In this case study we're going to share with the method and email sequence that we've been using to generate high-ticket appointments from ice-cold leads within 1 month.
Sound too good to be true?
Well, there's a lot that goes into it.
So buckle up and get ready to learn and implement.
First - like any good campaign it starts by knowing who you are going after.
Who are the people you want to speak with?
Who are the high-ticket prospects that fall into your prospect profile?
Like many companies we have a number of different niches we typically do well with...but for this campaign we decided to focus on Owners of smaller (1-50 employee) management consulting companies.
Once we knew who we were targeting with this campaign, it was time to put together a small outreach list.
There are a number of processes, tools, or software out there to build contact lists (or purchase them), we chose to utilize Get Prospect.
We have experience of using similar software in the past and have found Get Prospect to get reliable results.
(If you are curious about Get Prospect, you can click here to set up a trial or purchase.)
Now we mentioned that we knew the industry we wanted to target and the company size. We also primarily work with English speaking clients within our marketing agency, so we targeted specifically within the US. And focused in on the titles of Owner, Partner, and CEO so we knew we'd be talking to someone with decision-making capacity.
Those titles or this specific targeting isn't necessary for everyone. Even within our own business we target different industries and different size companies and titles for different campaigns, but in this instance that was the criteria we plugged into Get Prospect's search tool.
With the software we've developed a list of a few hundred contacts all of whom fit our ideal prospect profile (depending on your account level in Get Prospect the amount of emails you can gather each month will vary).
Now that we had our list it was time to put together the messaging sequence.
We know from our work that trying to write one silver bullet email to introduce yourself, pitch your service, and close the deal isn't likely to get results.
There are a bevy of studies out there about the amount of touchpoints it takes until a prospect is ready to buy. So we constructed a multi-touchpoint email campaign that had a five main goals throughout the sequence:
- Introduce ourselves to the prospect.
- Provide value before we made our ask.
- Build authority for our salesperson.
- Book appointments.
- Get the most responses as possible.
Now you'll notice that book appointments (which was the ultimate goal in this campaign) is not listed first. That's because it's not a focal point of our first message.
We don't want to be like every other vendor out there.
The ones who turn and burn through prospects by sending them one cold email or making one cold call then moving on.
We want to be the ones that provide value. The ones that build a relationship. So that when the time is right, we're the company left on the prospect's mind.
So, how do we do this?
THE EMAIL SEQUENCE
Our email campaign started with a group of 65 prospects.
All 65 we had confirmed the email address and that they were a good fit for our prospect profile.
Now - it can take time to send out 65 individual emails by hand. And then repeat that each week in the following approach. Stick with us to the end of this post and we'll explain how you can get a personal email delivered through Gmail to your prospects in batches. So that all you need to do is choose your prospects, enter each email once, schedule it, and sit back.
Week 1 - The Group Invite Message -
SUBJECT: Invite to What Drives Business: An Executive Leadership Discussion Forum
{firstname},
I came across your info on LinkedIn, and thought you’d be interested in joining an exclusive community there called What Drives Business: An Executive Leadership Discussion Forum. The group is highly curated and we only invite the top business and executive consultants to join. It’s quickly becoming a top resource for the industry and I think your experience will add a lot of value.
In the near future we’re also looking to do some feature profiles on our top members. Is that something you would be interested in?
I hope all is well and I look forward to seeing you in the group.
Here’s the link to join: INSERT GROUP LINK
And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well, here’s a link to my profile: INSERT PROFILE LINK
Have a great day,
Dan
In our situation we set this group up on LinkedIn. It could work if you run a group on Facebook also. But the most important point here about this outreach to cold prospects is that your group should be named to be clear that the group is specifically for your prospects. It should be named either how they identify themselves. Or by a common interest. Not named based on the service you provide.
(For more information on creating the perfect group name, check out this post.)
Message 2 - Interesting Article - Group Follow-up
SUBJECT: Thought this article made an interesting point about {enter interesting point this audience cares about}
{firstname},
There’s a great article in the What Drives Business group discussing emerging trends within executive coaching that I thought you might find valuable.
Check it out here: INSERT LINK TO POST IN GROUP
I’d love it if you could chime in and add your thoughts there.
By the way, I’d love to jump on a call sometime if you’re open to it. It would be great to learn more about what you do, and vice versa. Do you have any time this week or next?
Thanks,
Dan
P.s. If you haven't yet, be sure to request to join the group here - INSERT GROUP LINK.
Message 3 - Survey
SUBJECT: {firstname}, your thoughts?
{firstname},
I’m doing some market research and was hoping you could share your experience on something.
Many of my clients come to me with the same problem, referrals not coming consistently enough which leads to slowdowns, and not having the time to spend filling the top end of their sales funnel.
I was wondering if you’ve come across this in your business as well and what steps you’ve taken to resolve this issue? Any insights would be appreciated.
Best,
Dan
Message 4 - Call to Action
SUBJECT: Can we connect soon?
{firstname},
I’d love to line up a quick call to see if there are any ways we can help each other out. With our common experiences growing businesses, I think we’d have a very productive conversation.
What’s your schedule look like this week?
Let me know and we can set up a time to chat.
Thanks and I’m looking forward to talking,
Dan
Message 5 - Call to Action Follow-up
SUBJECT: Re: Can we connect soon?
{firstname},
A couple weeks back you received a message regarding lining up a call with me to make introductions. Just thought it would be worthwhile to circle back on this.
We're connected on LinkedIn, and there are definitely ways I could assist you with boosting your growth and rounding up warm leads for your organization. Do you have a couple minutes for that convo?
Let me know a few times that work for you this week or next and we'll line something up.
Thanks,
Dan
THE EMAIL DELIVERY
A couple big things to point out from this sequence.
First, the length of the message.
Short, sweet and to the point.
This isn’t the place to write your manifesto.
You want to give enough information to entice a click or a response without overwhelming your prospect.
Second, the tone.
These messages are written more casual in tone. It’s not a formal sales pitch.
The relationship is the goal.
Which leads us to our final big takeaway.
Third, the delivery.
With a more personal, warm tone and message that has a focus on building up a relationship before making our request for a call, you can’t rely on delivering this type of email through a large crm.
Big CRMs and Email tools like Mailchimp and InfusionSoft have their place. When you are emailing your large list they are really the only way to get out tens of thousands of emails at once.
However, if you have batches of prospects hundreds (or less than 2k) using processes like Mail Merge are preferable.
That will deliver your message directly from your Gmail inbox.
So that to your prospect it looks like any other email you might manually send them.
Can you tell the difference between these two emails?
Email 1:
Email 2:
A couple big things stand out in the first example and other big bulky, cold emails like it...
In the examples above you see strange sidebars in the column, graphics, long ugly referral/unsubscribe links, and even language that says 'sent via hubspot.com.
Because of this these emails are more likely to end up in spam/promotions folders.
While if you deliver a message through your Gmail you are more likely to bypass those triggers.
That’s what makes this campaign so effective.
It’s the style and format certainly….but it also comes down to where this ends up in our prospect’s inbox.
THE RESULTS
Within a month of this first campaign we had gathered 83 prospects (using the software Get Prospect).
65 of those we found a verified email address for.
Within 4 weeks:
- 10.7% joined our LinkedIn Group
- 4.6% had booked an appointment
- 1 new client closed
If every 4 weeks we are able to generate one new client from the system we’ve already set up in Connect 365 that will be a huge win. Now that the system is built...we just need to drop new prospects into the first message in the campaign and sit back and wait for the phone calls.
Not to mention we have additional follow-ups planned to be added to the sequence as part of our Long-Term nurture campaigns.
We’ll keep you updated to any changes or updates.