B2B Email Outreaching Tips

B2B Email Outreaching Tips

Great, so we have our list of prospects, we know our buyer persona, and we have segmented all of our potential customers, so now it’s time to start outreaching to them.

To do this, we will use Mailshake.com, at a very low price of $9/month.

P.S. If you can afford LeadFuze.com or Klenty.com, it is more efficient to use these tools as you can automate the whole process of prospecting, segmenting, and outreaching with one tool.

With the help of Mailshake.com, you will be able to sign into your Gmail account and start one-to-one email communication with your prospects, as you’ll be able to automate this process.

Using Mailshake, you’ll be able to:

• Build evergreen campaigns – once you add a contact, a new campaign will start for each individual person with a series of emails.
• Create follow-up emails based on your configuration (Send X days after Y email is sent).
• Monitor clicks, replies, and make real-time changes to your email campaigns.

Here are a few things you need to be careful with when doing email outreaching.

Send Your Emails To The Right Person

Make sure that you are sending your emails to the right people. This is where good customer segmentation will be very important, so that you can achieve a higher conversion rate.

Interact With Your Recipients Before

Interact with your recipients before you send them emails. This can be at a conference/meetup, through a LinkedIn connection, via a Facebook group, or on a forum.

Email Templates Should Not Sound Like Templates

Use templates that don’t sound like templates. This is very important because you want to sound natural. You want to be original.

There is nothing wrong with using templates, but make sure that you craft them using your own style of voice.

Craft Brief Emails

People are busy, and so are you.

So your emails should be nice and brief and sound very natural.

Have only one message in your emails and make it very easy for your recipients to be able to answer you.

Don’t Lie In Your Emails, Be Honest

Always, always be honest with your recipients. Don’t make big promises that you won’t be able to keep later on. Don’t lie just because you want them to contact you. Be genuine and people will appreciate you much more.

Don’t Forget About A Call To Action

Make sure that you have one call to action in your email, and that it is very clear what your call to action is.

Check Your Grammatical Mistakes And Proofread

When we have spelling mistakes in our emails, it makes us look lazy and as if we’re not serious about what we’re doing. So make sure you proofread all of your emails before sending them out.

Don’t Include Attachments In Your Emails

Don’t include attachments. This is a huge mistake that many people do and all email providers will start to flag you up as a spammer.

Carry Out A Recipient Email Address Verification

Verify that your email list is clean and in working order.

Email bounces can affect your delivery rate and spam rate. Make sure that all of your recipient email addresses are working. Use Kickbox.io to do it for you, or do it manually by using Rapportive or FullContact.

Follow Up Your Emails

It takes up to about five follow-up emails to close a sale, yet many salespeople don’t follow up their emails. In fact, 70% of salespeople give up after not getting a reply from their first email. (Source Yesware.com)

Check out these cool follow-up emails.

Don’t Buy Any Kinds Of Email Lists

As I mentioned before, initial interactions with your recipients are very important for achieving high conversion rates. Buying email lists is a waste of time and money.

Email Open Rate Enemies

The funny thing is that most of these mistakes are right under your nose. And they are things that you think you are doing a good job of, but actually you might be making a terrible mess of it.

So, let’s quickly get into what those things are.

Enemy #1 – Too Many Images

Yes, images.

A lot of people think that we need to include images in our emails because we think that they are engaging or that they show what our product is.

Because at the end of the day, if you have an ecommerce business, how are you meant to show your product if you can’t use images?

Solutions

1. A single image – if you really need to include more images, have a maximum of 2.
2. Image ALT text – it helps the mail server to understand what that image is about.
3. Reduce the size of the image.

Enemy #2 – Email Size

We sometimes include so much information in our emails that the email server clips the email.

This happens when you see this:

Now, the dangers of messages being clipped happen in two ways.

1. The primary danger of your message being clipped is that it is clipping off part of your content and often (because of the way we design our emails), it is clipping off your call to action.

1. The second has to do with the open tracking itself. Oftentimes, your open tracking pixel will be at the bottom of your email in the footer, so you won’t be collecting accurate data, and you might be getting really low open rates because your messages are really long.

Solutions:

1. Just use text – email was meant for sending text, so don’t make it messy with a bunch of images.
2. Click-through for longer content – keep it simple and motivate people to click through to a longer version of your email (e.g. have a blog post summary in your email, and a long post on your blog).
3. CTA near the top – make sure you add the call to action at the beginning of the email too, not only at the end.

Enemy #3 – Unverified Sender Identity

This is the easiest one to defeat. Anybody can do it.

You don’t need to be a copywriter or a marketer.

If you expand the email you’re sending and you have something similar to what’s shown below, you will most likely be sent to the spam folder.

Why?

As you can see below, the mailing list is some weird number. This is because the email provider they use lets them send out emails without verifying the sender.

Here is an example of a verified sender:

See the difference?

It is telling us what domain is sending out the email. Much clearer, right?

Solutions:

1. Check your domain key status: http://ift.tt/1qoAt4l
2. And your sender score at: http://ift.tt/10GLh1C

If you need to get a DKIM Key, don’t worry, just google DKIM Key + {your email marketing provider} and you will get one.

Make sure that you do this ASAP before you start sending out any emails via an email marketing tool (e.g. MailChimp, GetResponse, HubSpot, FreshMail, or SALESmanago).

Enemy #4 – Bad Subject Lines

Ohhh, this is a big one.

Bad subject lines just scream out for attention off the spam filters. It is very easy to spot them.

Here are a few bad subject lines:

“Your June Hot Pick”

“Something new on the horizon”

“Verify your subscription! Don’t miss out on the latest…”

“Recap”

There’s nothing offensive or wrong, they just don’t say anything. They don’t peak your curiosity.

Some tricks include making your emails look like a reply or a forward by using “re:” or “fwd:”, or you could use some of these keywords: “you”, “new”, and “now”.

Here is a great blog post from HubSpot about 23 subject lines that work.

Enemy #5 – Stinky Content

The next enemy for your email marketing is just plain bad content. The number one predictor of your future open rates is your current content.

So if you have really bad content that doesn’t say anything, that is full of images, and that basically doesn’t give anything back to people for the time that they have invested in opening your email, then they will have very little reason to continue opening your emails in the future.

You can always trick people into opening your emails with good subject lines, but if you consistently give them non-relevant content, your open rates will go down drastically.

The key to sending good content is to know your audience and to segment them so that you are sending quality and relevant emails to the right people. Don’t forget that.

[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”How to segment:” ” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]

• According to acquisition channel
• According to acquisition campaign
• According to demographics or geography
• According to the offers that brought them in
• According to device
• According to time and other “laterals”
• Ask them (surveys or quizzes)

[/ht_message]

Here is a great resource by HubSpot on the art of sending sales email.

Enemy #6 – Your Ice-cold List

The biggest enemy of all is your ice-cold list. It is a dormant list.

If you have an open rate under 20%, a delivery rate under 99%, and an unsubscribe rate of more than 3%, then you have dormant subscribers.

Dormant = deep sleep

There is a general statistic that 60% of subscribers around the world are dormant. 60%!

You need to wake them up, guys!

[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”Create a simple activation formula. Here is one that you can copy and tailor to your subscribers” ” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]

• Day 0 – Welcome (and activate now)
• Day 1 – Fear-based
• Day 2 – Benefits-based
• Day 4 – Incentivised
• Day 7 – Get ready for the backburner
• Day 8+

[/ht_message]

Backburner = automated loop; it’s when you send them some sort of newsletter that doesn’t require segmentation or customisation.

Obviously, this is just a simple email marketing activation formula, we go into much more detail about segmentation later on. There’s more about this in Chapter 6 where we talk about marketing automation for your online business.

Activation merely unlocks further activation. This means that our work is not yet done through activation alone.

Let’s say you activate someone to click on your landing page. Now, here is someone who not only opened your page, but also clicked on it, so they must be interested. If you want them to be even more interested, you have to have the next level of ASK, to show that you want them after they have clicked on your landing page.

Maybe you want them to buy something, so you need to create further activations. So, this is the next step in terms of activation.

Now, maybe they’ve bought something but you want them to buy something else; so now you need to create another form of activation with just this goal in mind.

Maybe they’ll become repeat buyers, and now you want them to refer you. This is another potential activation.

The most important thing to remember is that OPEN RATES are a form of VANITY. For us, what is most important is achieving conversions.

You’ll learn more in the next chapter about how to create RELEVANT content for your audience that converts and how to convert these prospects into paying customers.

Keep on reading to learn more.

Conclusions

1. First of all, make sure that you have a goal and that you know who you are targeting. In Chapter 2, we talked about buyer personas and how to carry out research into your market and your buyer persona.
2. Tailor your LinkedIn Profile as it if it were your sales page. Be very brief and make sure that you get a lot of testimonials from your clients and partners onto your LinkedIn Profile.
3. Start prospecting on LinkedIn using tools such as LeadFuze and Klenty, build a list, and segment it. Make sure that you add them to your LinkedIn connections or that you start following them on Twitter or other social networks.
4. Do your outreaching via Mailshake and implement all the best practices for sending out cold emails.
5. Make sure you go through the enemies of email open rates each time you write an email.

Learn more How To Generate and Nurture More B2B Leads from our Playbook!

Read more on our blog MAN Digital Blog

How To Generate and Outreach To More Leads

You’ve got the trends, you know who you want to target, and you have the demographics figured out: your buyer persona is clear in your mind.

Now it’s time to get a process in place and to start outreaching to your audience.

If you don’t have your audience research done yet, go back to How To Do Market And Competitor Analysis For Your B2B Business.

Here’s a video from the Marketing Automation Network where we talk about this topic with Simon from Northstar Consulting.

— Video Coming Soon —

Key Points:

• Define your prospecting goal and message for your target audience
• Prepare your LinkedIn profile for selling your solutions
• Use LinkedIn’s Advanced Search and Groups, as well as LeadFuze, Prospecting.io, or Klenty to make your audience list.
• Find anyone’s email address and outreach to them via email and IM
• Craft the right messages for your audience and build a compelling call to action
• Close your outreach and convert a prospective client into a lead or a customer

When I was 18, I read Bill Gallagher’s book, Guerrilla Selling, and was fascinated by the strategies of cold calling and techniques for getting a meeting.

To be honest, all of that doesn’t work anymore – this is 2017, not 1992. Cold calling and just popping in to a corporate office is annoying and slow.

We run our businesses online, so we need to embrace online social networks. Business owners are much more flexible working with someone over the Internet, and this opens a new way of doing marketing and sales.

In this chapter, we will be exploring LinkedIn as the main source of prospecting and reaching out to our potential clients.

In the previous chapter, we researched our market and buyer persona, so we now have a clear picture of who our buyer persona is and who we need to target.

Our next chapter will be all about the content we create for your buyer persona, what you should reach out with, and what that value is that you bring to them.

Before we get there, let’s discover how to use LinkedIn for prospecting and outreaching to them via email or IM.

Define The Goals Of Your Prospecting Efforts

Before starting the whole process, ask yourself:

What do you want your prospective client to do after they receive your email?

Do you want to meet with them in person?

Are you offering a free consultation or a free demo?

Do you want to invite them to a webinar? Or do you want to drive them to the latest blog post or guide that you wrote?

Ask yourself: What value do you bring with the email that you want to send out?

And only after you have all the answers can you start your outreaching.

Tailor Your LinkedIn Profile To Your Buyer Persona

Firstly, prepare your LinkedIn profile and use it like a landing page, as this is what all prospective clients are going to see before replying to your messages.

Make the headline talk to your audience and point out who you want to help, what you can help them with, and how you can do it.

You need to tell your audience how you will be able to help them.

See my example below:

Here is another great LinkedIn headline, which answers all 3 of these questions. The person provides tech services, for the SMB market, by being a virtual CIO. All of the most important questions that any potential client might have are answered in just one headline.

Virtual CIO: Providing expert technology services (Information Security, IT Operations, IT Strategy) for the SMB market

TIP Think of your LinkedIn headline as if it were your landing page headline. This means that you need to put in a lot of copywriting effort and constantly polish it up. Test it and see if you get more profile views.

Next is your summary, which is where you want to tell your audience more about your USPs.

My last point would be to make sure that you get a few testimonials onto your profile from co-workers, partners, and clients.

If you want to read more about how to create a more appealing LinkedIn profile, read this INC article full of awesome insights.

LinkedIn Prospecting Hack Using LeadFuze and Klenty

Your LinkedIn profile is updated and you know who you want to target, so it’s now time to start prospecting.

Jump into the video below to see how I do it using LinkedIn prospecting tools likes LeadFuze and Klenty (but there are more tools out there).

— Video coming soon —

LinkedIn Prospecting With LeadFuze

Head over to LeadFuze.com and sign yourself up for a trial account. This tool has been created for 3 purposes: prospecting via LinkedIn, finding emails, and outreach automation.

Awesome TIP: I recommend using F6S.com’s deal for LeadFuze, where you’ll get 500 + 4,000 verified emails with this awesome offer if you pay for at least 1 month. That’s 4,500 verified emails for $250. And you can now use LeadFuze to automate your outreaching. That should be more than enough to boost your prospecting and find new clients.

Now, if you don’t want to pay that money again for the second month, this is how you can leverage LeadFuze (you can do this even after the trial period, there’s no need to even pay for the first month).

I use LeadFuze to perform Boolean searches to find prospective clients fast on LinkedIn.

On LeadFuze, click on “find leads”  and start filtering your prospects. As soon as you click on “search for leads”, you’ll get a Google Boolean search.

You can select the role, industry, and location, and you can also exclude particular keywords.

The results you’ll receive will only be LinkedIn profiles.

See the functionality I use below.

As soon as you click on “search for leads”, you’ll get a Boolean search like this:

(“Marketing Manager” OR “Director of Marketing” OR “CMO” OR “Chief Marketing Officer” OR “Vice President of Marketing” OR “VP of Marketing” OR “VP Marketing”) (“Business Supplies and Equipment” OR “Building Materials” OR “Banking” OR “Biotechnology”) -intern, -assistant site:de.linkedin.com/in/ OR site:de.linkedin.com/pub/ -site:http://ift.tt/2rFGMTG -site:ca.linkedin.com

I have the role, the industry, any keywords to exclude, and the websites to search on.

 

Great, now you can start adding people to your list of connections. Just make sure that you customise the connection invitation and that you select “friend” when it asks you how you know that contact.

You can do the same by using LinkedIn’s Advanced Search, however, I just find that method longer when I am searching for specific positions in specific countries.

LinkedIn Prospecting With Klenty

Here is what you can do with Klenty’s free account. You can get hundreds of LinkedIn prospects in no time and even export them into an Excel file for free.

Later on, I’ll show you how you can find anyone’s email address.

First of all, install Klenty’s Chrome Extension and start an Advanced Search in LinkedIn.

On the results page, select the locations (cities) you want to target and click on the “prospect all” button.

You’ll import the whole list into Klenty, and then within Klenty, you’ll be able to export it into an Excel file and start finding people’s email addresses so that you can prepare for outreaching.

 

If you choose to pay for Klenty, you won’t need to export or use any other email outreaching tool, as you can do everything with this tool or connect it with other CRM software.

Make a list of your prospects, segment them based on your customer avatars, and then start your outreaching.

Find Anyone’s Email Address For Free

If you are using any LinkedIn prospecting tools, you’ll easily be able to find your prospects’ email addresses.

 

To do this, I am using a few free tools. When I have many emails to find though, I outsource it.

Use LeadFuze or Klenty to save time when doing your email prospecting as they have built-in email finders. With the LeadFuze offer available from F6S.com, you’ll get 4,500 verified listed emails for $250.

If you can’t afford LeadFuze or Klenty, here is how to do it manually.

Create an account on Hunter.io, and you’ll get 150 email requests for free (which is not bad).

Now, it is very easy to use it.

Add the free Chrome Extension, go onto any website, and click on the small email hunter logo on your Chrome tab

Here’s how:

You can use the same process on any LinkedIn Profile and you’ll get a confidence score too.

Similar to Email Hunter, you have FindAnyEmail and ContactOut.

Now, just test an email address with Rapportive or FullContact. Install one of the two Chrome Extensions, and go onto Gmail and compose an email. If you’re using Rapportive, on the left, you’ll see all of the social profiles of the recipient if they use the email address you found on a social network.

Personally, I like to use Full Contact. I can just enter the email address and get all of the details about the contact.

I can now connect with my prospective clients on LinkedIn and any other social networking platform, which is a very important step before sending out any emails. You’ll see why in the email outreaching section.

I would recommend outsourcing this task if you have a lot of emails that you need to prospect.

You can use Fiverr or Mechanical Turk for this kind of work.

Learn more How To Generate and Nurture More B2B Leads from our Playbook!

Read more on our blog MAN Digital Blog