You’re taking a break for lunch in the middle of a busy workday and open your inbox, only to find two new sales emails from unknown senders.
The first one starts with a run-of-the-mill promotional sales pitch. The second email opens with a reference to your recent LinkedIn post, connects it to your pain points, and offers a helpful solution.
No points for guessing which one resonates better.
That’s what adding personalization to your sales outreach efforts can do. In this article, we’ll dig deep into the importance of personalization in sales outreach and outline practical ways to help you get started.
Why personalized messages matter in sales outreach
Every industry is crowded with multiple players offering similar solutions. Whether your small business caters to everyday consumers or C-suite decision-makers, you have to compete for every prospect’s attention. It’s particularly crucial when your sales strategy starts with a cold email or phone call.
How do you ensure that your outreach email or call cuts through the noise? The answer is personalization. It’s the key to making each prospect feel valued instead of treating them like another sales target you need to tick off your to-do list.
Case in point—a McKinsey report revealed that 71 percent of consumers expected personalization from brands in 2021. Another 76 percent felt frustrated when a brand didn’t deliver a personalized experience.
Integrating personalized touchpoints into your sales outreach strategy can help you strike a chord with prospects. Also, it can help you lasting relationships with them and drive more revenue through repeat purchases. Ultimately, it translates into a loyal customer base and an improved reputation for your company.
How to personalize your sales outreach strategy
Personalization is more than just adding a prospect’s name or job title in the greeting or subject line of a cold email. Instead, it’s about delighting them with messaging tailored to their unique challenges and preferences. The key is to make them feel like every piece of communication was created just for them.
Here are a few valuable ways to personalize your sales outreach efforts.
Don’t skimp on research
How do you make a prospect feel that you value them? By showing you invested effort and time in learning about their world.
If you’ve already identified a potential buyer, it’s time for your sales team to search for their personal name and company name and take a closer look at their online presence. Find out which social media platforms they use and what kind of content they share on each platform. Stay on top of the latest news about them, including any recent awards or company milestones.
Take things up a notch by digging deeper into their personal preferences and events. Find out whether they relocated to a new home or added a new pet to their home recently. Even if you’re pitching to a B2B buyer, such personal details can help you build an instant rapport.
Go the extra mile and use a CRM system to collect and organize a prospect’s details in a centralized dashboard. This will ensure that salespeople have access to the latest information whenever for their outreach campaigns.
Build a connection
Before you reach out to a potential customer via a cold email or phone call, it’s a good idea to start a conversation with them. Engaging with their content on social media is one particularly effective way to start a discussion. Drop a comment on one of their LinkedIn posts or retweet their content on X.
Did you just find out that they host a podcast on their company’s YouTube channel? Share it across your social media profiles, and remember to tag them. Initiating a conversation like this maximizes your chances of grabbing the prospect’s attention when you eventually reach out to them with an offer.
Focus on customer-centric messaging
Nothing drives potential customers away faster than going on and on about what an outstanding business or product you’ve built. Instead, put your prospect at the left, right, and center of all your messaging.
If you’re sending a cold email campaign, start by crafting a catchy subject line that generates curiosity or promises value to boost open rates. Next, begin the email with some information that demonstrates how much you know about the prospect. Highlight the current challenges they might be facing and position your product or service as a solution to their problems.
Collecting buyer data in a platform like Act! can come in handy here, too. You get access to detailed buyer profiles, which makes it easier to tailor your communication according to a prospect’s pain points, purchase history, and other attributes. You can even use the search feature to find relevant information quickly.
Take them on a journey
B2B sales outreach doesn’t have to be all about sending cold emails in bulk or making a bunch of phone calls to new leads. Instead, it’s better done by handholding qualified prospects through the buyer’s journey and helping them make the right purchase decisions.
One way of doing that is to nurture active leads through a series of well-timed and tailored follow-ups. You can use Act!’s marketing automation functionalities to trigger a series of personalized emails based on a recipient’s online activity and behavior.
Let’s say your first email concludes with a call to action (CTA) to download a case study. A prospect clicks the CTA but doesn’t send a reply for a week. You can set up an automated follow-up with an email template to check whether they had a chance to go through the case study. In that email, you can ask them to visit a relevant product page on your website or reach out to your sales reps.
Similarly, when a customer purchases from you, you can schedule a reminder to follow up with them after a week. Act! lets you assign such tasks to specific team members, too.
Customizing your follow-ups based on the recipient’s past actions helps deliver a personalized purchase experience. Ultimately, it improves your chances of closing the deal and building a long-standing relationship.
Personalize your sales outreach with Act!
If you’re looking to up your sales outreach game, personalization is the way to go. A personalized outreach strategy helps build a rapport with prospects and win their trust and loyalty. It also plays a crucial role in making your sales efforts stand out in a crowded market and boosts conversion rates.
With its feature-packed CRM and marketing automation software, Act! offers several tools that make it easier to personalize your outreach efforts at scale. Start your free trial today to see how Act! fits into your sales strategy.
