ℹ️ ⛳ Key points: Based on what we learned from your existing customer base, we’ve been able to create your perfect global target market.
On top of that, we now also have an outbound-oriented segmentation into this market to leverage the best icebreakers (alibis) to get answers.
But how can you write emails that get replies? How do you manage internally all the aspects of a great outbound campaign? What are the main mistakes to avoid?
🛠️ What you’ll need:
- You’ve done Chapter 5 so you should have all tabs in the template sheet done until 16_Messaging_Outbound_Map.
- A cup of coffee.
🔥 What you’ll get at the end of this chapter:
- Tips to get replies and launch your campaign tomorrow.
- A keynote template to explain and launch outbound at your own company.
- A clear understanding of expected results and how to progress per quarter.
- Answers to the most frequently asked (good) questions about outbound in 2023.
- Some template slides to prevent GDPR issues.
- A proven 30-day outbound sequence template.
⏳ Estimated work time: 3h
Opening Statement
⭕ TL;DR: We want a long-term, scientific way of getting great meetings for your sales.
People scrape contacts with nets on Linkedin and shoot a series of 3 emails. That’s it.
Does it work? Nope.
Because outbound & account-based marketing is not about scrapping a few contacts and clicking “start a campaign” into any cold-email-sending tool.
As we saw, it’s first all about market analysis, customer knowledge, segmentation, and relevant contact alibis.
Then you need to be able to generate answers with your campaign.
Again, there are some scientific tactics you can use right now to achieve this goal and some mistakes you can avoid.
Here are 20 of the most important Q&As regarding all these topics. Are you ready?
Let’s go!
1. Where can I find valid emails?
As seen in Chapter 4 or 5, one of Captain Data's secret sauces is “Email Cascade”.
There are so many email providers on the market: DropContact, ColdCRM, Hunter, FreshCRM, Lusha, Apollo…
Depending on the decision-makers you want to target, your country, language, all of these tools can have slightly different results.
Some are better than others (DropContact is our favorite) but the difficulty remains to test all of these tools to maximize your email validity.
Hopefully, the Email Cascade automation by Captain Data lets you combine multiple email finders to increase your chance to find a B2B email.
You can use this workflow alone or as seen before, it is plugged natively into the best lead generation Captain Data workflows. i.e. this one.
2. How can I maintain a good domain reputation for my company?
It’s a fear shared by all companies doing outbound. Hopefully, here are some key things you can do not to damage your domain reputation:
- Monitor bounce rate (cf. Question 3).
- Increase email validity (cf. Question 1).
- Use auto warm-up tools such as Lemwarm by Lemlist.
3. What is a good bounce rate?
0 would be the best, of course, but <5% is what you want.
4. What about GDPR?
GDPR does not prevent you from sending cold emails to companies you want to work with.
Hopefully 🙂
Here are however the 6 things you need to do/respect to ensure GDPR-Compliant B2B Cold Emails:
- Always add an unsubscribe link to your email
- Your company address is in your email signature
- You’re sending emails to relevant people in the company based on what you offer.
It is called legitimate interest and that’s the key paragraph in the GDPR law text granting you the right to do cold-emailing. It’s very simple. If you sell HR software, you can target HR decision-makers.
No problem. But if you sell an uptime-monitoring SaaS for dev ops and send an email to the Head of Sales, you’re out of the GDPR permissions.
- Your yearly delete data from contacts that did not show any interest
- As soon as a prospect asks to be removed from our communications, you remove him from all of your databases within 7 days. You also know where it comes from thanks to custom tracking in your CRM system.
Build some short slides right now to explain how you handle this data privacy stake into your outbound strategy.
It is very unlikely you’ll get controlled, but if so, the main thing is all about proving good faith.
Here’s your quick free template.
Build your very own right now, you just need to replace {{Company.Name}} with your very own Company Name.
5. What tool should I be using to send cold emails?
To keep it brief, we’d advise you to use 3 tools:
- Lemlist
- Reply.io
- WoodPecker
Lemlist is the #1 choice to get things running quickly.
6. When should I scrape contact data? How often?
Very good question!
The issue here is about email validity.
If you scrape all the decision-makers right now and launch campaigns all throughout the year, it is very likely that some of them would have left the company you were first targeting.
So do your scraping with Captain Data for each batch of campaigns and make sure to remove bounced emails after each campaign.
7. How can I write an email that gets replies?
🎯 The goal with all these tips is to write your very own cold email for the first campaign you’ll be launching. Good luck!
And we won't lie to you. This is a vast topic. It’s a long-term training and expertise but here are some top-notch tips:
Remember this tab “16_Messaging_Outbound_Map” in your Google Sheet?
It’s all there. You need to craft short and clear emails based on all this information.
Before writing an email, you can write down a quick recap of all the icebreakers you can leverage in your target audience i.e. a summary of who you’re writing to. Make sure to use everything, even if it appears in short brackets in your email.
Leverage all the custom “values” you’ve been working on in this tab 🙂
Also, brainstorm about your prospect’s vocabulary: what are the metrics they follow each week? What KPIs do they dream about? What are the words in their mouth daily?
For instance, you’re a B2B Marketer, so I know that if I speak about MQLs/SQLs or sales not following up on your leads, we’ll understand each other and I’ll get your attention.
- The fewer external links, the better: you want prospects to reply, not to click.
- If you need to add a link (but we advise you don’t, except for content-oriented emails), make sure it looks like a “normal” link. The blue web hexadecimal is
#0000FF. - If you need to add a link, put it twice i.e. a hypertext link, just like that; PLUS the regular plain link: https://app.captaindata.co/store?searchText=cascade
You wouldn't like to click on something you don’t know, would you?
-
If you need to add this second link, make sure to customize it with contact data. Such as: https://app.captaindata.co/store?searchText=cascade-{{Company.Name}} But the link will point to the good URL anyway.
-
Your email must look like an email you would have sent manually from your Gmail. No newsletter shitty look! So go blank, typo Arial, 13.
-
A short and personalized object. Make sure to include your best icebreakers inside. Example: Quick question @{{Company.Name}} (Cambridge alumni)
-
A clear and unique call to action (CTA). Ask when they’re available for a short call.
-
Repeat your question by suggesting dates + times, even if they’re fake. “What about next Monday, 2 PM or 5 PM?”
-
Say thanks + {First.Name}} at the end of your email. No robotic, useless, and overused “Kind Regards”.
Thanks for your answer Tim, Guillaume
It’s like pushing courtesy and works like a charm.
- If you can segment your emailing by gender, it’s cool.
Why? Because in cold-emailing, the game is all about convincing your contact that you write down this email manually.
And in some languages (like French), sometimes you can’t properly formulate an expression because you don’t know if it is a man or a woman.
Thanks to any public open-source and free database such as this one, you can segment your emailing by gender and increase your reply rate (just download it and use V-Lookups).
If you add that kind of GIF in your emails, you should think about quitting your job and launching a stand-up comedy show.
📩 Feel free to send us your cold email if it's ready and we’ll give you feedback within 48 hours!
8. Should I target multiple personas at the same time?
Once again, a very good question! Sorry, but there’s no template-type answer.
It depends on:
- The size of the company you target. The bigger, the more personas you can target at the same time.
- If a different messaging truly makes sense for each person, remember your outbound messaging map for each of your next 5 awesome campaigns?
Then you could segment your “values” messaging by persona 👇
- Your campaign targeting
You should maybe launch one campaign targeting one kind of persona, then, a few weeks later, launch another campaign targeting another kind of persona if the first one did not lead to a qualified meeting.
9. How many emails should I send during a campaign on one contact?
At least 4. or, 4 to 7 max.
But the main thing is all about what series of emails you should send.
Here’s a classic 30-day outbound sequence template you can inspire yourself from 👇
Here it is: 17_Ideal_30Day_Outbound_Sequence
10. How can my BDR/SDRs help me?
BDR/SDRs can help you deploy another great channel to get prospects on the line: phone.
It does not matter whether they’re part of your marketing team, or not.
Work with them to add a “call” touch within your outbound sequences.
If you want them to follow up on openers after your campaign, please give them a maximum of context about the campaign: who you are targeting, where the contacts come from, what have they received yet…
Actually, the best thing would be to onboard them from scratch 🙂
11. Who’s the best sender?
It all depends on your campaign targeting.
But make sure to customize your email signature based on the persona you try to get replies from.
Let’s say you’re targeting a Product Manager, put “Product Manager Expert” as a Job Title, not “Head of Sales”.
Also, it’s cool to send emails from one unique particular marketing email (like your Head of Marketing) because afterward, you can split replies treatment easily within your SDR/BDR.
Otherwise, it means that you need to attribute each company beforehand.
12. What is a good open & reply rate?
ℹ️ Minimum Open rate > 40%.
Minimum Reply rate > 7%.
13. If you had only one piece of advice to give regarding cold-email copywriting?
Stop a colleague, and ask for 2 minutes.
Read aloud the email you just wrote.
Does it sound weird?
Would you really speak like that to a human being?
No?
So start over again.
14. Is there any checklist I can use before launching my campaign?
- Verify data! Make sure all your personalization will work properly before sending.
- Have a quick meeting with your sales to warn them about the campaign launch. They need to follow up quickly.
- Verify the contacts list (we’ll see it with the blacklist strategy in Chapter 7)
- Ask for feedback from sales after they handle the leads you gave them
15. How to tackle negative answers?
You will have some negative replies to your campaigns. No lies.
But you need to address these answers in the best possible manner.
Most of the time, an angry prospect can become your next best customer.
Gather the maximum of information about contact+company and craft a super-personalized message.
16. How long does my campaign take?
- 30-day sequence template here.
- Your campaign never ends until you have replies or meetings from each of your target accounts 🙂
17. What should I do when the campaign is over?
- Reporting (open rate, replies, number of meetings booked, number of new customers, new booking $)
- Ask for feedback from sales
- Plan your next campaigns on this target segment: launch another messaging on another persona within the same accounts, and enroll the contacts you’ve just targeted inside a cool educative nurturing workflow. Except for those who have already shown interest, of course.
18. Is outbound only about new customer acquisition?
Nope! You could launch outbound campaigns to upsell your existing customer portfolio or to find new companies to partner with (channel marketing).
19. What are the main evolution steps of an outbound & account-based marketing program? How can I progress or define my Outbound OKRs?
ℹ️ Here’s a 10-step growth roadmap for any great outbound & account-based marketing team in 2023 👇
- Test a couple of simple outbound campaigns on small segments of your TAM. Start by engaging samples of your top-5 upcoming campaigns. One super segment = one campaign = 10-40 companies = 1 persona/company.
- Learn from that and scale successful campaigns until these super-segments are totally consumed. Don’t be afraid to ask for tips on the Captain Data support, we are here for that.
- Repeat the methodology while trying to increase the number of personas you target during one campaign, plus the number of channels you use (email, LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp, dimensional email, IP-targeted ads, etc).
- Scale internal processes if you think you’re wasting some time at some step of launching a campaign. Automate all the things you can. For instance, if you’re wasting time with contact validation by your sales, build an automated blacklist (cf. Chapter 6).
- Set up your proper campaign portfolio and your quarterly campaign roadmap.
- Don’t track qualified replies or meetings any longer, track increased turnover impact. Stop reporting with smartlists into your CRM, build a proper dashboard.
- Add some specific account-based roadmaps with your sales team. Let’s say: 2-4 accounts per sales rep that you’ll be especially targeting during 6 months.
- If you need to launch outbound into other geos, build your own outbound playbook to scale knowledge internally.
- Think outside the “marketing” box. Launch Customer Success or Channel-based campaigns.
- Support sales longer in the funnel. How could you help them turn an intro meeting into a negotiation stage?
Wow, what a ride if you reach that step 🔥
20. How to calculate outbound ROI?
Outbound ROI = Revenue From Outbound Sales Qualified Leads / Total Outbound Tools Costs.
If you can’t calculate revenue from outbound sales, just use how valuable a qualified opportunity is for your business today.
Most of the time, you only need to close a couple of customers (often only 1 if you sell to Enterprise) from outbound to get a super Return On Investment 🙂
BONUS TRICKS #5 Free Outbound Launch Template
A free template deck you can use to launch outbound or convince internally to invest.
You just need to replace {{Company.Name}} by your very own company name.
Final Words & Key Milestones
You just learned how to master any outbound campaign.
Also, you should have sent us your cold email draft by email.
If you need additional help, send us a message. If not, so you’re ready for Chapter 7: Let’s build your own outbound tracking system & architecture 🔥