How many emails did you receive today?
Between advertisements from online retailers, updates from social media, newsletters you’ve subscribed to and whatever else, the answer is probably a lot. That’s equally true at work — email marketing platform Campaign Monitor reported in 2019 that the average office worker receives 121 emails per day. With numbers that high, it’s inevitable that you’re going to filter some of them out.
Still, email remains one of the most useful tools in a marketer’s arsenal. According to Hubspot, 78 percent of marketers in 2020 said email campaigns were crucial to their success — rising from 71 percent in 2019. Companies are presented with a fascinating dilemma: How can emails stand out from the sea of generic marketing copy that floods inboxes every day?
“What catches people’s attention is a short message with personalization that understands their challenges and industry,” said Nick Kurtz, director of sales development at LumApps. “Automation can help a ton if you use it wisely — but if you overdo it, results will tank.”
Each company has their own answer to the question, but it will probably involve some degree of personalization. This alone makes a world of difference: Outreach platform Snov.io reported in January that 88 percent of customers are more likely to respond positively to an email that looks like it was tailored to them. There is a place for automation — especially when scaling to a large market of clients — but it’s important to find a balance.
Social intranet platform LumApps and trade monitoring company Eventus Systems told Built In Austin that they are finding that balance. Both of these companies have a wide range of clients, so personalizing for customer and market is key to their outreach strategy. We sat down with these two companies to learn more about why their approaches work so well.
What have your most successful prospecting strategies been over the last few months?
A combination of using LinkedIn, cold calling and emailing with several automated nudges.
We prospect into the enterprise space, so we’ve been zoning into three different departments with messaging tailored to each. Within each department, we hit multiple contacts and leverage non-decision-makers to give us information to build credibility when we speak with who we want to make our champion.
We cross reference contact data between Zoominfo, SalesNav and Lusha to make sure we have a good feel for company initiatives and what might get our prospect talking. Sometimes what gets them talking is right in front of your face if you take the time to look for it.
Once the research is done, we blitz our contacts until we break through the noise. Our goal is to spend a shorter period of time to get a yes or no, but with more points of contact in that short window. If we fail, we add another account and come back to that one later. Hit ’em fast and hit ’em hard with charm.
How much of a role should email automation play in a sales rep’s prospecting process, and what are the potential side effects of an overreliance on automated email?
Look, automation can be your best friend — but if you hang out with your best friend too much, you get tired of them and need some space!
I am constantly being hounded by sales reps. To be honest, the first thing going through my head is “Am I in a sequence or cadence, or does this person actually think that their product can help me?”
Seventy-five percent of the time, I can tell I was a plug-and-play prospect, part of their spray-and-pray tactic — so I hit the trash button, even if the subject matter was relevant to me. Let this be a lesson with automated emails.
What catches people’s attention is a short message with personalization that understands their challenges and industry. Make them feel like they are the only person you talked to all day long and that you are there for them, not just to set a meeting.
Look, automation can be your best friend — but if you hang out with your best friend too much, you get tired of them and need some space!”
As automated email campaigns lose their potency, what skills should successful reps brush up on to continue to thrive?
There’s no faster way to success than picking up the phone and cold calling. The great thing about cold calling is that it’s only getting easier.
Today’s sales stack is loaded with products to make reps that do everything but have to cold call. Automated campaigns, data at the tip of your finger, social selling, inbound leads and so on — it’s all done in an effort to skate away from having to pick up the phone and stare rejection in the eye.
So, I say cold calling is easier because fewer people are doing it — and if they are doing it, they are doing it timidly and not enough.
At the end of the day, anyone can hide behind the keyboard and use the same strategy over an email. But over the phone, no one can replicate who you are. This is your best chance to truly stand out and share your passion and conviction that you have the best solution for their problems.
I still believe in emails, but they have to be used in conjunction with calling — and calling a lot. If you want your emails to win, keep them short and to the point — and please customize with something relevant and with personality. Just my thoughts!
What have your most successful prospecting strategies been over the last few months?
One of my successful prospecting strategies over the past few months has been to identify peer groups with common issues, understand the impact of those issues on their business and then identify how our platform addresses those issues in conjunction with using supporting articles from subject matter experts (SMEs) in that field.
How much of a role should email automation play in a sales rep’s prospecting process, and what are the potential side effects of an overreliance on automated email?
There needs to be a hybrid approach. The personalization of an email with a prospect provides a connection to them and their business requirements and shows a level of understanding of who they are and what it is they are trying to achieve. Having general content that is related to a large group of like-minded clients that can be dovetailed into a personalized email through the help of automation can be extremely useful and time-saving when trying to reach out to a large audience.
Be personable, relevant and on point, with the understanding that your email may be forwarded through to others within the prospect’s business.”
As automated email campaigns lose their potency, what skills should successful reps brush up on to continue to thrive?
Reps should brush up on their industry expertise and make sure the information they are providing is relevant and useful to the prospect. The majority of people are time-poor and the days of reading long-winded emails are gone. Therefore, be personable, relevant and on point, with the understanding that your email may be forwarded through to others within the prospect’s business makes a massive difference.
