Every sales process starts with reaching out to your prospects and gaining their attention. In order to do so successfully, you need to have a bulletproof outreach strategy.
However, it doesn’t stop at just making a connection. You have to continuously work on keeping your prospects engaged and actively nurture your leads.
The beginning of the new year is a perfect time to reevaluate your outreach strategy and see if you should try something new to skyrocket your sales in 2020.
Automate your outreach
Email outreach is not a revolutionary outreach method. In fact, 81% of businesses are already using it as a primary channel for communicating with their customers. This comes as no surprise as email has proven to be a highly effective way to reach out to customers, with $40 ROI for every $1 spent.
However, it doesn’t mean that your email outreach will be a guaranteed success. There are many things that could go wrong, so you need to carefully craft your strategy.
As effective as it is, email outreach can also be time-consuming, as it requires sending a lot of emails and follow-ups in order to actually get a positive reply. But with many email automation software and tools, sending your emails manually should no longer be a thing.
These tools can help you on every step of your outreach process, from creating and segmenting your prospect list to setting up drip campaigns and automated follow-ups. Sending multiple emails and follow-ups is essential, as it can lead to 2x more responses. Automation will help you streamline this process and save time.
Personalize your emails
Before you set off your automated email campaign, you first need to craft templates that will resonate with different groups within your audience. Sending the same message to all of your contacts is a waste of time and will hardly give you any good results. Instead, try to make your messages as personalized as possible.
Start with creating effective networking subject lines. They should be catchy, provoke curiosity and create a sense of urgency. But the essential thing is to personalize your subject lines. If the recipients feel like the message is written exclusively for them, they’re more likely to open the email. You can achieve this by including the name of the recipient or their company in the subject line or mentioning a specific offer that would appeal to them based on demographic.
Closing your email is equally important as your subject line, so you need to figure out how to end your email. It is the last thing your contact will read and it will have the strongest impact on how they feel when they’re done reading your email. If you manage to leave a strong impression, it’s more likely that the recipient will take action.
Try personalizing your closing by including your contacts name in the sign-off. End of the email is also a perfect place for CTA, and it also helps if you end it with a question, as the recipient will feel more obligated to respond.
Also, don’t be afraid to be a bit informal in your emails. While it was unthinkable to use things such as emojis in business correspondence, it is now completely acceptable.
Digital communication can often seem cold and impersonal. Using emojis can help you set a better tone of your message and make it feel humanized and personal. In fact, brands who use emojis in their subject have 56% higher open rates than those who don’t.
Send handwritten notes and thank you gifts
As digital communication has become a new norm, it’s easy to overlook some of the more traditional outreach strategies. However, some of them are actually very effective, as they offer you the opportunity for a more personalized and humanized approach.
Use special occasions such as holidays and birthdays to send handwritten notes and small gift packages. You can even include useful branded products that will be used almost daily or passed on to friends and family – either way boosting your brand awareness.
You should reserve this strategy for your most valuable leads and people who already bought your product or service. It is a great way to say thanks and remind them of your brand.
This may not be the most direct outreach strategy, but it will certainly help you build trust and nourish your relationship with your customers.
Use the power of social media
Social media is another great way to reach out to your prospects. However, don’t look at social media as just another way to send direct messages to people you haven’t previously communicated with.
Instead, use social media to raise brand awareness and build valuable relationships with your audience. Start by creating your ideal customer personas, and based on that make a list of prospects you’d like to contact. Then, proceed to segment your audience and group them by their location, interest, age, business size, etc.
Once you have your prospect list sorted out, prioritize who you should contact first and slowly start interacting with them. This means anything from liking and sharing their posts, to engaging with them in the comments.
Another big advantage of social media is that it allows you to stalk on your prospects and find out more about their needs and interests. This will help you personalize your approach and boost your chances of converting them. Just be careful, messages that are too personalized can creep them out, so try to find the right balance.
Only when you’ve built a relationship with your followers and gain their trust you should proceed to directly contact them with your offer. Which of these strategies will you try in 2020?
