Scalable email templates that feel like personalized one-on-one messages

How Miller Lite Invented a New Beer Category Leveraging “The Art of The Pitch”

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I recently met Keith Cutler, the principal of KC Marketing Group LLC a few months ago in New York at a sales conference we both sat on the panel of. I was especially impressed with Keith’s insights and wide range of sales and marketing experiences, and so I asked him for an interview.

Keith works closely with companies to fine-tune their brand positioning and messaging, recruit top talent, and generate revenue through integrated marketing platforms and strategic partnerships. During his 25+ years in sports marketing/media, Cutler has held senior positions at USA TODAY, Turner Sports and CBS. Keith Cutler is also an executive recruiter for MiCa Sports Executive Search, and is able to tap into his vast network to recruit top-tier talent.

In addition, Keith Cutler is an instructor at General Assembly (a school for tech/design entrepreneurs), teaching his unique brand of business development called “Sales Bootcamp: The Art of The Pitch”.

art of pitch

HEATHER: What was the most effective sales or marketing campaign you’ve ever seen and why?

KEITH: Probably a campaign that I worked on in the 80’s for Miller Lite, the #1 light beer. Their slogan was: “Tastes Great, Less Filling.” This remarkable one-liner created the light beer category, and vaulted Miller Lite to #1 (#2) in brand sales along with the Budweiser brand.

So Miller had bought a diet beer, but no guy wanted to drink a diet beer. They tried to get men to drink it, and they wouldn’t. This campaign worked because taste was important, and the psychology was, if it’s less filling, you can drink more Miller Lite.

We used former athletes to push the campaign. My goal was to create as many marketing programs with these former athletes and celebs (known as “Miller Lite All-Stars”) as possible, and the overall national campaign was a juxtaposition where “these big guys show their softer side.” We made sure we covered all major athletes in all major sports across all regions of the country, and we promoted these athletes mostly in the regions where they were known, unless they were national figures. We brought them to key Miller Lite  point of sale locations—e.g. bars, restaurants, supermarkets, etc.—we also took them to tailgate parties and other events to autograph cases of beer, and the fans went nuts and bought more beer than ever.

art of pitch

HEATHER:  How did you get these athletes to endorse this campaign?

KEITH: It was a joint effort, but really it was a good endorsement deal that (upon their retirement from pro sports) made most of them even more famous. Take John Madden for example. He was one of our spokesmen then. Today, he’s even more popular as a TV/football analyst and is the name/face of one of the most popular sports videogames—back in the 80’s he was a very successful coach, but the Miller Lite campaign vaulted him to greater popularity as a corporate spokesman. Once a guy retires from professional sports, he’s mostly forgotten. Any realistic athlete understands this, so what we did was expand their career in the limelight, and these guys loved it.

art of the pitch john madden style

HEATHER: What are the most common mistakes companies make with their sales messaging?

KEITH: Probably when companies focus more on themselves, their origin and leadership rather than why they’re there, what the customer needs and why the customer should care. I see many pitches that say “we have XYZ product, and this was created by my great leader/guru,” and they keep going with that. Instead, they should be telling customers what they have, why I need it, what benefits are in it for my company, and just get to the point.

Thinking that you (or your company) are more important than your prospects (or customers) is a huge mistake.

HEATHER: How do you think sales has changed in the last 10 years?

KEITH: Technology. Yes, now there’s multiple ways to connect to a customer, and multiple ways for a customer to connect to you. But technology has become both a blessing and a curse; just as there are more ways to connect, there are now more ways for them to ignore you.

Today business is remote, and too many of our business interactions occur by twitter, text and social. With all these channels, it’s really easy for your message to get lost in the noise and for (prospective) customers to ignore you.

HEATHER: So how do you deal with these communication changes?

KEITH: Technology means things are done less in person, so it can be more efficient, but you can easily get lost in a sea of digital noise. You have to find the most effective way to communicate with each person. It could be a generational or cultural thing, but you need to try to find out how each prospect prefers to be communicated to, and by which means. If I don’t have a sense, I will just call them.

HEATHER: I think most people leverage technology in the wrong way and forget that their sales message still needs to be personal and feel human. When I write my cold email campaigns for clients I always use the kind of language that you’d use in a letter to a relative or friend. Obviously I make things more formal and appropriate as needed, but it’s important to use first person communication and focus on the person you’re emailing more than yourself as much as possible.

KEITH: Absolutely.  That’s the good thing about social—there’s a lot of information about prospective clients out there—if you can just find one common connection (not necessarily a mutual connection) you’re ahead. Even something like noticing that your colleges were in the same region of the U.S. or sports conference, even that can offer a bridge. I used to live in SF, so when I talk to people in the Bay Area, I might say “Is restaurant XYZ still on Van Ness?” If you do your research, you can breakdown the barrier, and get prospects more interested in spending a few minutes with you.

HEATHER: What are a few things salespeople can do to improve their sales pitch?

KEITH:

  1. Take I and me out of your sales pitch, and make it all about your customer.
  2. Make the pitch short and simple. Time is your customer’s most valuable currency. You only have a few minutes to get to the point and quickly address their needs. If you can do this, they’re in. If you’re pitching me, I usually don’t care about you, your leader or company origin (unless any of those are relevant to me, or what I need from you)—I mostly care about how you’re going to help me, and that you can do it quickly. If you do this, you’ve won my interest and my time, and now you can try to win my trust.
  3. Tailor your message to your medium.” That means focusing your message on your audience—make it relevant.
  4. Sales storytelling is not one-size fits all. If you have a compelling story, don’t bury the lede! You can reinforce your main point, and might be able to use it as a hook if it is relevant to your sales pitch. But just because you have a story doesn’t mean you should tell it to everyone either. Tailor your message to your audience and focus on their pain points.

How to Write Cold Emails that Pack a Punch

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How often do you actually read a cold email all the way through?

Most emails are a struggle to read all the way through, either because  they’re too long, boring or fail to offer any real nuggets of valuable information. Since cold email is my business, I read through almost every cold email in my inbox, though mostly out of curiosity rather than genuine interest.

This week’s cold email critique focuses on how to write persuasive emails that grab your prospects’ attention and keep them reading until the end.

Research shows if you can get your prospect to read just 25% of your marketing copy, they’ll likely read the whole thing. Since successful cold emails should average between 2-5 sentences, you have to make every sentence count. If your opening sentence isn’t attention-grabbing, your prospects will hit delete before they ever reach your call to action.

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How To Hook Your Prospects With Language That Packs A Punch

Can you work 10 times more hours or 10 times harder than you’re working now? The reality is that there are companies and departments that are 10 times bigger than yours, and you know they aren’t working 10 times harder than you are.

The opening sentence of your cold email is key because it sets the tone for the rest of your email. The goal is to draw your prospects in and entice them to keep reading.

This opening line is ineffective because it lacks a dynamic punch. It’s not engaging and it definitely doesn’t make me want to read further. Repeating the number 10 over and over isn’t clever; it’s distracting. Trying to be cute can backfire and confuse your message. So make sure that your language is clear and neat. You don’t want your prospects asking, “10 what again?”

Pro Tip #1: Cold emails should be the beginning of a conversation between you and your prospects. Start by asking a question to get your prospects thinking. While this email poses a question, it’s too long winded to provide any real impact.

Instead a better first sentence would be:

“What’s holding you back from scaling {!Company}’s sales process to the next level?”

cold emails that pack a punch

Why Crafting Clear Emails Evokes Emotion

Imagine what it would be like if you were suddenly thrust into managing or running a $50 billion company. Do CEOs of giant corporations have more hours in the day than you do? Of course not. But they do need to masters of this crucial competency: time management.

Your cold email should always provide a clear benefit for your prospects. Being too general about your product is a great way to lose your prospects. This email is so vague I can’t even tell what the product is, or how it would benefit me. My only clue to what they do is some obscure reference to time management, which is too generic to catch my interest.

If they’re a product management tool for salespeople, they could instead say:

“By removing frictions in sales workflow, we helped [client X] save the time-cost of 1 sales rep for every 4 sales people.”

Pro Tip #2: Instead of having a long block of text, create one sentence that illustrates your product’s biggest benefit in a way that your prospects can relate to.

cold email leave them hanging

(Rovenko Photography)

Don’t Write Cold Emails that Leave Your Prospects Hanging In the Wind

“Once you understand the time management secrets of running a multibillion-dollar company, you’ll have no trouble managing your sales activities, if you’re in sales, or getting your company or department to function as its maximum productivity.

[link]”

One of the worst cold email mistakes is failing to include a call to action. When crafting your cold email you need to have a specific goal in mind. Just as your entire email’s copy reinforces and leads up to that, your call to action should close the loop with your goal.

What does this person want me to do? Just click a link, or do they want me to contact them? What incentive do I have to click this link? You definitely don’t want your prospects reading through your email and thinking, “now what?”

Simply including a link without explaining the benefit of it or giving a clear and persuasive call to action is a cold email fail.

Pro Tip #3: I generally dislike including links and attachments in cold emails, especially if they are the first few interactions you have with the prospect. Save your marketing materials for a drip campaign, white papers or company blog. But if you do include links, be sure to incentivize the recipient to click or open the content with a strong benefit like this:

“Watch this video to learn 3 easy tips that will help {!Company} improve its sales activities management.”

One Thing You Must Cut Out of Your Cold Emails

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cut your cold email

How long are your cold emails?

If you can’t answer this question in 3 seconds your emails are too long.

The average length of my cold email is 3 sentences long. Some of my most successful emails were only 2 sentences, and I rarely write emails with more than 5 sentences.

Today people have the attention span of gerbils and barely enough time to chug a shot of espresso, so you can’t expect prospects to read an email that resembles the length of marketing’s latest white paper. Because every sentence counts, it’s important to remove weak language whenever possible and consolidate words and phrases that aren’t helping you persuade the prospect to respond.

This cold email critique is the second piece of a two-part critique on this email submitted by a reader just like you:

cold email critique 3

How to Cut Redundancies from Your Emails: Avoid the Obvious

“ Obviously, getting signups for demos of [!COMPANY] is super important to your team. I made a personal video going over a few ideas on increasing demo signups with a/b testing. [link]“

If you want your emails to actually be read and your call to action to work, you need to make your emails as short as possible. Cut them to the bare essentials, and then cut some more.

Don’t tell your prospects what they already know. It weighs down your email and distracts from your core message. Yes, demos signups are important, but what the text of this email doesn’t say is a preview of “how this product/service will help increase your customers’ demo numbers.”

I somewhat like the fact that the sender included a personalized video, but you can’t assume that your prospects will actually click your link and watch your video to understand your main benefits. In fact, they are especially unlikely to click on your link if your email doesn’t offer them new interesting and valuable insights. Your cold email needs to give your prospect a quick preview of how you will solve their problems and benefit them. The video can reinforce this or go into deeper detail of your business, but you can’t exclude this from your email just because you include a video link.

How Much Value Should You Give Away In Your Email?

“ In the video, I go over a few ideas that you can implement right away with. I also explain a system I’ve created to help busy teams automate the process of getting fresh a/b tests live every month.

If you like the video and think this is something your team might be interested in, just shoot me a quick reply.”

I appreciate that the sender has designed a video that gives a few quick actionable nuggets specific to their prospect.  Giving away a small amount of value can help build rapport and credibility, and can be very effective with a laser-focused list of prospects.

However, there is a fine line between giving enough value to entice your prospects and giving away too much too soon. If this salesperson is getting high click rate on an embedded video with a low response rate, then they can assume that either:

  1. Their list is not targeted enough.
  2. The video is not interesting or enticing enough to their prospects.
  3. They’re giving too much value away without leaving enough allure for a call.
  4. All of the above.

Any video or article you add should only be treated as a teaser that will further pique your prospects’ interest and entice them to request a call.

While I can’t share the link to the actual video with you because this is anonymous, I can say that the video is too long (~4.5 minutes) and doesn’t have a lot of enthusiasm. Like the email, I would cut the video down and only mention a few main points that the prospect could use for improving their business.

In both cases the Call-to-Action needs to be improved.

The email’s last sentence is weak and passive. Instead it should say something like, “I have another idea that I think can double {!Company}’s conversion rate that worked well with {!Client}. When can we connect for a quick call so I can share this with you?”

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Stay tuned for next weeks’ cold email critique! We welcome your submissions for the “worst cold email,” but we’d also love to anonymously critique your cold emails. For submitting emails for critique or requesting cold email consultations for your business, please email haley (at) salesfolk (dot) com.

How to Write an Email That Will Never Be Ignored

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email seduction

On a scale of 1 to 10, how persuasive and interesting do you think your cold emails are?

Your cold email is fighting to claim attention over team emails, hilarious newsletters and notes from friends and family. No matter how cool you or your business are, if your email scores less than an 8, you’re not going to be seeing many replies.

This week’s cold email critique is all about mastering persuasion and building rapport in 4 sentences or less. Pay attention to this advice if you want to learn to write persuasive emails that get forwarded and reopened dozens of times.

cold email critique 3

Why Personalizing Your Cold Email’s First Sentence Works So Well

“I came across you guys through your blog article on Twitter lead gen cards and it helped me a ton as I was building a campaign recently (love the zapier trick you guys use).”

Sending out impersonal mass emails to random contacts is a waste of time and money. You need to speak to your prospects in a way that conveys that you understand their business and pain points. Brownie points usually go to salespeople who seem like they’ve really done their homework.

We like this cold email’s first sentence because it adds specific information relevant to their prospect in a natural and conversational tone. It frames the sender’s reason for connecting nicely while also complimenting the reader in a way that establishes rapport. Anything that indicates to the reader that you’re a potential client, fan or business partner will help you win points.

Takeaways from the first sentence of this email:

  1. Write a customized sentence or use phrase to make your reader feel that the email is a personal one-on-one interaction rather than one of your thousands of prospects.
  2. Use a conversational tone with words like “I” and “you” instead of indirect language like “The SaaS industry is growing…” Also be sure to focus on them more than you.
  3. Establish rapport with flattery and the potential to be helpful to the prospect’s business.

How to Stroke Your Prospect’s Ego Through Email

“I also noticed you guys are using Optimizely for a/b testing.This means your ahead of the curve as far as optimization goes. “

The second sentence does an okay job of admiring the prospect. I appreciate this approach, as it also shows they have done their homework and have a good understanding of their audience. However, I would condense both sentences to say something like this instead:

“I noticed you’re using Optimizely for A/B testing, which means you’re already ahead of the analytics curve for most SaaS companies.”

I didn’t change much, but tightening the language and strengthening the comparison between the prospect’s company and the industry makes it stronger and more persuasive.

Also, please do be careful of typos and grammar errors in your email copy. Here “your” is used when “you’re” should be used. Little mistakes don’t bother everyone, but sometimes they do burn your chances of getting a call by signaling incompetence or lack of intelligence. If you’re not a native-English speaker or not comfortable with your editing skills, get someone to look at your copy before you start your cold email campaigns.

We’ll continue the rest of this cold email critique in our next post.

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Stay tuned for next weeks’ cold email critique! We welcome your submissions for the “worst cold email,” but we’d also love to anonymously critique your cold emails. For submitting emails for critique or requesting cold email consultations for your business, please email haley (at) salesfolk (dot) com.

 

Why 99% of Your Cold Emails Get Deleted Immediately

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cold email in trash

Have you ever received a cold email that was so completely wrong and untargeted, you wondered how it ever wound up in your inbox?

As a cold email specialist, nothing makes me sadder than emails that lack an attention to detail. Sending cold emails addressed to the wrong name, or trying to sell me a product that isn’t even closely relevant to my business, is a waste of my time and yours. Outbound prospecting is incredibly effective, but if you’re not going to do your homework on your prospects, you shouldn’t be spending time and money on outbound.

Blasting out untargeted emails indiscriminately is only making yourself look like an obnoxious spammer.

Doing your homework doesn’t mean writing one-on-one emails for every prospect though either. In the era of mail merges, big data and predictive analytics, it’s easier than ever for you to write customized email templates that leverage the rich information in your database. How do you expect to gain your prospect’s trust and confidence from a cold email if you can’t even take the time to understand their business and send them a relevant message?

I’m on a crusade to save your inboxes from bad emails.

If you haven’t guessed already, this week my cold email critique focuses on the mistake of poor email targeting and segmenting.

Pay attention so your emails make it past the trash folder!

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Cold Email Mistake #1:“Reconnecting” with Someone You’ve Definitely Never Met

“I understand you’ve connected with us in the past, at which point you might’ve been exploring *****. I wanted to circle back,”

It’s fine to reconnect with potential customers that have shown interest in your company or product in the past, but make sure your prospects have actually reached out to you before.

I’ve never connected with this company, and I definitely haven’t been exploring any of their products.  I’m not sure where they retrieved my contact information from, but considering they didn’t even use my name correctly, it was probably scraped or bought from a random list.

While social engineering and hitting people from a conference list sometimes works, there is a right way and a shady disingenuous way to do it. If you’re going to “reconnect” with a prospect, make sure that your information is coming directly from that stack of business cards on your desk or from your company’s database.

Screwing this up risks turning off your prospects from your business entirely.

stranger cold email

COLD EMAIL PRO TIP #1: If you are trying to target prospects you’ve never met from an event list or other source, you should email them saying something like,

“It looks like I missed you at {!Conference}. I had hoped we could have met because I really wanted to learn more about {!Company}’s business and how you’re scaling your sales team.

I have an idea that I think could dramatically increase {!Company}’s sales productivity that I’d like to share with you. The same idea helped {!Client} double their sales revenue in Q3.

When do you have time for a quick call?

Cold Email Mistake #2: Poorly Targeted Prospecting List

“Perhaps we can schedule some time to detail ******’s added capabilities from a technical perspective and see if they align with the business issues you’re looking to solve?”

The goal of your cold email campaigns is to reach prospects that you’ve never met to set an appointment for a call or demo. However, if you’re blasting out messages from a broadly or untargeted list you won’t be very effective. Sending out mass emails from random lists is like throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it will stick.

Don’t blindly ask your prospect what their issues are; it’s lazy. Although it’s acceptable to ask questions related to their pain points, it’s your responsibility to have an understanding of your buyer persona’s pain point and needs before you build your email campaign. Effective cold emails should demonstrate that you understand your prospects’ problems and how to solve them. This is how you build trust and credibility.

Unless you already have a highly targeted list with a laser focus, sending the same email to all your prospects is lazy and will burn valuable contacts. It’s important to filter your list by the buyer personas and build your email campaigns to be relevant to each persona. Sending the same email to a VP of Sales as a CTO probably doesn’t make sense. At best, you’ll end up with one highly effective email and another that is entirely ineffective, but chances are your emails won’t be very effective for either persona if you were too lazy to personalize your message to the recipient.

missed target cold email

COLD EMAIL PRO TIP #2: Build detailed buyer/customer personas before creating your email campaign to ensure that you’ve created a persuasive personalized message.  Put yourself in your prospects shoes.

PS: If you’d like to learn more about cold email best practices or would like to have your own email critiqued, please join me with RingLead and their CEO Donato on for a webinar on Thursday November 20th at 2pm EST.

As always, if you have some terrible cold emails sitting around in your inbox that you’d like to share with me to anonymously critique, please shoot an email to Haley (at) Salesfolk (dot) com.  (If you’re up for it, I’ll even give you a free critique of your own email on here anonymously!)

 

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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