The Most Effective Outbound Email Framework for Digital Marketers

The Most Effective Outbound Email Framework for Digital Marketers

Outbound Email as a Digital Marketing Strategy can be effective when it's done right. The problem is that few digital marketers understand how Outbound Email Marketing actually works.

Outbound Emailing is a very effective method and will yield positive results and income generating conversions when it's done right. The problem is that few get it right and give up prematurely.

Unfortunately, there is no magic silver bullet to make you an Outbound Emailing genius overnight. It takes persistence, hard work, testing, and analysis. You may get it wrong and have a few failures before getting it right.

It’s an ongoing evolution of minor (and, sometimes, major) tweaks along the way. To find the right formula.

Do you want to build your brand awareness, grow your target audience, and see an increase in conversions and revenue?

If you answered yes, then this blog is for you!

What is Outbound Email Marketing?

Outbound Email Marketing is a traditional form of direct email marketing in which a company initiates contact with potential customers or leads by sending an (unsolicited) “cold” email. The goal is to establish a connection with a potential customer, gauge interest in a product or service, and build brand awareness.

Whereas Inbound Email Marketing allows you to build on a relationship that your customer sought out by subscribing to receive your emails.

In this blog, I will provide a framework and workflow on how to use Outbound Email as a Digital Marketing Strategy to improve your success rate of using Outbound Email Campaigns.

Is Outbound Emailing Marketing Effective?

I know exactly what you are going to say, so before you say it….

?Despite what others might have told you, Email Marketing is not dead!

It may be a more saturated method of digital marketing in today’s market. But it is still a very viable option for digital marketing campaigns.

• In 2022 Email Marketing continues to have the highest ROI (return on investment) of all forms of marketing, averaging about ￡36 in return for every ￡1 spent.

The importance of email marketing comes down to it being an effective method that gives you the power to reach customers in a place most people visit every day — their inbox.

What Does This Mean for Outbound Email Marketing?

In an era of digital information, you are competing against all the other Outbound Email senders.

Consequently, this means you must do it better!

It's also worth noting that Outbound Email Marketing isn't going to influence everyone. But you're not looking for everyone. You are looking for the x% of people who will act upon a cold email.?

They do exist.?

Why Do People Say That Outbound Email Marketing Doesn’t Work??

First and foremost, the most obvious reason is that the people you've spoken to haven't mastered Outbound Email Marketing.

They likely tried one or two email blasts from purchased lists without any real strategy. They didn't notice an immediate return on investment. As a result of this, they deemed it a failure and never tried it again.?

Like any marketing tactic - it's not just what you do, it's how you do it.?

People DO respond to Outbound Email Marketing when it's implemented effectively.?

TIPS ON HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL WITH OUTBOUND EMAIL MARKETING?

The question on everyone’s mind is how to create an effective Outbound Emailing Marketing campaign.

There is so much that goes into building effective Outbound Email Marketing that we, the Marketing Ops Community, could write a whole book on it.?

And just for you, I've designed a framework for implementing Outbound Emailing to help you save time.

In this comprehensive 7-part framework, you have the perfect formula to create a successful Outbound Email Marketing Strategy. It will help you reach your goals by building brand awareness, growing your audience, and increasing revenue.

Outbound Email Made Easy with the ICEDOME Framework

?We all love a good acronym, and ICEDOME has been strategically designed to provide you with the 7 key components that will help your rock your Outbound Email campaign.

Follow these 7 Simple Steps and you will start to see the results you want.

So, let’s get started!

?1. Ideal Customer Profiles?

An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is the profile of your target audience and customer. They are the people who are most likely to purchase your product or service.

If you don't know who your customer is, you are not alone.?

Identifying your ICP is the first step to creating a solid digital marketing strategy for Outbound Email Marketing.

?Here's a Couple of Quick Ways of Identifying Your ICP

• For established businesses with past (to current) analytics on Revenue Operations + Customer Data, use the best Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Lifetime Value (LTV) Ratio and model your ICP based on this.?
• For new businesses that don’t have adequate data to create an ICP, the first thing you need to do is gather data.

Here is an example of different "ICP Hypotheses" to test. Let’s use this fictional accounting app, “Xero”, to use as an example.

Hypothesis #1

Accountants using the Xero App are frustrated with the time it takes to reconcile items.

Hypothesis #2

Business owners are frustrated that they can't better automate their accounting systems because of lagging reconciliation times when using the Xero App.

Hypothesis #3

Xero App API Developers who want to build new apps that better automate accounting processes.?

2. Customer Journey Goals?

Outbound Email Marketing involves reaching out to potential customers to gauge interest in a product or service. Before you start crafting your email message, it’s important to define your goals.

It’s helpful to specify the impact you want your email sequence to have on your customer’s journey as you build brand awareness and explore different ways they can interact and participate through these emails.

Yes, your end goal is for them to buy your product or service. But that's unlikely to happen from the first email. Especially if they are complete strangers to your brand.?

Your first emails are intended to establish a relationship, not to sell.

So, if you’re not prompting them to buy your product or service from the first few emails, what are alternative goals??

Here are a few goals I typically use:?

• Explore our website
• Sign up for a free trial
• Reply to the email??
• Fill out a form for another asset to learn more.?
• Book a meeting with us

You can also choose one or more of these to use in your Outbound Email sequence, depending on your sales journey. It might be different, depending on each ideal customer persona.?

3. Existing Online Presence

If your email recipient clicks through to a half-arsed website or they google your business and find little to no information about you or your business, it doesn't matter how good your email is. Why should they trust you??

That’s why building and establishing credibility is key!

For this reason, you need to establish and perfect your personal and business brand prior to starting an email campaign. Otherwise, all your digital marketing efforts will be in vain.

Make your website interesting to look at and easy to navigate. If you don’t have a blog - consider adding one. And make sure your social media and LinkedIn accounts are active and up to date.

Better yet, build a brand asset that gives you industry credibility like a Whitepaper or eBook. These are particularly effective for building trust with your ideal customers.?

4. Deliverability

Outbound Emails frequently land in spam folders if not properly configured. This occurs because Outbound Emails are typically sent in bulk, and servers like Gmail and Yahoo flag these emails as unsolicited.

With Outbound Emails, the first goal is to get your email into your recipient’s inbox.

So, before embarking on any sort of email campaign, configure your email delivery system and test it to confirm emails are going straight to the inbox.?

There are many free resources on deliverability that can explain:

• How spam filters work in Google and Apple
• How to update your DNS for deliverability
• How to whitelist your domain and avoid blacklisting

Here are a few of my favourites:

• 3 DNS Records Every Email Marketer Must Know
• How to Prevent Emails from Going to Spam in 2022?
• 12 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability

If your time is short and too valuable to learn yet another new process, hire an expert to help you set up your email delivery system quickly.

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5. Outbound Operations

Setting up Outbound Email marketing systems isn't difficult. But few take the time to implement it correctly. The critical step that most fail at is Operations.?

Operations are the systems and processes behind the implementation of your Outbound Email Marketing which are an integral component of the Outbound Email Marketing Strategy.

For Effective Outbound Email Marketing You Need:

• A list of business emails.
• A CRM system to which the emails are uploaded.?
• A marketing automation system where you can design and send A/B emails to CRM contacts.?
• Detailed marketing reporting system to track the behaviour of customers in relation to their interaction with your emails.
• Email campaign comparison reporting and analytics, to compare the different email campaigns.?
• A RevOps system that can attribute the customer behaviour from the marketing email to specific actions taken by the recipient such as subscribing to an email list, downloading an eBook, or booking a consultation.

If any of these are missing, you will not be able to track the Return on Investment (ROI) on your Outbound Email Marketing campaigns.

Outbound Email Marketing Workflow

Once you have your operations stack in place you can start mapping out how you plan to deliver your emails.

First and foremost, keep it simple so it’s easy to track and tweak.

? Step One: Set up a 3 x A/B test "Cold Outreach" workflow, where the goal is to interact with the email in some way. For example - click a link ?? or reply.?

? Step Two: Set up a 3 x A/B email campaign "Has Engaged" workflow. The contact moves into this workflow if they have achieved the engagement goal, but haven't achieved the overall goal of the Outbound Email campaign.?

? Step Three: At the same time, add additional lead scoring. If a contact is showing intent by engaging repeatedly, they can be passed over to the Sales Development Representatives (SDR) test to connect on LinkedIn (or other SM platforms) to begin one-to-one outreach.?

It's critical to plan these operations, before moving on to the messaging step. This ensures that you and your copywriters have all the information before you begin crafting your email masterpiece(s)!

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6. Messaging

You now have your ICP audiences, the journey you want them to take, and the operations all mapped out. Now, we’ve finally made it to the cherry ?? on top of all your prep work, your finely crafted brand message.

Provided that your email is delivered straight to the inbox, your copy is the only thing that stands between you and your goals.?

All Effective Outbound Email Copy Share 3 Key Components

? Subject Line. Make it stand out from the crowd of other emails with short, personalised, clear, and intriguing copy.

? Email Body. Establish credibility, add value, eliminate objections, personalise your message, and segue way into a Call to Action (CTA).

? Call to Action (CTA). This tells your reader what to do after reading the email message — sign up for your webinar, download a report, etc. A clean CTA can increase sales by as much as 1617%.

I suggest testing a variety of approaches when crafting emails - from short and straight to the point to long-form emails with high-value information.

Use the emails as an opportunity to share what is unique about your brand as well as why and how it will add value for the customer. Feel free to play with different tones and voices (see below) for each of the email workflows to see which one’s people respond to and engage with.

?Audience Personality Types & Traits

• Get to the point, I'm busy
• Flatter me and entertain me first, then we can talk
• Data-driven
• Suspicious and untrusting

Rid yourself of all preconceptions about what your audience may or may not respond to. What resonated with people last year, last month or even last week might not resonate today.

If you write a clear and concise message that is compelling and informative, you will have the best chance of being successful with your Outbound Email Marketing campaign.

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Outbound Email Workflow

Using the formula below, pick ONE ICP to start with. For the A/B testing, it's easiest to start with 2 different titles for each to initially test recipient open rates.?

• 3 Emails A/B
• 6 Emails with two variations of each (for each ICP)

Pick the best three for the “Cold” outreach workflow and the best three for the “Engaged” workflow and build them on the automated email system you've already set up.

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7. Evaluation

Treat metrics and analytics as an indicator of your Outbound Email campaign’s health.

Providing that you have used an email sending platform, which allows you to

• Send A/B emails?
• Configure them in automated workflows
• Track the behaviours of the contact across all your digital touchpoints

Then getting the insights to improve your Outbound Email marketing is relatively simple.

HubSpot has reporting on individual email A/B campaigns, workflow, and higher-level campaigns where you can group in other trackable assets like landing pages, forms, and meeting links.?

Provided you're recording deals opened and won on HubSpot, you'll be able to see the direct impact of your outbound campaigns on revenue.?

Once you have sent out your first batch of cold Outbound Emails, allow a couple of days after the final cold outreach email has been sent to evaluate.?

Look at which emails performed best from all the A/B tests. If there are clear winners, keep the winning email as the next A of the next A/B test and come up with another B to test. If one of the emails in the series performed better than the others, move that email further up the workflow to convert people earlier.

Keep running these experiments repeatedly, on batches of your cold emails, until you discover a method that yields the most promising results. A/B tests are key for levelling up your sales game.

It's going to take time and hard work, but you will achieve your goals!

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Key Takeaways

Outbound Email Marketing is all about meeting your audience where they’re at. Do it well, and this process will have the greatest possible impact on your customer relationships, as well as the greatest possible lift in your overall conversions. You’ll quickly find that your marketing efforts are performing better and helping your brand grow.

If you’re looking to add revenue-driving value to your operations and process, consider working with RevOpsAutomated , a HubSpot certified agency with experience implementing systems in your sector. We build smart solutions for Directors, Sales Leaders, and CMOs who want to improve operational efficiency across marketing, sales, and customer success.

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