Playbooks

Boost Sequence Reply Rates Using Sendoso & Outreach

A black background with blue dots on it

If you’ve heard the phrase “Do more with less,” raise your hand. 🙋

Marketers have been tasked with generating a pipeline that converts, filling the lead funnel, creating engaging content, launching campaigns - the list goes on. At the same time, budgets are flat or shrinking, and time spent on any one project is at a premium.

So, how can you effectively accomplish all these goals while being efficient with time and money? We have one word for you: automation.

You might be thinking, “Sendoso, you’re all about the personal touch! Isn’t automation the complete opposite of that?” We’re here to tell you that you can have your automation and build personal relationships, too. We think of it as helping you send the right gift to the right person at the right time.

By integrating the tools you already have at your fingertips with Sendoso, you can build (and scale!) outreach programs that are personalized and effective without adding any additional workflows to your marketing or sales process.

Grabbing prospects’ attention is tough. Direct mail and gifts are a great way to break through the noise. Sendoso’s Outreach integration allows teams to add a personalized touch into your sequences to boost response rates. 

The Sendoso and Outreach integration allows you to:

  • Send Sendoso Touches directly from Outreach to individual people 
  • Have visibility into sends from Outreach in Salesforce (with the Salesforce integration)
  • Never leave your Outreach workflow to send physical gifts, direct mail, or e-Gift cards

Follow these steps to create personalized experiences and simplified workflows for your prospects and team.

‍If you need help setting up an automated gifting campaign using Sendoso + Outreach, click here for setup instructions.

Email Messaging Basics

Before we dive in to how to craft your gifting campaign emails, let's look at the foundation for your email programs.

Understanding Your Audience

Understanding your audience and segmenting your messaging to provide the most tailored emails possible is key to success. 

While there are many ways to segment your audience, here’s what we’ve used to generate 18-26% topline sequence reply rates:

First, figure out if the prospect is an above-the-line (ATL) buyer or a below-the-line (BTL) buyer. This concept from Skip Miller essentially states that ATL buyers are your decision makers (typically your VP+ prospects) while BTL buyers are more of a user-buyer (typically Director-level and below). 

ATL buyers focus on the return on the investments they are making - they typically won’t actually be utilizing your product firsthand. BTL buyers, on the other hand, are focused on the features and benefits of your product and they are interested in how your product will make their lives and their team's lives easier. 

ATL Buyers → Focus on ROI

BTL Buyers → Focus on features & benefits

Second, if you leverage an intent data tool, their level of intent can be helpful when determining your messaging. For prospects showing high levels of intent, you can assume they are looking into your product and your competition - differentiation is important here. For prospects showing lower levels of intent, education is crucial - share information about what your product does and how it can potentially benefit them. 

‍High Intent → Focus on Differentiation

Low Intent → Focus on Education

Finally, segment your audience based on their role or their industry - whichever aligns to your product offering the most. For example, if you sell to both sales and marketing leaders but your value proposition is different for both, having a separate sequence for both personas will provide the most tailored and effective messaging. 

From the moment a prospect opens an email, you have 3 seconds until they decide to read it or not. If they do decide to read your email, they will only take about 11 seconds to skim it. Therefore, it’s very important to have short and simplified messaging that’s very easy to scan and understand with lots of white space and a clear call to action. 

Positioning a Gift in Cold Emails

It’s best practice to not try and trade a gift for someone’s time but, rather, use it as a relationship building tool to capture attention. Avoid wording like, “In exchange for your time, I’d like to send you...". Instead, separate your company’s value proposition and the send offer within your email. 

Here’s an example:

A PS increases reply rates by 38% and is a great way to separate the ask for time from the gift offer. 

For some, this may seem contradictory - “Well, won’t they take the gift and run if the gift isn’t directly attached to the ask for time?” The law of reciprocity comes into play here - even though you are separating the ask from the offer, it’s unlikely that a recipient will take the gift without reciprocating. 

Sendoso + Outreach Gift Campaigns

Now, let's look at the different types of emails you can include in your sequences that tie into your gifting strategy.

First-Touch Door Opener

Sometimes the best way to generate a response from a prospect is to ask a question rather than asking for time out of the gate. 

In this example, you can see that the messaging is catered to a Sales Development manager who is focused on helping their team break into target accounts and hit goals. Rather than asking for time, you simply want to generate a response to gauge interest and you offer a low-value eGift to incentivize a reply.

One of four things can happen with this approach:

  1. They respond and say “yes” and book a meeting
  2. They don’t respond
  3. They respond and say “no” with an objection that you now have a chance to overcome
  4. They respond and say “no” for a legitimate reason and you can now focus your efforts elsewhere

Manual Personalized Door Opener

For target accounts, composing personalized one-off emails is highly effective in capturing buyers’ attention.

In this example, the first two lines of the email are personalization - this is intentional as the preview text will most likely pique their interest enough for them to open the email. Then, the second two lines are the relevance - these lines detail who the writer is, what their product offers, and the ask for time.

The same four outcomes apply as the first door opener email, and you can progress the conversation based on the reply you receive.

Increase Demo Attendance

Getting ghosted on demos? Send a meeting reminder email the day of the scheduled demo with an eGift for a coffee to enjoy during the meeting to encourage attendance and build rapport. 

The team at Sendoso started sending these emails and has a 91% meeting hold rate.

Reengagement Opportunity

Sometimes deals go dead - re-engage those closed lost opps with Sendoso with a “Wake the Dead” sequence.

Here we lead with relevance and a familiar name drop to capture attention and place our personalized gift offer in the PS that is proven to increase reply rates. We are showing them that there was once a use-case at their organization, instilling a bit of “FOMO” as someone on their team has spoken to us but they have not, and proving that we’ve done our research - on their company and on them as a human with a personalized gift offer.

Analyze Your Results

Once you’ve implemented your campaigns using Demandbase and Sendoso, you’ll want to track and analyze your results to determine your success. You can look at the data in a few different ways.

Gift acceptance: Are your gifts being accepted or going unnoticed? A high acceptance rate means that your prospects are at least reading your emails and are interested enough to redeem their gift offer. Periodically looking at what gifts are accepted the most can help determine which items are the best choices for your campaigns.

‍Meetings booked: Compare the number of meetings booked from these campaigns to your typical benchmark. Is it higher or lower? This is a good indicator of effective messaging.

Meetings booked to show rate: Are your prospects attending the meetings they’ve booked with you? Compare your benchmark show rate to those of your campaigns. If it’s missing the mark, you may consider changing your messaging or the signals you’re targeting.

‍Opportunity Win Rate: How are your campaigns influencing won deals? Tracking the progress of your account lists through the sales cycle is another helpful indicator of your timing, messaging, and gift resonating with your prospects.

Send It!

With today’s marketers being tasked to achieve more with less, the integration of Sendoso and Outreach presents a golden opportunity to streamline your outreach efforts. By marrying the personal touch of Sendoso’s gifting capabilities with Outreach's robust automation, you can create highly personalized and effective sequences that not only catch the attention of your prospects but also significantly boost reply rates. Remember, the key to success is not just in choosing the right gift but in ensuring that it's sent at the right time to the right person. So, utilize the combined power of Sendoso and Salesloft to transform your marketing and sales outreach into an efficient, impactful process.