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How to Create a Killer Email Sequence That Converts
62 Plays6 years ago
Entrepreneurs and salespeople -- this week's episode is one to help you improve your sales outreach. We're talking about email sequences with Shawn Finder, CEO of Autoklose.
Listen in to hear Shawn discuss . . .
- The difference between a marketing email nurture campaign and a sales email sequence
- Why you shouldn't waste the beginning of an email talking about yourself (hint: it has to do with how people read emails now on their phones)
- The do's and don'ts for email subject lines
- His thoughts on email personalization and customization
- His take on the ideal number of touches per sequence
- Using humor in the "kiss off" email
- Persistence and getting a returned email
- How video can improve your email outreach
- The importance of social selling in your sale cadence
- Tips on avoiding the spam filter
- Calendly and the use of scheduling technology
- A funny story about a 0% click-through rate
- What he'd do as his dream job
- A final tips for selling
If you'd like to get in touch with Shawn, you can reach him as follows:
Email: shawn@autoclose.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnfinder/
Twitter::@autoklose
Instagram: @sfinds
Website: www.autoklose.com
B2B Sales Handbook: https://autoklose.com/books/b2bsales
673 Years of Sales Excellence Book: https://autoklose.com/books/salesleaders
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About The B2B Mix Show
The B2B Mix Show with Alanna Jackson and Stacy Jackson is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let’s talk!
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Transcript
Introduction to B2B Mix Show
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Elena and Stacey. Each week, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your own marketing strategy. We'll share what we know and advice from industry experts who will join us from time to time here on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
Meet the Jackson Co-Founders
00:00:18
Speaker
Hey everyone, I'm Alaina Jackson. And this is Stacey Jackson. We're the co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And in case you haven't heard, we're also sisters. We're bringing you episode 16 of the B2B mix show. Alaina, what's the topic of today's episode?
Creating Effective Email Sequences
00:00:36
Speaker
Today's topic is perfect for our fellow entrepreneurs and friends in sales. This episode is all about creating a killer email sequence.
00:00:47
Speaker
That's right, and we've got an expert here to give us all a little advice on how to accomplish that killer level email sequence.
Sean Finder's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:00:55
Speaker
Today, joining us is Sean Finder, CEO of Autoclose. Sean has always been an entrepreneur at heart. At age 24, Sean entered the entrepreneurial world after competing as one of Canada's top ranked tennis players.
00:01:10
Speaker
He started out importing packaging from the Orient and selling to top retailers in North America. However, knowing he always loved selling and list building, he founded Exchange Leads in 2013, which helps his company build quality lists for outreach to new prospects. This venture was followed by his new company, AutoClothes, in 2017. Sean, welcome to the B2B mix show. Thank you, Stacy and Elena. So excited to be here with you and talk to your audience.
00:01:41
Speaker
We're excited to have you here. I love that you play tennis. I played tennis in high school, but probably nothing at all close to how you did. If you were top ranked in the whole country of Canada, that's pretty awesome. Yeah, but you know what? You guys are in Tampa, Florida, and actually the best tennis academies are in Florida. So when I actually was younger, now it's going to be about 18 years ago, I was actually training in Sarasota. I went to the Qualitarius Tennis Academy out there while I was competing.
00:02:11
Speaker
That's pretty cool. That's just right down the road from where we are. Yeah. That's a fun fact that we get to learn about you. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about auto clothes and your company and how that came about and just give us a little bit of background.
Development of Autoclose Platform
00:02:28
Speaker
Perfect. Yeah. So I'll give you a little bit of background myself. So actually I graduated with an MBA in finance was
00:02:33
Speaker
I always wanted to go down that finance route and then I worked a few years at some of the big banks and I'd be on the elevator going up to my desk and nobody would talk. Everyone would just stare at the computer screen inside the elevator and I'd be like, this is not going to be my life. I'm very social. I'm very outgoing. You say good morning to people and they would look at you like you're strange.
00:02:58
Speaker
So what happened was I actually got an opportunity and because of tennis, I actually blame, I say all of it's because of tennis. I'm in my networking at a young age and competing at a young age and always talking to people. I always wanted to become an entrepreneur, but I figured I knew the finance for my schooling, but I need to learn more sales and I had a little bit of sales experience. So my first venture exchange leads, which was a data company. I was a VP of sales after my finance life.
00:03:25
Speaker
And what happened was we would have sales reps and they'd be trying to prospect cold calling or emailing and the data quality was very poor. And I'm not going to mention the company we're using, but it was a billion dollar company. I was like, how's a billion dollar company providing not high quality data? So with exchange leads, I basically took a model that already exists. And my goal was instead of providing quantity to provide quality. So
00:03:53
Speaker
Build exchange leads, work with top data companies like VMware, Microsoft, etc. And then our clients would say to us, well, we love your data, Sean, but we don't know where to email to. Now we have the data, where we go and email these people. So funny enough, and I'll tell you the honest truth, it was instead of paying the Canadian government a lot of taxes, I said, let's do some R&D and build a new platform, which is auto close.
00:04:19
Speaker
Autoclose is a sales engagement platform that allows you to automate your outreach, personalize your outreach and follow-up sequences. But we are the first and only with a built-in database from my first company. So if you want to target 50 VPS sales in Florida, you can go in, you can build out your cadences, you can go and choose VP of Sales in Clearwater, Florida.
00:04:44
Speaker
Press start, start the campaign, travel the world and auto close runs and automates everything for you.
00:04:50
Speaker
Okay, cool. So is it, it's primarily helps them to engage with using email. Yeah. So we do provide phone numbers inside the platform. You don't have the access to call directly from the platform, but yeah, it would be more for emailing or sales outreach to try and nurture people through, you know, seven, seven followup sequences or killer email sequence until they reply and say, Sean, Stacy, I'd love to have 15 minutes to talk to you. Okay.
00:05:20
Speaker
That makes sense. So that's pretty cool that you combined your previous company, the data with this, and it gives you a really good, robust tool is what it sounds like. So that's awesome. Yeah, exactly. And we found, you know, I found one of, you know, sales leaders were looking for kind of consolidation of different tools. Cause now you have marketing tools, CRM tools, sales tools. So we felt having the database inside would be a great asset to sales leaders. That's the reason why we built it.
00:05:45
Speaker
The database, is that available? Everyone or do people need to bring their own data to upload into it? How does that work? Great question. So you have both options. So option A, for auto close for the sales engagement, you can actually upload your own CSV. You can upload your own contacts and target your own contacts.
00:06:03
Speaker
The database inside is only US contacts. It's only B2B contacts and it's an added cost. So you would pay and lease the database, which has about 30 million contacts. You pay an annual price and then you get the search and filter and email those people from our database for a lease. Okay. So Stacey, you got any questions before we dig into some email sequences? Let's get on to killer email sequences.
00:06:27
Speaker
Alright folks, before we dig into this topic, we are going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. And we are back!
Sales vs. Marketing Email Strategies
00:06:43
Speaker
All right, first off, Sean, can you explain for our listeners a little bit about the difference between a sales email sequence compared to marketing email nurture campaigns? Yeah, perfect. So for example, we do a lot of marketing campaigns as well. So the difference between a sales email sequence and a marketing email sequence would be the following.
00:07:04
Speaker
If you have a newsletter or you just published a nice blog or some content that you want to send to your newsletter subscribers, you might use an email marketing platform or a marketing automation platform to send those pretty HTML emails that would try and nurture them and obviously create value and provide them content. The sales side is more of a personalized text email approach. So the way we actually combine both is
00:07:32
Speaker
We have our weekly newsletter that might be sent through, for example, a MailChimp. We send that out and then we'll take our four to five stars or the people that raise their hand from the marketing and then throw them into the sales funnel where it's more, okay, now that they've heard about us, they've heard about our company, we want to get them on a 15 minute demo with one of our SDRs or they want to get them on a 30 minute call with one of our account managers, et cetera. So that would be the difference is the text versus more the HTML pretty content driven emails. Okay.
00:08:01
Speaker
And those would be more of like a one-on-one, one-to-one email? Exactly, exactly. So you'd personalize as much as possible by doing your due diligence, knowing some interests of that person. For example, if you're a property manager, maybe in that email sequence, you might put what the dimensions of their property are, etc. So you want to make sure you make...
00:08:23
Speaker
You have that really personal touch in that sales email where on the marketing side, it's more you want to build that brand and get that prospect to trust you. So when it comes to actually creating then that personal one-to-one email sequence, is there a magic formula that you would recommend following? I have the little list of several different points like email length or is there a messaging approach you would recommend?
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, perfect. So there's a few different things that I always recommend. In your email sequence, what I find a lot of people are doing nowadays is if they're going to email someone, they say like, you know, their first email and their first line might be like, hi, my name is Sean Finer and I'm the CEO of Autoclose. Well, when you're emailing somebody in a sales sequence and they already probably know something about you,
00:09:11
Speaker
You don't want to talk about yourself. You want to talk about the challenges or something that can resonate to that prospect. Therefore, if I said, if I was talking to a CEO, I might say, if I could triple the revenue of your, or triple the revenue your sales reps are bringing in.
00:09:27
Speaker
You know, because CEOs, buyers persona might be, you know, they want to make more money, for example, or an SDR might want to get more demos. So if I said to an SDR, you know, if I can, you know, triple your bookings on your calendar on a weekly basis. So I think the biggest mistake people are making is that kind of that first line where they're talking too much about themselves and not enough about what the challenges of that prospect are.
00:09:49
Speaker
Do you find that that's what a lot of salespeople do? Because I know, I don't know if you've ever heard of Benjamin Dennehy, but he does training for cold calling and he says, don't even introduce yourself. Just tell him it's a cold call. Don't even introduce yourself and just start finding out, do you have this problem? And I'm sure it's the same thing with emails because you can't help it. A lot of people just want to say, hi, I'm so-and-so. And you know, is that something that you find a lot of times that people just have a hard time breaking that habit?
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, I find a lot of people just say their first name in their company, but if you think about it, if you email me right now, I know your name is Stacy, and I know you were Jackson Marketing Services, because your email says Stacy at Jackson at marketing services.
00:10:32
Speaker
I already know that because I've opened the email. I already know that information. So a lot of people, the biggest mistake is they talk too much about themselves and they try and introduce themselves. But if you go right into a problem in that first sentence that your prospect might have or a challenge they have, you'll get a lot better open and response rate by doing that. And one more thing I want to say is whenever you send an email,
00:10:58
Speaker
75% of people now open their email on their phone. Well, guess what? They can only see those first eight words. So if you're saying, my name is Sean, find an at auto close, they're not going to open it because that's all they're going to see. But if you say, I can say, I can save you seven hours a day in prospecting, it might open it. That's so true. I read that little intro part and I decide whether I'm going to open it or delete it. Is there a recommendation that you would have to go along with that opening line that is in regard to the subject line?
Crafting Effective Subject Lines
00:11:28
Speaker
One thing about autocloses is we were finding a lot of people love the platform, but a lot of people had trouble with the content. They didn't know how to write an email or they were writing, I don't want to say this, but very poor emails. So we had to figure out a way, how can we help them with their subject line and their body? And a lot of people in their subject line might be like offer or 50% discount or like anytime you use a number free discount, a number, something like that, or you have it eight to 10 words, people aren't going to open it. A, they know you're just going to promote your product you're trying to sell.
00:11:56
Speaker
Or B, if you're writing an eight to 10 word or seven word subject line, it's the same thing on mobile. People aren't going to see it. So what I like to do is keep your subject line between two to four words. And funny enough, the number, I would say the top two subject lines that we find is A, high first name. So that could be like, high Stacy.
00:12:16
Speaker
And B, if you just say like quick follow up, quick update or something with quick because it feels like the reader almost says, okay, this is going to be very quick for me to read this or quick for me to reply to it. So those two subject line work really well, but keeping them short and concise is the recommendation I would give.
00:12:31
Speaker
for personalization or customization, are there tips that you would recommend? I know you don't want to say, hey, I see on your LinkedIn profile, you live in Florida. I went to Florida 20 years ago. That's not a good connection. So are there personalization tips that
00:12:49
Speaker
you recommend that people should use? Yep. And that's, this is later on in the sequence. So what we do is we try and track what people click or what actions people take. So for example, let's use Stacey again, for example, say Stacey either A, went to my website,
00:13:05
Speaker
B, clicked on my calendar to book an appointment but didn't book. C, went to my Twitter account or D, we actually track all that so that you can create a custom campaign to those audience and I can say, so say for example, I get all the people that clicked my website, I go, Stacy, I noticed you were on my website but didn't book a demo. Is there anything I can help you with or something like that? Because I know they visited the website or I know something about them,
00:13:30
Speaker
People know you kind of did a little bit of research, but if you just cold spray and pray, I call it, your results will be a lot less. So personalization is key. I always try and personalize inside my subject line as well, simply because you want the person to feel, the whole feeling of the sales is you want it to feel one-on-one and not like a mass email market to a thousand people, for example.
00:13:52
Speaker
So maybe we could talk about, because you mentioned something being later on the sequence, what is the perfect sequence? The number of touches? What should the point of each email be? Yep. Perfect. So the length of the sequence varies. And that all depends on A, is this a very, very cold prospect that's never been nurtured through some sort of marketing campaign? If so, you might want to do between 8 to 10 follow-ups over 30 to 45 days.
00:14:22
Speaker
However, if it's somebody that was going through my newsletter and getting my weekly newsletter and, or for example, coming to the podcast we're doing today and coming every week to the podcast, they're more warmer because now they've heard of Stacey, they've heard of your team, they've heard of Jackson Marketing Services. For them, I would probably do a five to seven sequence. The difference between cold and warm would be five to seven and eight to 10.
00:14:49
Speaker
Now, one more thing I think a lot of people do inside those signatures, and there's a big mistake, is do not write long emails. Your initial email should be almost 50 to 75 words, like literally two paragraphs. But each of those follow-ups should not be more than two, three sentences. So one tip that we do is I'll start a campaign, for example, let's say I start on this coming Monday. Let's say a Monday.
00:15:18
Speaker
My second email might be on a Friday, and I'll just say in the email, my first one might be just following up as we close out the week. And I know I'm sending that on a Friday, so they're going to get that on a Friday, saying just as we close out the week. My next follow-up might be on a Monday. And as you can guess, my first email might be just checking in as we open up the week or just checking as we start the week.
00:15:39
Speaker
So keeping as personalized as possible and making sure that they feel like it's one-on-one is very important in that sequence. And lastly, try and have it all in one thread. Meaning if you're going to send an email or six, seven emails, make sure it's all followed up with the maybe the RE in your subject line so they know that you've followed up them more than once. Because most people aren't going to reply to your first or second email. People are just busy nowadays.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's interesting because I get a lot of sales emails and they don't keep the thread. It's a completely new one. So that's an interesting way of doing it because it helps them to remember that you have connected with them already.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah, and if you're lucky, I mean, I know, for example, me, when I get a first or second email, I might not reply, but when I get an eighth to tenth, and I'm like, you know what, this guy's being persistent, even if it's a no, even if I'm not interested, I might still reply and say, you know what, I'm not interested, but I appreciate the persistence. What do you think about people who in that final
00:16:44
Speaker
I guess I'd call it a kiss off email or whatever where they're trying to rattle somebody that last attempt where they use humor like, oh, you must be stuck in a burning house or whatever. Is that starting to backfire on people? I know at first I thought it was kind of cute, but now it's getting a little. Yeah, it annoys me. Yeah.
00:17:07
Speaker
You know what? I'm going to tell you. So funny enough, I used to do that. I used to be that guy. And I'm going to tell you why I changed and what I said. So I used to say, I don't remember. I used to say my last email would be like, I've emailed you 14 times now. I've called you 17 times now. I've checked your LinkedIn. I've visited your Twitter. And I still can't get ahold of you. Something very funny. And this is like three, four years ago. And people, like when I recently did like five years ago, people loved it. But now, people don't. So what I do in my last email now,
00:17:36
Speaker
is I don't mind if I get a no or a yes, but I'll send an email like this. You know, I follow up with you a few times now. Can you let me know which one of it is it? A, you're just not interested in the product. B, you're using a competitor. C, you don't have the budget.
00:17:52
Speaker
D, you're just not ready yet. You want me to fall up in a few months. And then I'll get like an answer, A, B, C, or D. But at least I got that answer and I can engage. So if somebody says, well, yeah, we're using one of your competitors, so we're not interested. Oh, which competitor are you using and what do you like and dislike about my competitor? So I actually start my engagement by getting that A, B, C, D and stopping with my funny humor, which I used to think was funny, but the prospects definitely didn't think so.
00:18:19
Speaker
I think because more people do it now that it's become less of a surprise and a delight and more of a. Yeah, exactly. And people just are trying too hard with it. And I think that that's where it, it was good at first, but now it's like, eh, just tell me what you want.
00:18:39
Speaker
I just made a note here saying, do not send Jackson Marketing Services funny emails. Oh no, we love funny emails. Just don't send us that funny kiss on email. What about video? Do you think that putting a little video in the sales sequences is a good thing?
00:19:04
Speaker
100%, which is why we did an integration with Vidyard. We have a partnership with Vidyard, another Canadian company. Especially nowadays, not a lot of people are doing it. A lot of people are starting to do video. They're all over LinkedIn. They're all over everywhere. Instagram, every marketing channel is all about video and YouTube, but no one was doing an email. Some people are, and I do it in our sequences. I do it for a few things.
00:19:27
Speaker
So in my sequence, if somebody after three, four meals, you know, does not reply, I might actually send them a quick recorded demo inside autoclose saying, Hey, I know you're probably busy. You don't want to hear from me, but here's a three minute video of how it works. But what I'll also do, for example, I had a webinar. We did a webinar yesterday with Calendly to head about the.
00:19:45
Speaker
over 400 people. And what I did was this morning I sent a video and I personally sent a video inside to everybody that attended and that didn't attend saying, Hey, I'm so glad you attended. Thank you for showing up. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I did an actual thank you video to all the people that attended the webinar.
00:20:03
Speaker
And a lot of people like that because they feel like it's more personal touch. They don't have to read an email. They just click play and they can watch it. Now, one thing I will say about video and emails and most people don't know this is, for example, if we use video inside our platform,
00:20:18
Speaker
you get an email with how much of that video that prospect watches.
Tracking Video Email Engagement
00:20:23
Speaker
Therefore, if I see that Bill watches 92% of my videos and Kevin watches 8%, well, you know where you should spending your time when you're prospecting. So that's a great tool that Vidyard has. And they actually send you that email. That's nice. Cause you know how long they were engaged and maybe where they started to get disengaged and you can adjust accordingly. Exactly.
00:20:46
Speaker
So, are there things that salespeople should be thinking about when it comes to spam compliance and I know a lot of people think of those as marketing concerns, but are there things that salespeople should think about when it comes to monitoring those issues?
00:21:05
Speaker
A hundred percent. I mean, so what we do, I will talk about like, you know, there's spam, there's GDPR and there's castle and there's can't spam. Um, so which is, which is the, the exact reason why in our database, we only actually provide us context because of GDPR and castle here in Canada. But what I would recommend and which is one thing we implemented is we actually highlight spam words that are in your content now.
00:21:24
Speaker
Because the way you're going to go into spam is a few reasons. If you have many words like discount free, millions, great, those are all spam words. There's a lot of spam words people don't know are spam. So inside your email secrets in articles, we highlight those spam words in yellow, so you can actually adjust them so you get a higher chance to being delivered. Now the second thing,
00:21:44
Speaker
I would recommend is links. Try not to have too many links in your email. As a call to action, you should probably have one, but even in your email signature, if you're putting a link to your Twitter, your Facebook, your website, your other social channels, your G plus channel, your YouTube channel, those links all will also contribute to putting it to spam. So you want to make sure you have the most important links, but not too many.
00:22:07
Speaker
And I know I have a lot of links in my email signature, so that's something to think about. And I know we marketers love to put our pretty logos and images. Does that kind of prohibit some emails from getting through if you've added a logo or whatever?
00:22:23
Speaker
It does to, yeah, it does to a certain, I mean, I have my picture in my signature, but it does add a little bit, you know, nowadays though, you know, the Google is the Microsoft, the servers are very smart. So they send a lot of the emails that come from marketing into like a marketing or promotions folder, which is why with ours, we're more of the text emails. But to be honest, you know, it all depends on how many spam words you have, how many links you have.
00:22:48
Speaker
If you're using the word free or discount or stuff like that, try and take those out of your vocabulary because those are the keywords that actually throw you into the spam filter. Are there other things that we haven't talked about related to the email sequences that you think is important that they need to know about when you're creating those sales emails? A tool I love and I actually did a webinar yesterday with was Calendly.
00:23:14
Speaker
Nowadays, sales automation is great, but having a scheduling automation in there as well. So it's as easy as, for example, you can actually embed in your sequence. So whenever I do a sequence, I always say, if you can find 15 minutes on my calendar, so instead of having that back and forth, email back and forth saying, oh, well, what time are you available, Bill? Well, I'm open Tuesday, Thursday. Oh, I'm not available Tuesday, Thursday. What about Friday? Are you going back and forth?
00:23:40
Speaker
get a calorie link. I think you can hit for free actually or you can pay like $9 a month. Get a calorie link, put those in your email sequences because it's basically you can have somebody click on your calendar, book a time with you, have it automatically with your screen share in your description and it basically automates the whole scheduling side of the funnel. So I would definitely have a scheduling tool. And the other thing is always have a call to action. Don't just send emails to send emails.
00:24:07
Speaker
In your mind, you have to know what you want from that email and what you want that prospect to do. So if you want them to book a meeting with you, do that. If you want them to listen to your podcast, tell them to do that. So make sure you have that call to action inside your sequence. And one more thing I'm going to mention about sales emails is, and it's probably the most important, know your buyer's persona.
Tailoring Sequences to Buyer Personas
00:24:27
Speaker
Every person that's buying your product is buying it for a different reason. Your email to each person has to be different. I'll use autoclose for an example. If I'm going to reach out to a CEO, CEOs want to make their company more money. If I'm going to reach out to a marketing person, a marketing person is probably going to want a database of high quality contacts.
00:24:47
Speaker
If I'm going to reach out to a national sales manager, they're going to want their regional sales manager to outperform or get more meetings. And an SDR might want to be able to book more appointments. So make sure you know what each person's buyer's persona is so you can actually build your sequence to those buyer's persona. And that will really, really help with the opens, the deliveries, and the replies you get.
00:25:07
Speaker
So on the part where you were talking about Calendly, we've used Calendly before, so we're very familiar with it. But I was listening to a podcast a couple of weeks ago and it was a CEO and a CMO. And they were talking about, they hate it when people say, Hey, find some time on my calendar because they feel like it's making it all about them and not about the customer.
00:25:29
Speaker
But they did say it's all in how you say it. So have you noticed that that is the case as well? That even though you're giving them your calendar, is it dependent on how you say to book the meeting? Yes, 100%. So I'll say, for example, I mean, I do have people that sometimes when I send the calendar out, they're like, I want to have a call. I don't want to book on a calendar. But the way you say it is very important. So what I do and it works
00:25:57
Speaker
And it's maybe a little bit pushy, but I always never ask. I never say, please find, or can you find? So I don't really ask them to find. I almost make like, we already have the meeting. And so I'll be like, here's my calendar so you can find a time that works for you. So not only a time that works for me, but a time that works for you. So I try and make it about them and not about me when I'm sending that email, but I try not to ask. I almost try to like, to tell, but without telling.
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah, I remember that I was like, you don't really think about it being that way. But I guess a lot of times on the other side, what you're making me do all the work or just the way that it comes across that the way you ask can have a huge impact.
00:26:39
Speaker
So what would you say the number one or the most prevalent error people make when setting up sequences are? Is there something that you see just constantly all the time that you're like, why are you doing it this way? Yeah. I'll tell you something. I'll give you a funny example of what happened with one of my clients.
00:26:56
Speaker
So I think the biggest thing is people talk too much about themselves. They don't talk enough about the challenge like we discussed earlier with that first line. I think that's the biggest mistake. The second mistake is buyer's persona. They don't know who their buyers actually are. So they might be sending an email that might not resonate to the person that is reading the email. The third thing that I would say is that they don't focus on
00:27:18
Speaker
what they want the prospect to do. You have to have a call to action. You have to have a reason why you're sending the email, and you have to be able to how to analyze those results. And here's the funny story. I got a call two weeks ago. Client calls me and goes, Sean, I've been using your platform. I have to tell you, I have a 0% click rate, and it's really bothering me. And I don't know what it is, but something's wrong with your platform. And I'm like, sorry. Let me share. Obviously, it's your platform, right?
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, you guys say we're going to get results, but I'll have a 0% click rate. I'm like, well, I'm really sorry to hear that. My customer success team will look at it. And when it escalates that high, I like to get involved to see what exactly is wrong, what's going on with auto close. So we go in and he sends us his email that he sent.
00:28:12
Speaker
Now, I didn't know how to say this in a nice way. I said it in a nice way, but I'm like, well, sorry, John. The reason why you have a 0% click rate is because your email actually had nothing to click.
00:28:25
Speaker
So there was no link in the email. So he should be judging replies, which he had a 6% reply rate, which the average is one to three, which is great. He had a 0% click rate. And he was mad that he had a 0% click rate. But I'm like, he didn't even have a signature. He had nothing in there you could even click. And that's what he was told. So those are the things why I say content and stuff like that. But that was a really funny story. And in our intercom support chat, we're all in our notes are like, oh my god.
00:28:54
Speaker
We have to be nice to the client. We're saying, sorry John, but you need to have a link to click to get a click. So that's kind of a funny story we had a few weeks ago. So when somebody's sequence isn't working and they're frustrated, do you have like a checklist of, you know, here's where you should start and try to find out where it's maybe gone wrong? I guess number one is, did you have a link to click? Well, yeah, that's a good one.
00:29:17
Speaker
For that answer, I took an amazing question because that was something we had about five months ago, where we had a lot of our clients saying, our template, it was doing so well and now it's kind of stale. So what we actually did now, we measure inside the platform, we measure per email.
00:29:33
Speaker
So now we can see emails one to six, which ones are performing, which ones are not performing, where people are falling off, et cetera, in that sequence. So that's a great question. But we find that it all depends on the process. Like you got to have a plan when you're saying email, like you can't just send the email without saying, you know, for example, maybe, you know, in the second deal, maybe doing a case and build more trust.
00:29:56
Speaker
Maybe send a marketing blog or send it, for example, we're doing a podcast on email killer sequences. So in my next sequence, to a cold prospect, I might say email number four, like, hey, I know I haven't heard back from you. We actually just did a podcast and it was about killer email sequences. It might help your sales team. And we might send in this podcast.
00:30:17
Speaker
So always nurturing them and helping them. But we've had some clients that, I can sit here and tell you stories and make you guys laugh, but I'll only tell you the click one right now.
00:30:32
Speaker
Obviously, email sequences can have a big impact on making more sales, but are there other things you'd recommend to do throughout that sequence for a full multi-touch or multi-channel sales gain? A hundred percent.
Integrating Social Media into Email Sequences
00:30:49
Speaker
One thing that has worked really well for us, and I do it all the time, is the social touches.
00:30:56
Speaker
So what I mean by that is inside a sequence, what I will do is if I see somebody to open my email or take an action, I'll do different things like add them on LinkedIn, okay? Then I might like, share, comment, or endorse those four things.
00:31:14
Speaker
And the reason why is you can do all four of those things on LinkedIn. You could like, share, endorse, or comment on a post and don't have to talk or send them an email. So for example, I actually do with contracts even sent out. I have a campaign inside AutoCloser, a campaign that is with quotes that are sent out. So if I send a quote to somebody I haven't heard back from in a week, I'll just like us something they did on LinkedIn.
00:31:37
Speaker
or I'll just comment, or I'll endorse them. And anything you do that will automatically on LinkedIn show, oh, Sean Finder just endorsed you for a marketing skill. And they'd be like, oh, I forgot to email Sean back. He sent me that quote last week. And I find it really helps to get engaged. It helps to build trust. So social touch is for sure. And then if you want to mix in some cold calling, you can as well. But I find the social touches using Twitter and LinkedIn really, really works well with cold prospects, warm prospects, existing clients, or even quotes are being sent out.
00:32:06
Speaker
I noticed you didn't mention send an email to pester people, which is my biggest epi when people do that. I usually tell people just actually connect, but don't actually don't just connect and say, oh, I'd like to join your network. Tell them why. So say, you know, you know, hi, Stacy, I'd love to join your network because I'm a really big fan of your podcast.
00:32:27
Speaker
Something like that. And then you're more likely to get them to connect with you. And once you have a connection, you've won because now you can share, you can tag, you can endorse, you can like, you can do all these different things and touch them a hundred times. And for example, now, because we post a lot of content and videos and stuff on LinkedIn.
00:32:44
Speaker
Whenever we send a cold email to our, for example, our MailChimp list, we have people that respect us because we provide high quality content. We do a lot of videos. We do a lot of podcasts. I don't even have to really sell them in a sequence anymore because I've already built that comfort zone and that trust with my clients and prospects. So how do you recommend they go about the endorsement part? Because most likely you've never worked with this person to be able to endorse them on certain things.
00:33:08
Speaker
Like if somebody that I don't know endorses me for something that I'm like, well, they don't know how I am with this. They've never worked with me on this. So how do you go about picking what you're going to endorse them for? Because there are some things that you can endorse them for based on activities that they're doing and things like that. So how do you make that determination? So it seems authentic.
00:33:31
Speaker
Yeah, so what I do is I'll usually go inside LinkedIn, I'll check either posts, articles, or stuff they've commented on. And I will look at them, and if they did a big post on, for example, killer subject lines, like say they did a post on killer subject lines.
00:33:47
Speaker
I would then go in, and if one of the things I could endorse them was subject lines, I would endorse them enough because I could easily even comment on their posts saying, hey, I read your killer subject lines. I was really impressed. And then go right in and endorse them two days later. And now they've known I've commented on them. So they know I've read their posts in their blog. And then when I endorse them, they know, oh, he read my blog and endorsed. That was really nice of him. So that makes sense to kind of go about it that way. But there are some people that definitely do not do that.
00:34:14
Speaker
I'm not going to lie, I might be one of them sometimes. We have a fun question for you. So if you weren't doing what you're doing now, what would be your dream job? My wife will kill me.
00:34:34
Speaker
professional poker player. I love, I love, I love, I've always been competitive. So as you know, I play tennis. I've always been a big, big poker player, not in fine games and stuff. I've played, you know, in some tournaments, but it's been a hobby of mine simply because there's a lot of thinking, a lot of stuff you have to do at the table. It's relaxing for me. So even on my spare time when I travel to Florida or Vegas, my two places, I'm at the hard rock hotel a lot when I'm there. So, so, uh, yeah, I would say professional poker player, but, uh,
00:35:01
Speaker
yeah as I said don't let's not tell my wife there's still uh so not like the the gambling by that because she already thinks I gamble a lot so well at least you could potentially make some money from it see that's that's what I say I say you know I got when you go shopping you're spending when I play poker there's a chance I could win right well are there any additional tips you want to share with our audience about sales emails
00:35:28
Speaker
Yeah, the only thing I would say is for salespeople in general, and I don't like to say this word, but a lot of salespeople nowadays I find are lazy or they give up after one email or two emails. Keep in mind that now everyone in the world gets hundreds of emails a day. Everyone is busy. Most people are not going to reply to your first or second email, so don't get down on yourself.
00:35:49
Speaker
You have to be persistent, but you have to have a sequence of at least six, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 emails to get, especially someone in C-level or VP level. Because the last thing they want to do on a Monday to Friday is answer cold prospect emails. So be persistent. Don't give up. Don't be lazy. Spread out those sequences.
00:36:10
Speaker
And hopefully you'll see those leads and those high qualified leads come in. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And everyone, now you have the info you need to get your email sequences performing at their best. So take Sean's advice, take his tips and make it happen.
Contacting Sean Finder & Hosts
00:36:28
Speaker
So if people want to get in touch with you, Sean, what's the best way for them to do that?
00:36:32
Speaker
If you want to get in touch with me, email me sean, s-h-a-w-n at autoclose.com. You can try and connect with me on LinkedIn, but I think I have too many connections. You might have to follow me on LinkedIn so you can follow our content, or you can go to our website autoclose.com. But if you have any questions, email me or our support team on our chat, on our website with any questions about sales. It can not even be on Autoclose, just about sales in general. Ask me, and I usually respond right away.
00:36:56
Speaker
And we'll include that contact information in the show notes as well as some links that you gave us Sean earlier about some B2B sales handbooks and 673 years of sales excellence book. So we'll make sure all that's in the show notes for our listeners to review. Perfect. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That was a lot of fun.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah, and if people want to get in touch with either me or Elena, you can hit us up on social. On Twitter, you can find me at STACY underscore JAX. That's Stacy underscore JAX. And you can find Elena at A-L-A-N-N-A underscore JAX. And not a Twitter fan. You can find us on LinkedIn and
00:37:42
Speaker
You can also download the Anchor mobile app to leave us a voicemail. We might use your message on Next Show. Thanks for joining us and have a great week. The B2B Mix Show is hosted by Stacey Jackson and Elena Jackson of, you guessed it, Jackson Marketing. If you need help with your B2B inbound marketing efforts, visit us at JacksonMarketingServices.com.