Multinationals, SMEs, startups and freelancers, all need sales to keep their business afloat. To get sales you need prospects, to get prospects you need a good outreach campaign.
The basis of any outreach campaign lays in defining the most valuable aspect of your offering, identify potential leads and starting a conversation with them. You need to go in your outreach campaign knowing what your services/your product brings to the table and what problems you are solving from the customer point of view.
Once you have identified what you do for them it will be easier for you to see which industries or trades you might appeal to.
I have previously written on how best to write an initial sales email and the importance of following up, which will both be essential to your outreach campaign. So today I wanted to let you in on tools that will make finding contacts, getting your content right and hearing back from leads just that much easier.
Finding Contacts
To get business leads you can personally try to find contacts for industries through Google and LinkedIn or buy contact lists but in either cases you wont be sure of the quality of your leads. Else you can select a software or an add-on designed to get you leads.
There are many out there, but one that keeps coming back is Clearbit. What stands out from that solution is the Prospector functionality which not only gives you contact leads but also helps you to make sure your emails get to the right recipient. You can look up a company name and the role of the person you are hoping to reach (VP, sales manager etc) and get their contact details including email and phone number.
“Search through over 20M companies using advanced criteria like company size, location, industry, description, business model and location.
Whether you’re selling to ‘venture funded NY companies that use Google Apps’ or doing research on ‘non-profits in Canada with 50+ employees’, we’ve got you covered.”
The Clearbit solution being quite expensive make sure to take on their free trial to see how much of a return on investment you could get.
On the cheaper side, a smart tool that has been making quite some noise is Leadfeeder. It integrates directly into your Google Analytics and instead of providing you with industry leads you selected, it gives you info on companies who are already aware of your product as they are visitors of your website. Leadfeeder will turn your visitors into leads.
Sending the Email And Gathering Data
Once you have found out who you are looking to contact you should get help with the actual writing, sending and data gathering of emails. Gmelius allows you to be more efficient with your email outreach without taking you out of Gmail and with no learning necessary!
You can use templates to facilitate the A/B testing of your outreach content and to save time writing emails. They will also allow you to integrate automatic personnalisation with the use of variables such as:
Once you have your email content down you can use the scheduling feature to send emails later. This is a great tool as it will allow you to decide when your lead receives your email taking into account time zones and the times with the best opening rate. You will also have the option to set up follow-up email reminders on your outreach emails, making sure you never forget to get back in touch with a lead. (Not convinced you should follow up? Check out why you should never skip it!)
Another key aspect you should not neglect is to check your emails’ data once they are sent, you can have real time notifications with read receipts and a detailed activity report letting you in on your email open rates, time to open etc. Gmelius also gives you per recipient tracking details if you send emails to multiple contacts inside one conversation.
To keep track of your emails inside your CRM you can also set up an automatic CC rule to copy your messages to your CRM.
Proofreading Your Content
I have said it before, the content of your email is essential and you should spend time reading it and optimizing it. You should also make sure a least one other person proofreads everything to make sure it all makes sense and it appeals to them.
Speaking of proofreading, you can make sure your spelling and grammar is on point before sending it forward with Grammarly. This is a great proof-reading tool that works not only within Gmail, but anywhere you might write online, think Facebook, Quora etc.
Grammarly can help you avoid all the embarrassment that comes from sending an email full of typos to potential client.
Helping Leads Get in Touch
Your email outreach must have a clear objective from the beginning it must be set before your even write your email template, what do you want your lead to do? One of the most common objective is for them to get in touch with you and the best for that would be to suggest a call. This will help you take away the risk of an email conversation loop and most importantly your prospect will save time by getting all the info he/she needs in a quick chat.
To avoid going back and forth with them trying to find the best time to catch up, use a booking system such as Calendly or our very own Gmelius Meeting Scheduler. You first decide the type of meetings you want to have, I use it for 10 minutes calls, you input your availabilities, for example from 9 to 11 at the beginning of each day. You can also limit your availabilities like adding a buffer of 15 min to prevent back to back calls. Then, you can simply insert meeting invites right inside your emails when composing in Gmail, and send meeting invites on the go with the Gmelius mobile app for iOS and Android.
With these tools supporting your outreach campaigns from the beginning up to the end, you can be free to focus on your message and your objective, making your outreach as efficient as it can be.
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