Beginner’s guide to sales email personalization

Email personalization generates positive outcome

Want to learn how to 5x your email your email conversion rates?

In recent years, customers’ expectations about sales have changed drastically: personalization is no longer optional. Prospects expect outreach emails to evidence that you understand their pain, and can serve their needs. To build this understanding, it is paramount that you do the research, and qualification of prospects before reaching out.

How do you discover great insights to hook prospects to your value proposition?

The basic yet less effective general personalization process is 

  • you start with your value proposition, then move outwards in the value chain: at what change, or what trigger is that urgent for other companies? For example, for a company selling workforce education, a massive hiring spree can signal increased demands
  • Another angle is grouping prospects by customer persona, and using existing customers similar to prospects (by company size, industry, or location) as proof that you understand their problem, and needs. 
  • Similarly, looking at how existing customers talk about your value proposition, and what specific words they use can inform your research for new prospects
  • Finally, you can set up google alerts to notify you for specific keywords, which evidences changes in the company (new lead joining, hiring, fundraising, etc)

Where to find insights to connect with prospects?

  • 10-Ks, and annual / quarterly & sustainability reports are filled with insights, specifically under company risk, strategy, sales, IT, innovation and marketing focus, press releases, blogs, articles
  • Most recent earning calls with the CEO/CFO
  • Linkedin feeds of both company, and prospect. Company linkedin feed will have nuggets of recent success, personal feeds (and comments) can have hints about challenges
  • Twitter feeds of the company, Youtube video transcripts.

How does all of this turn into action?

To take a specific example, let’s say you’re selling a sales & marketing software tool. Here are five specific ways you can go about personalization:

  • Listening to Dan Sines’s interview on Rech Tech Media last year, found his observation of target clients being large restaurants, retailers & Hospitality businesses that focus on hiring in volumes as prime potential customers. Who are the sales professionals in your team that consistently execute on supporting the current & future talent needs of your target clients? 
  • I’ve noticed in your annual report that operation excellence is a key challenge you want to tackle this quarter. I would love a few minutes to discuss how business process automation can help by drastically reducing the time execute on your sales strategies.
  • With many Enterprises & Federal organizations reacting to the executive order “Secure the software supply chain” by prioritizing focus & execution on achieving high velocity development without sacrificing security. Great opportunities ahead for Contrast Security. Who do you know in your sales team that consistently uncovers target customer’s current & future needs as part of your sales strategy and do so with success?
  • Appreciate learning about Cisco’s transformation of its sales approach through cross-architecture sales plays. How does your sales team identify everyone of your target clients’ challenges that can leverage Cisco DNA?
  • As more and more public agencies, corporations and private sector orgs focus on investing in digitally transformational investigative workflow and process, there are tremendous opportunities for growth in the private sector for your Digital Intelligence platform. Cellebrite’s transaction announcement webcast report was a great read. How do you ensure your sales team is equipped in identifying & reaching out with outcomes to the target clients in need of your value prop?

The key here is that by explaining it to the prospect how your solution fits into their overall business challenges, you can drastically improve your chances of getting to a meeting, and getting to a yes.

Doing all of this manually is expensive, which is why most companies currently are sending industry, or vertical-specific outbound mail sequences. However, by streamlining the research, and personalization process, this suddenly becomes economical and effective  to do on a company-by-company basis; which results in far more meetings set, and ultimately, deals closed. 

GR8INSIGHT can help you perform this personalization, and drastically cut down time spent on the research, by automating the entire process. We do this by

  •  Scraping the internet, and collecting relevant articles, linkedin posts, news publications about prospect’s company, in seconds; 
  • Filter it based on your specific value proposition, such that you see immediately what’s relevant, and where there is a good fit in that company.
  • Enabling snippet generation based on the research in a single click.

This allows you to focus on what matters the most -finding the best fit for your product in each prospect’s specific circumstances- and thereby drastically increasing your conversion rate.

In recent years, customers’ expectations about sales have changed drastically: personalization is no longer optional. Prospects expect outreach emails to evidence that you understand their pain, and can serve their needs. To build this understanding, it is paramount that you do the research, and qualification of prospects before reaching out.

How do you discover great insights to hook prospects to your value proposition?

The basic general personalization process is :

  • you start with your value proposition, then move outwards in the value chain: at what change, or what trigger is that urgent for other companies? For example, for a company selling workforce education, a massive hiring spree can signal increased demands
  • Another angle is grouping prospects by customer persona, and using existing customers similar to prospects (by company size, industry, or location) as proof that you understand their problem, and needs. 
  • Similarly, looking at how existing customers talk about your value proposition, and what specific words they use can inform your research for new prospects
  • Finally, you can set up google alerts to notify you for specific keywords, which evidences changes in the company (new lead joining, hiring, fundraising, etc)

Where to find insights to connect with prospects?

  • 10-Ks, and annual / quarterly reports are filled with insights, specifically under company risk, strategy, sales, and marketing focus
  • Most recent earning calls with the CEO/CFO
  • Linkedin feeds of both company, and prospect. Company linkedin feed will have nuggets of recent success, personal feeds (and comments) can have hints about challenges
  • Twitter feeds of the company

How does all of this turn into action?

To take a specific example, let’s say you’re selling software automation tools for automating business processes. Here are four specific ways you can go about personalization:

  • I’ve noticed on your career page, that you are hiring software engineers for improving your business processes. I  would love a few minutes to discuss how lowcode automation removes this burden, and enables your managers to create processes by themselves
  • I’ve noticed on your annual report that innovation is a key challenge you want to tackle this quarter. I would love a few minutes to discuss how business process automation can help by drastically reducing the time-to-production for new processes
  • Just saw the featured article on techcrunch about your new CEO. Congrats! Usually when this happens, corporate transformation becomes a key priority.
  • Just saw on your linkedin that you’ve recently launched {new product}. Sounds exciting times! We can help you with scaleability, and tackle your growth challenges

The key here is that by explaining it to the prospect how your solution fits into their overall business challenges, you can drastically improve your chances of getting to a meeting, and getting to a yes.

Doing all of this manually is expensive, which is why most companies currently are sending industry, or vertical-specific outbound mail sequences. However, by streamlining the research, and personalization process, this suddenly becomes economical to do on a company-by-company basis; which results in far more meetings set, and ultimately, deals closed. 

GR8INSIGHT can help you perform this personalization, and drastically cut down time spent on the research, by automating the entire process. We do this by

  •  scraping the internet, and collecting relevant articles, linkedin posts, news publications about prospect’s company, in seconds; 
  • filter it based on your specific value proposition, such that you see immediately what’s relevant, and where there is a good fit in that company; and 
  • enabling snippet generation based on the research in a single click.

This allows you to focus on what matters the most -finding the best fit for your product in each prospect’s specific circumstances- and thereby drastically increasing your conversion rate.

 

 

Beginner’s guide to sales email personalization