s InMail policy, and how will it effect {!Company}’s outbound sales?”
  3. If you weren’t sending InMail much before, but generally have a good success rate with getting your cold email responses, you should probably think about leveraging InMail with the new policy because you don’t pay for replies.
    1. Think about this: if you can get a 28% response rate with your cold email, creating an even more targeted list of prospects on Linkedin that you would like to reach via inMail may get you even higher response rates when they can instantly put a face and profile to your message. (Test it out to see the difference and do the math)

What’s Next for Outbound Sales with Linkedin InMail and Other Social Channels?

Just like the tragedy of the commons for natural resources like fish caused by overfishing, as time moves on and social platforms become increasingly inundated with unsolicited messages, the following could likely occur:

  1. As more untargeted messages flood our social accounts, we will become more numb to these messages as the level of untargeted spam continues to increase, resulting in both:
    1. the open rates of all InMail messages decreasing, thus decreasing response rate, especially for spammy untargeted messages
    2. less reliance on InMail by smart prospectors who will seek other channels for outreach, but those who are successful with it will continue to use it until effectiveness decreases substancially
  2. This will continue until it either:
    1. dilutes the value of the communication channels of that particular platform
    2. or the regulators of that platform decide to regulate and disincentivize against spam to maintain the integrity of the quality of their users’ interactions

I suspect this is only Linkedin’s first measure against fighting the bombardment of low quality InMail messages in our inboxes, and anticipate more efforts to prevent untargeted valueless messages in the future.

Be a goat, not a sheep!

We always strive to create captivating copy that is unique, actionable and adds value to prospects’ lives.

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