Are you skeptical of cold email outreach as a lead generation method? In today’s blog post Anastasia Voytehina from CIENCE gives you a handful of good reasons why it can actually be a game-changer for your clients and your own company.
Some companies are still hesitant when it comes to using cold email outreach. That’s something we, at CIENCE, hear from our potential buyers time after time. There are certain concerns about this practice. And, frankly speaking, it’s no surprise.
Every day we get at least one email on our Marketing box that starts with: “Hi, Marketing!” It’s 2019 and, unfortunately, we still get those impersonal emails. Most likely so do you!
Other ridiculous examples abound:
- Many companies offer us lists of contacts, which means they didn’t even try to figure out how our company earns money. Otherwise, they would’ve known we’re quite good at generating lead lists on our own.
- Multiple letters are very long. The only time emails are long is when people can’t shut up about themselves. We’d only read them to the end for humor or to evaluate mistakes.
- Poor spelling, poor grammar — no point in discussion.
Such emails give you the feeling that cold email outreach is an inefficient practice. However, when done properly, it can become a powerful tool for a company to build sales and grow revenues. The good news is that good cold emails stand out like a sore thumb.
In the present blog, we’ll discuss how your sales team can benefit from this method.
1. Lead Control
Cold email outreach is part of Lead Generation. Its goal is to feed your salespeople with qualified leads or appointments. You can combine it with other channels, such as phone calling and/or social networks.
Another great source of leads for many companies is a website. Multiple teams experience the conflict of transitioning Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Scoring solves the problem only partially.
When running Inbound Marketing, you have limited control over your audience and leads. For example, you can’t close your website to bad-fit leads, so your sales team will inevitably lose their time processing those prospects.
Similarly, you can’t make certain people from certain companies come to you – no matter how hard you wish to make them your clients. You can only sit and passively wait hoping it’ll happen one day.
On the other hand, cold email outreach gives you an opportunity to target firms and titles you want to work with by actively engaging a sales conversation with them.
Furthermore, you have several tools that enable you to control your leads and secure their high quality. These are:
- Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) – the set of criteria of sales research (includes, but not limited to industry, geography, title, revenues, etc.)
- Building a list of contacts that match your ICP
A high-quality lead is a decision-maker who works in a company that can become your potential buyer because they have problems that your product or service can solve. It’s also his or her contact data. The latter should be accurate and up-to-date to make for a high-quality lead.
ICP is generally based on your best clients or on the assumption that winning new types of customers will be profitable (e.g. expanding to a new state or industry). Meanwhile, a good sales researcher (or a provider like CIENCE) can build you the list of contacts with a low bounce rate.
High quality leads in the top of your B2B sales funnel will guarantee better conversions and more closed deals at the end of the month. On the flipside, the lack of lead control will make you target companies that have little need for your product/service. Your time and energy will be simply wasted.
2. Provide Personalized Content
Do you remember the example of not-so-efficient cold letters from the beginning of the post? “Hey Marketing, Do you need direct contact information from Contact List for Marketing?” is an example of poor personalization (or the absence of it).
In a digitalized world where content is king, personalized content is a deity or a superhero – whichever you see as more powerful. Blog posts are quite general. For example, we can write 10 tips on how to build a sales development process from scratch and publish it on our website.
It will be intended for multiple companies from almost any industry, that have different revenues and number of employees, different business processes and niches. It will contain some basic suggestions for everyone.
Meanwhile, a Business Development Representative has an opportunity to send an email that will directly be addressed to a certain person within a certain company. Furthermore, it will aim at particular problems that this firm and its employees have.
When writing a cold email to a prospect, a BDR will take into account the distinguishing features of the lead. He can also include a reference to something personal – e.g., to participation in a conference or a promotion.
Basically, a cold email is your chance to show that you care and understand, that you are smart and capable of studying the potential client. It’s your chance to stand out.
3. Begin Human-to-Human Conversation
When it comes to B2C, the sellers aren’t necessary for most products. Luckily, we are capable of buying a toothbrush without someone telling us why we need it and which one is the best.
However, let’s imagine you don’t know how to use a toothbrush (you’ve never seen one). Furthermore, no one in your family does. You visit a dentist on a regular basis and your health insurance company hates you. You buy chewing gum but it isn’t helping.
Then comes a person who educates you about dental hygiene and the ways of disease prevention as well as keeping your breath fresh. He or she explains that you need to use a toothbrush twice a day to achieve these results.
That’s exactly what the best BDRs (as well as Sales Managers and Account Executives) do in a B2B sales process. Most B2B products/services are complex solutions that solve multiple problems for a company. Purchasing them is difficult because buyers tend to study a lot of details in order to make an informed decision. Reps educate prospects on how to solve these problems and facilitate the process.
There’s one more aspect to consider. Any buying is the act of trust. And in B2B, it’s also an act of cooperation. You can’t cooperate with a machine or a faceless entity. That’s why all the best Sales Professionals emphasize the importance of human-to-human communication.
4. Target People in Pre-Awareness Stage of the Funnel
This is something only sales reps can do. Sometimes, a company can have unperceived problems. Otherwise, they can understand they have a problem but lack understanding of how to solve it.
At the pre-awareness stage of the buying funnel, it’s next to impossible to target your prospects with inbound methods. People will not search Google for a need they don’t know they have.
This is where direct targeting of prospects with topics that will be interesting and relevant to them can be welcome, not interruptive. Discovery of new ways to solve business issues never gets old for ambitious executives looking to get ahead.
5. Scale Sales
Scaling sales is necessary for any company to grow. If you run a start-up, you might not have the time necessary for your digital marketing strategy to start working full force. On the other hand, cold email outreach as a part of general outbound strategy can bring you first appointments in as little as one week.
Furthermore, you can actually scale programs by engaging more BDRs in the process. For example, one employee sends 30 personalized emails per day and sets one appointment per week. This means, that two people can double this result. By contrast, hiring a second SEO manager won’t improve your SERP position the next day (e.g., you were the 100th, you won’t be the 50th).
Wrapping it up, cold email outreach is an efficient scalable method to target the companies that you want to see as your clients, especially those firms that are yet to understand their pain points. It helps you control the quality of your leads, sent personalized messaging and start a human-to-human conversation.
Thank you, Anastasia, for sharing your insight with us.
If you are interested in learning how to grow your business with cold email outreach, make sure to read these 6 evergreen trends in cold emailing shared by our CEO, Matt Tarczynski:
6 Trends in Cold Email that Will Help You Get New Clients Abroad >>
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