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Email bulk messages are dead - Do this instead
Email is still the best en most used channel for winning new deals. However, few have discovered how to do it. I’ve been bad at it myself for a long time. But I was eager enough to learn all about it. When I discovered what worked and what didn’t, I decided to start a B2B lead generation agency to help others with it. Over the past few years, I’ve used multiple outreach strategies/best practices and tried 30+ different lead gen tools. In this blog I’ll tell you what once worked (but doesn’t anymore) and what does work today. (Make sure you read it to the end, there you will find the best part).
1. Why Email is still the best channel for B2B prospecting
Email is the oldest channel these days and it is a channel that people look at multiple times a day, it will probably stay that way for the next few decades. According to a recent study by ALF Insight, 82 percent of B2B marketers cite email marketing as their top priority and their number one channel investment.
2. Short cuts are tempting. But the results don’t lie.
Everyone is looking for that one ‘Growth Hack’ that will make all the deals ‘magically’ come their way. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Doing the actual work is part of the deal. If you do what everyone else does, you get what everyone else gets. And that looks something like this:
I’m pretty sure this person used an automation tool with {first_name} and {industry} as variables. That worked in 2017, not anymore.
👉 Takeaway 1: there’s nothing wrong with automation tools that do the repetitive tasks for you, as long as they don’t make you lazy. Later in this article I will tell you how to use them correctly.
2.1 Email servers get stricter by the day
To prevent spam, email servers are getting stricter by the day. As everyone knows, email has something like a spam box. If you send a lot of bulk messages, chances are you’ll end up in there. For that reason, the following is very important:
- Having DMARC, DKIM and SPF settings in place properly.
- Warm up your email account properly.
- Sending emails to email addresses that exist so the emails don’t bounce.
- Send emails during the day instead of at the same time.
- Do not send more than 100 emails per day from 1 account.
- Make sure people open your emails and preferably respond to them.
Even LinkedIn makes rules to crack down on spammers
If you’ve been paying attention lately, you might have noticed that LinkedIn is changing its rules on the platform. You used to be able to send 100 connection requests per day, but nowadays you can only send 100 connection requests per week. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about this (for people with a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account, the same applies).
Takeaway 2: These restrictions are game changers in the world of prospecting. Where previously you could settle for sending hundreds of bulk messages and 1% conversion, today you have to come up with a more personalized approach to hit your sales quota.
3. The road to successful B2B outreach campaigns
Okay, now to the fun part. So what works anno 2022? Do you want to get the same reactions as the ones below? Then read on 😉
❗ Disclaimer: the tips I tell you in this chapter work incredibly well. However, they are time consuming, require some in-depth knowledge and you pay for several tools. Fortunately, there is an alternative that applies all these smart strategies and more without the downsides. More on this later in the article.
3.1 Examples of things that worked out quite well
Doing the actually work is hard but pays off. Here are some things that worked out quite well.
3.1.1 Make small lists with decision makers
This pretty much speaks for itself. The more filters you apply in your targeting, the smaller the list becomes. This ensures that you can adjust your message precisely to your target group. I recommend starting with creating your ideal customer profiles, so you are aware of the ‘pain’ and ‘needs’ of your prospect.
Don’t know how to create detailed list of relevant prospects? No worries. Here’s how:
- Start with a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Account and make some small lists with relevant prospects ($100 p/m).
- Subscribe to one of the many LinkedIn automation tools (+/- $50 p/m). Often you can enter your LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search URL here, they will then scrape all contacts from this list. Export the list to a csv file.
- Upload the list in one of the many data-enrichment tools (+/- $80 p/m). These tools can often also find an email address associated with the contact. Now you have a good list
3.1.2 Pretend you are writing to one person
This is a simple but golden tip. Keep the following 2 things in mind:
- Keep your message short and sweet (between 50 and 125 words). Wanting to say too much in one message reveals that you’re sending it to multiple people, and it’s also not conducive to your prospect’s attention span.
- For some reason, we find that we have to adopt a different tone-of-voice when writing to multiple people (often more formal). If you want to increase your response rate, don’t do this.
3.1.3 Make use of personalized images
One of the things that is still very effective is adding personal images as shown in the image below. Some tools (check out Hyperise.com 50$ p/m) allow you to send these automatically via LinkedIn or Email. This way you can quickly highlight something visually or come out of the corner just a little different. Many people will think you spent some time in Canva, just for the ‘effort’ they take the time to read your message.
3.1.4 Personalize the opening paragraph (or preferably more)
Many automation tools allow you to add a [Custom Placeholder] in your CSV file, you can then write a personalized message tailored to the prospect. This can easily increase your response rate by 3x. However, it is a lot of work to do for each prospect.
Fortunately, we live in a world where there is such a thing as AI (Artificial Intelligence). When you see it you can hardly believe it but ‘robots’ are able to write entire outreaches which perfectly matches the prospects needs. How then do you wonder? By scrapping the prospect’s social media channels and website there is enough information for a strong pitch (you wouldn’t do it much differently yourself). More on this in the next chapter 😍.
4. The downside
As I mentioned before: the tips I tell you in this chapter work incredibly well. However, they are time consuming, require in-depth knowledge and you pay for several tools. A bit more on that below.
4.1 Incredibly time-consuming
Good work takes time. How much I’m not going to comment on but write yourself 10 outreaches that suits your prospect his/her needs (based on what you can find online -> website, LinkedIn profile, etc.). Do that X 40 and you know how much time you are spending per month on outreaches (not counting the follow-ups and setting-up the campaigns).
4.2 It requires quite a bit of in-depth knowledge
I’m not exactly sure how good your Growth Hacking skills are but to get the results I showed you earlier, you need to integrate quite a few tools with each other using APIs and webhooks. In addition, to set up the campaigns you need to be able to work with different software systems. And of course your copywriting skills need to be on-point.
4.3 Necessary tooling is expensive
Let’s do the math. (Some costs depend on usage. In my calculation I assumed writing to 400 unique prospects per month).
5. Can AI be the solution?
Okay, I already know the answer to this question (Yes!). But I bring up the topic anyway because for a long time I myself couldn’t believe that AI would be to the point where it could write high quality outreaches (and even better than an average sales rep. can).
I had to see it 3 times before I believed it. Not much later Steven, Robin and I started Luna (An AI tool that writes mind blowing cold emails, for you) which I tell all about in the next chapter.
6. The start of Luna and our roadmap so far
Business Owners and SDRs love Luna for winning more deals. Why? Luna applies all the strategies I’ve mentioned in this article. However, you don’t have to be a Growth Hacker to use Luna. Anyone is able to use it because the heavyweight is done in the backend, all you have to do is approve, modify or disapprove Luna’s suggestions. Watch the video under heading 6.3 to find out more.
6.1 When an illusion becomes a vision
Steven and I (Jean-Paul), ran a Digital Sales Agency for B2B companies for several years. The strategies we used, I have explained in this article. Although we learned a lot from running the agency, it was never our plan to do this forever. It simply wasn’t scalable enough. Really helping a lot of people, with their B2B lead generation, can only be done through a software product.
Not a software product like the many other sales tools. They are often too complicated to use and outdated in terms of what they can do. It was time for something completely different.
Fortunately we knew Robin (The best developer on planet Earth) from working on another project. When we presented our vision to him, he was immediately convinced and from that day on he started coding (in machine-mode).
Luna (Means ‘Moon’ in Latin. Referring to our favorite slogan “To the moon”).
6.2 The only prospect tool you need for getting the job done
The picture below describes enough. These are tools you no longer need if you use Luna. Basically, Luna is everything you need to prospect successfully. In case you want to keep all your conversations and deals up-to-date in your CRM -> Then use our native integrations with Hubspot and Pipedrive, or use Zapier and connect Luna with over 5000 tools.
6.3 Where we are today
Watch this 90-second promo video and you’ll know where we stand today.
6.4 Our roadmap. Stay tuned.
Fortunately, technology never stands still and the possibilities are endless. We always want to stay ahead of the curve so you can get the most out of your outreaches with just a few clicks a day. That is why we continue to improve our product on a daily basis. See our roadmap below and feel free to add an idea.
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Quality over quantity in cold outreach
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© Utopian, Inc. 2022. All Rights Reserved.
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© Utopian, Inc. 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Download the Luna app