The Agoge Sequence: A Blueprint for 2X Response Rates

A ton of people have been asking me for advice about sequence structure and content so I thought I would share The Agoge Sequence. A few months ago I wrote this sequence for the Agoge tribe and it blew our previous outbound sequences out of the water. For competitive reasons I cannot share the exact content publicly, but I will give you a blueprint that will make it easy for you to create your own with the same strategy.

Here’s the overall structure:

The Opening Emails

The vast majority of the power of an entire sequence is in the first email and associated reply emails (more on reply emails later). A great first email will increase the power of the rest of the sequence like compound interest, the more attention you get from the prospect at the beginning, the more effective the rest of the steps will be even if you don’t get a response initially. For this reason we have SDRs personalize the first email.

I have had all of my last 10 reps customize for every single prospect from the and they have had record-breaking success.

In the past I was afraid to have my reps customize because I was worried that it would cause them to spend too much time on individual emails. This was a huge mistake on my part. The fresh-out-of-college SDRs I have worked with are surprisingly good at customizing emails for high open and response rates. The key is to make it systematic to prevent misallocation of time.

The secret to a powerful, scalable, customized first email is by having reps customize just the first two sentences as follows:

Sentence #1: Get the prospect's attention, prove you did research.

Sentence #2: Tie that into a product value proposition.

Simple.

Doing this now will allow you to reap the rewards of personalization 10 times throughout this sequence without any additional research (more on that later.)

The opening is by far the most important to get attention in the first place, but in the body you need to clearly articulate what you do and the value you provide and end with a call to action.

Customizing only the first two sentences dramatically cuts down the time it takes to customize. With this method, as long as you are using Outreach properly, there isn’t this huge tradeoff between “personalization” and “quantity.”

Reply Emails

The next two emails in the opening section are the two reply emails.

Many "authorities" say it is not "best practice" to use reply emails. Data tells me otherwise. Bumping your custom email back to the top of the prospect's inbox with a one-sentence, “Just seeing if you got this...” type email consistently sends the open and response rate through the ceiling. Since it is short and the original email is attached, your personalized email is still visible and gets another chance to be seen. After two bumps you are getting the benefit of your original personalized email three times for the price of one.

Middle Emails

Here I use the same strategy as the opening emails except the entire first email is a template and sent automatically. The subject line, “can I call you at 3:00?” (all lowercase) is working surprisingly well for us. Write an email that is generic enough to be used with all prospects, make your value proposition clear, and ask for a meeting at a specific time at the end. The following two emails are replies that use the same strategy as the replies in the first email.

Social Touches

The more unique channels you use to get in front of someone the better. If your prospects use LinkedIn, it’s a great channel. I have heard of people using other social platforms, but since we sell to sales and marketing, LinkedIn is the way to go for us.

We use 3 primary strategies:

1.    LinkedIn Connection Request. Definitely put something in the connection request, it shows up bigger in their queue of requests and is more likely to be accepted. Completely unique personalization for each prospect probably does not justify the investment of time.

2.    LinkedIn InMail. LinkedIn makes sure these are very visible to prospects. I see every InMail sent to me even though I don’t always open them. For InMail content, I recommend opening up first email and rephrasing the custom lines of the custom portion and rephrasing them. Some people will not see your emails but will see InMails. Using the same custom content gives it another chance to be seen without requiring additional research.

3.    LinkedIn Profile View: We used to require these as different steps in sequences. We didn’t add any to The Agoge Sequence because profile views happen automatically when they do research, connect with a prospect, or write an InMail. If you want to add a profile view, add it between step 12 & 13.

Calls

Use the first two lines of the initial email as the opening to your call script. This is extremely important!

In Outreach it’s easy to open up the first email each time you are making a call and read those first two lines as the beginning of your script. Since the current common practice is to read the same opening line every time, this will give to the ability to be perhaps the most personalized phone call to your prospect every time.

Best of all, it takes no additional research on your part. Opening with those first two lines goes a long way. If you are currently using a generic opening for cold calls, you will notice a big difference when you start doing this right away. At some point I predict everyone will be doing this, at least companies with Outreach. But for right now, this is an easy change that will make your SDRs stand out big time.

Breakup Email

"Breakup Email" is a little bit of a misnomer since you aren't really breaking up, but that is what people are calling the last email attempt in a sequence so we'll stick with it. If a prospect has gotten to this point in a sequence, it is time to try something different than what has not worked so far. In a breakup email it is better to be remembered than liked. Here, more than anywhere else, you want to get attention. Ideally you want a positive reaction, but any strong reaction is better than being ignored.

There are a couple common strategies

1)   Write a funny email.

2)   Write an unusually direct email

Here’s an example of one I started testing that has strong early results:

{{first_name}}

I don't want to be rude but I have been reaching out for weeks and this is starting to feel like a one-way conversation.

I've researched you and your company, I've called you 6 times, I've left messages, InMails...everything in my power. I KNOW Outreach can be a game changer for {{account.name}}.

Even if you don't have time for a demo, can we at least chat so you can see why I'm being so persistent?

{{sender.first_name}}

(Note: You may have noticed that this email has poor grammar. This is intentional.)

This email is actually simply an old breakup email that hardly ever got any meaningful response. I simply added, “I don’t want to be rude but” at the beginning all of a sudden I started getting passionate responses. Think about it. Any time someone has said “I don’t want to be rude, but...” you pay attention. What is funny is that the email doesn’t really have anything offensive in it at all, people just instinctively react to the phrase “Hey I don’t want to be rude, but...” Splendid!

With enough practice, you will be able to convert responses, even negative ones, you receive from these types of emails into meetings surprisingly often.

When you do get a reaction from someone,

1.    Remain calm

2.    Look for their cell phone in their email signature

3.    Call them thank them for their kind words (calmly apologize if the reaction wasn't positive and naturally move the conversation into a friendly tone)

4.    Articulate value proposition in a relevant way

5.    Ask for the meeting

If you are not a competitor and want to see the copy that has worked well for us, you can search "agoge sequence" at samnelsoncontent.com

Also the: Agoge Sequence Livestream (July 2019 Update!)

#HappyHunting