Cold Email Alone Doesn’t Work: Try a Multi-Channel Approach
Ricky Cookson
Ah, the good ol’ cold email — a staple of outbound sales strategies and the go-to practice for connecting with prospects. For any sales rep, writing cold emails comprises a significant amount of their day, but too often, it’s to no avail. Cold email sales have been slowly sinking to a low point with only 24% being opened and 1% leading to actual conversions.
But why has cold emailing become such a thorn in the side for sales reps? Data shows that roughly eight out of 10 prospects prefer to speak with reps via email over other mediums, so why are conversions so low? The problem is that cold email alone hasn’t worked for quite some time.
Leveraging a Multi-Channel Approach to Outbound
Cold email in sales needs to be a part of a multi-channel approach to fortify your outbound sales strategy with direct engagement. Empowering sellers to expand prospecting past inboxes and into more personal realms.
Here are four more channels you should consider including in your outbound strategy for better results.
Related Content: Modern Outbound Part 2: Email, Call, LinkedIn, & Video Best Practices
Phone Calls & SMS Messaging
If there’s one thing sales reps can undoubtedly rely on to contact prospects, it’s through the phone. Some 82% of buyers still accept calls from sales reps that reach out to them. If email isn’t their preferred method of communication, hit ‘em up on the phone. It might take four-six calls to get them on the line, but once the connection is made, your chances of booking a meeting with them go way up.
Similarly, sending prospects follow-up text messages can help confirm meeting details and availability. If you compared the number of unread emails to unread texts, it’d be something around 100 to one. Research by Mobile Marketing Watch shows that 98% of text messages are opened, compared to 22% of emails. However, there is a time and place. Sending texts to prospects has a few prerequisites.
- Texting before calling decreases the conversion possibility by 40%, so make sure you reach out over the phone first.
- If you’ve connected over the phone, ask permission to text them beforehand.
- Use texts sparingly for reasons like checking availability, confirming a meeting, sending resources, or answering a question.
Video
Video in sales conversations has continued to skyrocket over the last few years. Not only is it a great way to provide valuable information, but it promotes a stronger connection between you and your audience.
Emails, phone calls, and SMS messages are a great way to communicate, but video gives a face to the voice. It humanizes the information in a way that other media can’t compete with. A sales rep quickly goes from being an email address to being a person the buyer can have face-to-face engagement with. During a time when in-person interactions are minimal, that type of communication is key.
And there are numerous ways you can use video to connect with your prospects: introduce yourself in a creative way, post videos on social media that speak to your audience, share mini demos to get the bigger demo, shorten complex and long emails, etc.
Creating that “face-to-face” contact goes a long way in the conversion and follow-up stage as well as in the attraction stage. 43% of B2B buyers watch online videos when researching a product or service, which means creating video content to outline your business’s offerings is a great way to sell and deliver value in a way that prospects find useful and engaging.
Absolutely include video in your cold sales emails for an added personal zest.
Direct Mail/Sending
With the prominence of social selling and digital engagement, you might think direct mail is a wash. However, direct sending has become a prominent aspect of account-based marketing and sales tactics with many companies seeing an ROI (29%) that rivals social media. And, let’s face it, who doesn’t love opening up a package to see what’s inside or being surprised by an e-gift card?
It’s worth noting that sending out the same promotional materials as your Marketing team isn’t going to cut it. An essential part of successful direct mail campaigns for sales is making it relevant and hyper-personal. You’re not sending to 100s or 1000s of people, so don’t waste your chance to 4X response rates.
Get your prospects lunch or coffee on you, send something tasty (always include a message), send them a branded item that creates brand awareness, learn something about them on your first call and send a gift or e-gift to create momentum. Get creative with it — after all, you know your buyers better than anyone.
Giving buyers a tangible item is a great way for them to interact with your brand outside of the digital environment. That being said, you can always point them back to your digital platforms to continue the engagement. (Or vice versa. Such as sending them a video about the gift you just put in the mail!)
LinkedIn is the king of customer engagement in B2B sales. It’s also a premier way to research and connect with prospects. If you’re targeting business professionals for your product/services, LinkedIn is the go-to platform. Given the nearly 740 million business professionals on LinkedIn, the opportunities to find and research prospects are incredible.
With a premium Sales Navigator account, the prospecting capabilities go through the roof: you can use robust searches and filters to build prospect lists, get real-time sales insights, push them into your CRM, and save/receive sales leads.
The information you gather on LinkedIn will give you the context to warm up your cold emails. Use the information they put out there to better direct your messaging. Make it about them as an individual, their interest, their industry, their needs, and their priorities. (Another Pro Tip: If you’re new to posting on LinkedIn, check out our tips on what to post and how to write a post on LinkedIn)
Related Content: LinkedIn Live Replay: How Do You Build Relationships Without F2F
And if you form a connection with prospects, go beyond the “connect” button. Connect with them through their content and your content. Develop your digital presence on LinkedIn with the same enthusiasm you develop your corporate brand. Being someone your prospects want to engage with is a sure-fire way to book more meetings.
Cold Email in Sales Isn’t Dead
We’re not saying cold emails don’t work anymore. In fact, getting conversations on cold emails is alive and well; however, it needs some extra “oomph” to be effective. Diversifying your prospecting tactics with a multi-channel approach to outbound provides endless value.
The content peaking the interests of your prospects can be repurposed to strengthen your relationships with your current client base as well.
Leveraging these channels in tandem with well-composed emails enables salespeople to excel in their domain. By reaching prospects across platforms, you can foster better relationships, evoke a sense of priority to each prospect, and defy the statistics with more meetings and conversions.