Getting higher open and response rates with unique twists to your outreach (Florin Tatulea, SDR Manager @ Loopio)

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1. 3:09

   think a little bit differently about like, Oh, okay. I've never really thought about it like that. And it opens up a much better conversation on a cold call or over a potential email. Cool. What's number two? So number two is we prefer using witty photos over a video in outreach, specifically on the outbound side of things. “The way that we look at it, outbound is about efficiency.” And we found that videos take, first of all, a significant amount of time. And a lot of people don't actually open and view them. Essentially what we want to do is we have this one photo that works really well. It's essentially like the SDR holding up a sign. A very important piece of this is making sure that the prospect's name is on it. So it looks more personal.

   In Cost per meeting and efficiency

2. 4:22

   They think that their first three to six steps are generally the most important. This is actually a tip that I got from Beck Holland, and I can validate right here on the show that she knows exactly what she's talking about. We ran the data. So what you want to do is your last six steps are going to be aggressively over six days, “three calls one day at a time, then three emails after that to round it off.” And what we've actually did there, we've increased our reply rate from about a 0.4% per email to roughly 2.5%, which is essentially almost like a five-time increase, which is awesome. This one drives me crazy because in my sequences, or if you're on sales lock, cadences, touches one, two, and then like 10 are always the best.

   In Cadence design

3. 5:18

   That isn't just like blasting them. I think a lot of people overthink the copy in a lot of these emails. By that point in the sequence, you've already or should have at least provided a decent amount of value and content that's actually relatable to them, and also had multiple steps that have a good pitch on what your company and product is actually doing. “So at that point, it's almost just reminding them that you're there and being a little bit aggressive so that you're getting to the yes or to the no very quickly.” One of our emails, it has roughly 30% open rate, 2.5% reply rate. It's literally a sad face reply to the email before it, which is usually a value email that has a few pieces of content with no ask. Our very last step is essentially just being like, hey, throughout all of this, I actually forgot to ask, are you even the right person to speak with?

   In Email sequences and follow-ups

4. 6:47

   One thing we use at Lupio, for example, we have an industry benchmark report that comes out every year that everyone's super interested in. So one of the touches is like, hey, if you're curious how you're stacking up against your peers in the RFP space, wanted to provide you this insight report, three takeaways, and we don't ask for anything. “It's just an email that is essentially, I almost think of it like a retargeting ad. It's like, hey, we're here. Here's some value. You let them go. And then you come back later and actually have an ask.” So have you seen anything with when it comes to your open rates? Because I know you got the photo thing too. And I would consider that content as well. You mentioned that you get over 50% open rates. Sometimes I've seen teams with open rates of like 30%. How do you get that number up?

   In Follow-up value progression

5. 8:45

   “As you continue to go on market in the enterprise space, how are you ensuring that your reps are equipped to cut through that noise? That first sentence is a piece of research. It's different than what the typical SEO is going to say, like, hey, I checked out your LinkedIn. And I think that's why it works in combination with the subject line.”

   In Opening line personalization

6. 11:51

   that could possibly happen is that someone ignores me and is like, essentially a maybe. So what that does is people literally respond with, okay, looking forward to talking Ben, or they say, no, absolutely not. Don't contact me. And it elicits enough of an emotion that people tend to respond. But then you're like, you know what, if you're not interested, “I'm going to move on from here. And that saves SDRs a ton of time.” Dude, that's so good. At what point in the sequence is that? So that's actually on our step six. So for us, the way that, and just to get a bit more into sequences. So the way that we do the front of our sequences is also based off of some stuff that Beck Holland talks about, but we do like multi-step days. So day one is three touches.

   In Not-interested objections

7. 12:25

   that Beck Holland talks about, but we do like multi-step days. So day one is three touches. It's like a LinkedIn email, and then a phone call that you take a break for a day. Then on day three, you do another LinkedIn connection request. If the first step was a view, or if you've already “connected with them, then you send them an actual DM, email, phone call, and then you wait a few” days. And then that next email is going to be the calling tomorrow. Can we talk about the negative responses? Because this is something that really stressed me out when I was in SDR where I'd prospect and maybe I do something a little controversial like that. And you get this

   In Cadence design

8. 16:15

   on your business of how you're doing things today? And really trying to get to essentially revenue. Do you need to increase revenue? Do you decrease costs? Do you need to mitigate risk? You want to get to that level of negative consequence. The next step is the after state “or what we call the ideal state. So where do you want to be? What does ideal look like for you?” And then this is what a lot of people miss. What is the positive business outcome of this ideal state? What's going to happen if we get you there for you, for the business, et cetera? The next part is required capabilities, which is like, okay, we now know what your ideal state is.

   In Needs and requirements discovery

9. 17:09

   you need a centralized library to store all of your information. Okay, great. And we ask a few other things. This is also a great place, especially if it's on outbound to influence the required capability. So you're influencing them to think about certain features that they “maybe didn't even think about in the past and that are a competitive advantage for you.” And then finally it's metrics. And it's metrics is like, okay, what are you actually going to do or what do you actually need to see to purchase the solution? Like what metric throughout the sales cycle would essentially make you buy the platform? For RFP software,

   In Demand capture and demand creation

10. 19:57

    the goal of this portion of the call is to really understand like what requirements they need in the solution for their ideal state, right? So a few questions that you want to ask and make sure that you're guiding them back to this and not just focusing on like features and then taking control of the call would be things like, again, specifically for Lupio, like what would you need “in order to reduce the amount of time?” that it's taking to complete an RFP. What would you need in order to make winning content widely available and reusable? One of the things I want to ask about is like you're on this call right and they've sort of articulated things and I don't know if your SDRs have ever been in the position where they've got that initial discovery meeting and you're trying to understand all of these things that they need

    In Needs and requirements discovery