10 Outreach Sequence Best Practices
If you want to make sure your outreach campaign is successful, following these best practices is a great place to start.
Outreach sequences are a great way to build relationships with potential customers and partners. By sending a series of personalized emails, you can introduce yourself and your business, build trust, and eventually ask for a meeting or sale.
However, not all outreach sequences are created equal. To be effective, your sequence should be well-planned and tailored to your audience. In this article, we’ll share 10 best practices for creating an outreach sequence that will get results.
1. Personalize your outreach
When you personalize your outreach, you’re more likely to get a response from your prospect. In fact, personalized emails have 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates than non-personalized emails.
Personalization can be as simple as adding the person’s first name to the subject line or body of the email. You can also personalize your outreach by tailoring your message to the specific needs of your prospect. For example, if you know they’re looking to improve their website’s conversion rate, you could mention how your product has helped other customers achieve that goal.
By personalizing your outreach, you’ll not only improve your chances of getting a response, but you’ll also show your prospects that you’re interested in helping them solve their specific problem, not just selling them a product.
2. Use a short, simple subject line
Your subject line is the first thing recipients will see when they receive your email, and it’s what will determine whether or not they open it. If your subject line is too long or complex, recipients are likely to gloss over it and move on to the next email in their inbox.
Keep your subject lines short, sweet, and to the point. Be sure to include the most important information upfront, so recipients know what to expect before they even open your email.
3. Keep it brief and to the point
When you’re reaching out to someone, whether it’s for business or personal reasons, you want to be respectful of their time. The last thing you want to do is send them a long, rambling message that they’ll either have to wade through or simply delete without reading.
Instead, keep your messages short and sweet. Get to the point quickly, and if you need to provide more information, include it in an attachment or link. This way, you’ll get your message across without taking up too much of the recipient’s time.
4. Make sure you’re using the right tone of voice
Your tone of voice is how you communicate your brand’s personality to the world. It’s the way you speak to your customers and prospects, and it should be consistent across all channels.
If you’re not sure what your brand’s tone of voice is, take a look at your website, social media, and marketing materials. Do they have a common thread? If not, that’s something you’ll need to work on.
Once you’ve established your brand’s tone of voice, make sure all your communications reflect it. That includes your outreach emails. The last thing you want is for your emails to sound like they’re coming from a different company entirely.
5. Don’t send emails from no-reply addresses
When you use a no-reply address, you’re essentially telling the recipient that you don’t want to hear from them. This is not the message you want to send when you’re trying to build a relationship.
Instead, use an email address that allows recipients to reply. This shows that you’re interested in hearing from them and that you value their input. It’s a small change that can make a big difference in the success of your outreach campaign.
6. Include social proof in your email copy
When you’re reaching out to a prospect, they have no idea who you are or what your product does. In order for them to take you seriously, you need to establish some credibility upfront. And one of the best ways to do that is by leveraging social proof.
Social proof can come in many forms, but some of the most effective include customer testimonials, case studies, and media mentions. By including these elements in your email copy, you’ll be able to show your prospects that you’re a company that’s worth doing business with.
Not only will this help you get your foot in the door, but it will also increase the likelihood of closing the deal.
7. Send follow-up messages
When you’re first reaching out to someone, they may not have the time to respond. By sending a follow-up message, you increase the chances of getting a response.
It’s also important to personalize your follow-up messages. A generic “just checking in” message is more likely to be ignored than a message that refers to something specific in the original email.
Finally, make sure to keep your follow-up messages short and to the point. No one wants to read a novel, so get to the point and don’t waste anyone’s time.
8. Track open rates and response times
Open rates give you an indication of how successful your subject line and sender name are. If you’re not getting a high open rate, it’s time to change up your approach.
Response times let you know how interested your prospects are in what you have to say. If you’re not getting responses within a reasonable timeframe, it might be time to move on to other leads.
Tracking these metrics will help you fine-tune your outreach sequence so that you can get the most out of your efforts.
9. A/B test your outreach sequences
A/B testing allows you to compare two versions of your sequence against each other to see which performs better. This could be something as simple as testing a different subject line or CTA. By A/B testing your sequences, you can fine-tune your outreach for maximum results.
To A/B test your outreach sequences, simply create two versions of your sequence and send them to a small sample of your list. Then, track the results to see which version performed better. From there, you can make changes to your sequence based on what you learned from the A/B test.
10. Automate where possible
When you’re manually sending emails, there’s always the potential for human error. Maybe you forget to include a key detail in the email, or you accidentally send it to the wrong person.
But when you automate your outreach sequence, you can set it up so that those types of errors are much less likely to happen. For example, you can use an email template so that all of the important details are included in every email, and you can use a tool like Mail Merge to personalize each email so that it feels like it was written just for the recipient.
Additionally, automating your outreach sequence will save you a lot of time in the long run. Once you’ve set it up, you can sit back and relax while the sequence does its job.