What is your secret sauce for email marketing?
One of our secret sauces is that we run really, really small, targeted email campaigns. So, we don't believe in running, at least for the clients that we have, that have these often times, 50,000, 100,000 dollar deal sizes, and sometimes more. We've worked with clients that have million plus deal sizes. We don't want to send a mass email, but what we'll do is we do micro campaigns, are oftentimes on about a hundred people in them. Sometimes that's sometimes a little bit more, and we'll send a pretty customized message, but in a automated way.
So, not to their target audience, and I really help them define who that target audience is, and define the right messaging for that specific audience, and the right subject line. So oftentimes some of my clients have several industries that they sell to, and will have different messaging, two different titles in each of these industries, and really tested to see what works. Then we'll scale what works, and will work on sending more campaigns with the wording that does work for that specific industry.
So, I think the secret sauce is to be small, to run small campaigns that are really, really targeted, and to then scale them on a bigger level. By scale I mean repeated campaigns that are small, not to thousands of people.
How do you target the right contact?
So, the first step that I do is of course get as much knowledge from my client, and their team as possible, because that's what will help me the most. Then I'll also look at other companies in this space, and who they're targeting. Then we have a couple of tools to help us find the right people. Then that's where the testing comes in, because we may seem, "Okay, you know the VP of marketing in the IT industry for our service is the best person. But we may run a couple micro campaigns, a hundred emails to a VP of marketing, a hundred emails to a director of marketing, a hundred emails to a CMO, and kind of see where that messaging gets the most traction. From there we'll see."
So, we do target multiple titles within a specific email campaign to see what works the most. That's how we're able to then tailor the messaging, and really figure out, "Okay, who's responding to what?"
What format do you use for email outreach?
We'll send at first, for the first campaigns, maybe 50 to 100 emails for a test. In terms of the content, we always test a long form, and a short form email, because a lot of material out there says, "Short, quick and to the point, emails are key." Which does work in a lot of contexts. What I find a lot is, especially for people to get into this introduction meeting of a company they've never heard of, they like to have as much information as possible about the company before hopping onto that call.
So, we'll test it because some positions, some certain titles tend to still respond better to the short form emails. But I also have a pretty long form email that I test to these titles, because I have seen in a lot of cases that converts better. Not only converts better, but it converts to better leads. So, those are definitely one thing that we test. On the subject line, there are certain subject lines, that tend to work really, really well across all industries, which are introduction. That works really well.
Quick call question mark, also works really well, or call with a company name question mark also works really well. So, those are always subject lines that we test, and then sometimes we mix other subject lines depending on the content of the email, on the product or the service that's being sold.
What does email content typically look like?
So, typically what we'll do is we'll target it by industry, and we'll say, "Hey, we help CTOs in your industry," you know, try to relate it back to clients, solve this and this problem here. If we're able to, depending on the client, here are certain companies that we've worked with in your industry. We'd love to tell you how we can help you with X, and Y problem and learn more about your projects for 2020. Can you get on a 10 minute call with us?
That would be kind of the gist of the email. So, we always link it back to what's in it for them, and how we're helping other companies that are in the same boat. Other titles that are similar to their titles, other companies in their industry. Maybe in the bottom I always add either related testimonial, or sometimes a case study below the signature. I always do that below the signature, because we don't want it to necessarily take space in the body. If they're interested, they will look at it. If they're not interested, then they may ignore the email.
That's another thing that I say is that, of course, not every... The goal here is, let's say we send 200 emails, even if we get two meetings out of the hat, for deals that are $100,000 that's really good. So, the goal is to get the people on the phone, that are actually really warm and really interested. It's not to, the goal is really to get few meetings that are really, really hot beans.
Do you just send the one email?
No. So, we do a cadence. We typically send depending on the industry, a little bit between, we'll send a main email, and at least one or two follow up, sometimes three follow ups. That's it. A lot of times we're targeting higher level titles. We don't want to make anyone annoyed in the followups. [inaudible 00:06:07] short, and sweet, they're, "Hey, just checking that you saw the email below. Do you have time to jump on a call?" Alternatively, "Is there a colleague of yours that we should reach out to?"
So, the main thing that I do, typically, I'll send a sequence of three emails. One main email, and then two follow ups. We do see a lot of replies that are in the first, or second follow up. Most of the time meetings are folks from the followup email, and not from the introduction email. So that's something that is good to keep in mind as well.