Outbound campaigns are a vital part of any business looking to grow quickly. But running campaigns that have little or no results can be frustrating. It is essential to have a well-thought-out plan and strategy in place to get the best results. This post discusses four outbound campaigns you should be running to increase your chances of success.

Outreach to your network

Build a referral machine using and nurturing your network.

You build meaningful segments of your 1st and 2nd degree connections, reach out with a scalable message, and setup intro calls. There are a variety of ways you can approach this. For instance, you can have your:

1st & 2nd degree connections that match your ICP
You may have people with a large platform or network you can reach out to.
You can reach out to ICP or connectors in your own Geo
You can reach out to 1st and 2nd degree connections on past companies you've worked with
You can reach out to your Alumni network

How to do this

Scrape 1st and 2nd degree connections based on the cohorts identified above.
Review list and delete all irrelevant contacts, these will be your current customers, bad fits, friends and family, etc.
Based on the cohort, get email addresses for contacts and send outreach email. This can be a 2 touch+Linkedin connection/message cadence.
The point is to setup a 15 minute call to learn about their company and ask if they need any help with any challenges they are facing. You provide or defer and tell them what you are doing.
Add these contacts into a CRM and try to keep in touch with the contacts you feel are good.

Creative Prospecting

Sticking to the same prospecting process isn’t always a good thing. You can't always go to apollo.io or Zoominfo and download a list of contacts based on targeting you have already done and gotten zero results on, and suddenly expect a different results now.

If you rely on the same prospecting methods and never try anything new, you’ll miss out on valuable opportunities.

To find these high-value prospects, you’ll need to try add some creative prospecting techniques to your arsenal. Here are some ideas:

Scrape LI/Twitter/facebook groups that your target audience is in
Scrape LI/Twitter/competitor facebook groups to find their customers to pitch
Scrape conference and webinar attendees on the problems you solve or your competitor have done
Mine companies job postings for pain, identifies keyword in company's job postings that are related to the problem you solve.
Companies that just signed up for competitor tool
Completed certifications in a certain field
Finding your competitors key personel and see who they are connected to your ICPs contacts - maybe perfect person to reach out
List who your competitor key employees are targeting and those companies to your list
Export contacts that are engaging on posts (on competitors and on problems your company solves)
Find companies running ads on Google on your specific keywords using spy
Find your target's personal emails and create a custom audience in Facebook or Linkedin to send ads to.

The next step is to determine which one of these targeted lists is worth focussing heavily on. For this we will have to approach it like experiments. You hypothesize (hey, since we have a wellness SAAS, this Linkedin group has 20k members, it seems 20% are HR professionals who might be interested in wellness, let's target them to see if we can get 10 meetings. Usually these warm-ish meetings results in 3 deals). After hypothis, we design and run that experiment, track how it performed.

We do a series of these small tests and move forward with winning experiments that reached statistical significance.

Re-engagement Campaigns & CRM cleanup

You may have old leads in your CRM. These are folks you spoke with but for some reason didn't move ahead. The ones you believe are the ones we need to re-engage.

We want to ensure that you not only generate net new sales from re-engaging old leads but also have good data in the CRM. This ensures that you can run re-engagement campaigns automatically so no lead would ever go cold again.

How to do this:

Export all leads in the CRM to google spreadsheet with all details. Go through each lead communication and determine if:

Correct status is assigned - insert "from status" to "to status" with reason in google spreadsheet
Name, company, and linkedin url is accurate - insert "from status" to "to status" with reason in google spreadsheet - use app like apollo.io or jobtitles.io
Prepare dump file of all pertinent/good emails that we can repurpose for other emails or campaigns
Copy the leads that are closer to the end of the sales cycle and prioritize this outreach. These will require personalized approach.

Outreach & Campaigns

Prepare email templates. Each stage/status will have their own sequences and email templates designed to move them up the funnel. These are the types of templates and content type we will need for a standard lead cycle stage. Use also the email swipe file for inspiration.
Consider these re-engagement strategies when preparing the templates.
Use priority list and strategize the approach that will be used to re-engage those specific contacts. Mode will be to use email+linkedin+twitter if appropriate. This will be a personalized approach.
Send email, then connect or send message on Linkedin.
For non-priority lists, categorize each lead by status and enroll those leads into required sequences.
Ensure tracking is set to monitor opens and clicks
Any responses, answer within 15 minutes.
Check stats every 24 hours for each sequence, check if drop in opens, clicks, and responses. Specifically, check the activity of each lead within the sequence. These are some of the checks:
How many times email open - if more than 4, initiate warm call
Links clicked - if more than 3, means probably the email is being sent around, initiate warm call
Did they visit website in the past 24 hours - if yes, initiate warm call
If no significant changes, check each lead's social media profile and visit, like and comment on posts made. Do not send message as this will be done by lagrowthmachine.com. If sent, delete contact in lagrowthmachine.com
Make appropriate changes to lead status based on responses

Automations

Typical automations you can implement to ensure leads are always being followed up with:
Setup inactive activity trigger of 6 months for enrollments.
Create drip campaigns for each segment - can use the previous templates created
Setup enrollment and automation

Outbound - High Volume

Most companies use a high volume approach to their outbound activities. This is where you pull a list of companies and contacts based on limited criteria. Think of it as companies we are not sure are experiencing the problem we are trying to solve.

Prospecting

Build lists using apollo.io or sales navigator via Evaboot.

Define Target Audience
Who are the people you are targeting?
What industry are they in?
Are they using specific technology?
What job title does the ideal target have?
Clean the List. Remove people:
that don't fit your target audience
Competitors
Make sure that the first name and other variables are written properly (e.g. good: Markus, bad: mArkus) Same counts for the company name. Avoid companies written like that: Kickscale Inc, Kickscale GmbH, it should be just Kickscale instead.

Email Templates

So now it's the time to think of the goal we are trying to achieve. Is it a reply? a Meeting? a Trial? Whatever it is, it is crucial that you first think of your goal, because every message that you send, should lead towards this goal.

Once you confirm your goal, you can start to draft your message. It is important to focus on --- Less is More --- Sales Teams tend to send too long and the same email to everyone. I can tell you right now that this is not working ideally. Customization and providing value are key.

Write Templates
We propose to create 4 Email Templates sent every 3-4 days.
Personal Touching point: The reason for reaching out (1 sentence). Be sure that you focus on the right lead
Be Positive (I see you are doing a great job at…. NEVER be negative… don't use negative phrases (1 sentence)
Deliver Value: I am of value to you: (2-6 sentences) deliver some kind of value. Share an insight or ideas. Share the problem they might be experiencing and how you are solving it.
Call to action: ask a precise question: e.g. Do you have time for a meeting on Tuesday 11 a.m.? (note: end with a question mark) I will never ever go away until you reply to me. (be subtle): always follow up until they replies or explicitly says i don't want to get your messages.

Email Automation

Setup a tool and upload lists and email copy
Track and Measure
We do this in the platform and weekly transfer the data to the growth ledger.

Running outbound campaigns require a well-structured process and a solid strategy to achieve success. The four campaigns discussed in this post - outreach to your network, creative prospecting, re-engagement campaigns and CRM cleanup, and outbound high volume - are all effective strategies that will help you achieve your goals. Implementing these campaigns will require careful planning, execution, and continuous monitoring and analysis to identify winning strategies. By following the outlined steps, you can create a winning outbound campaign that will help you achieve your business goals.

4 Outbound campaigns you should be running Outreach to your network