How Visum achieved a 19% reply rate with their outbound strategy?
Discover the details behind a successful outreach strategy with actionable tips you can replicate for your business.
Company overview 🔍
Company info 📊
Business
SaaSIndustry
Computer SoftwareRegion
Central EuropeCompany size
1-10 employeesAverage deal size
$650
Backstory 📚
Visum is a software that enables you to easily identify the tool stack a company is using based on an email address. Pretty cool tool, right?
So how do they sell this awesome feature? They were sticking to content marketing, mainly on LinkedIn to gain their first clients and only recently got introduced to cold email.
After joining lemHERO and talking to Simon about their abilities and goals, they figured out the 2 strongest value propositions for their tool and then defined two different targets:
1. Companies that sell tools that integrates with specific CRMs - by letting their sales team know what CRM their prospects are using, to then be able to only target relevant leads depending on the integration their company has.
2. CRM companies - by letting their sales team know what CRM their prospects are using, to then be able to expose the right value proposition when reaching out to them.
The game plan: start manually to find outbound method works, and only then scale the process. This goes through making sure we have the right target, the right approach and we reach out at the right moment.
We decided to target CRM companies and tools that only integrate with specifc CRMs, since these are the two targets that best fit with their value propositions.
By targeting decision makers first (i.e. VP or Head of sales) and then focusing on the people that would use the product on a daily basis (i.e. sales reps or BDR).
Ideal customer profile 🎯
Alex Jones
Profile 😀
Country
United States of AmericaPosition
Head of Sales, VP salesDaily focus
Train sales team, Focus on sales performance and optimizationHobbies
Working out, Tech, Going out
Goals & Objectives 📈
Build predictable revenue
Help his team upskill
Increase sales by 25% this quarter
Goals & Objectives 📈
Build predictable revenue
Help his team upskill
Increase sales by 25% this quarter
How he heard about us 👂
Inbound
Saw one of our LinkedIn post in his feed a few weeks agoOutbound
Cold email that invites him to try a new lead generation software
What might hold him back ✋
Doesn’t do outreach at the moment
Doesn’t have time to try a new software
Taylor Smith
Profile 😀
Country
United States of AmericaPosition
SDR, BDR, Account managerDaily focus
Reaching out to leads, managing networkHobbies
Sports, hitting up the brewery, meeting other sales reps
Goals & Objectives 📈
Meet quarterly objectives + bonus potential
Increase territory by 10%
Up her sales skills
Goals & Objectives 📈
Keeping an eye out for new tools
Trying out new tools to see if she can save time
Mentions the tool to her manager
How he heard about us 👂
Inbound
Saw one of our LinkedIn posts in her feed a few weeks agoOutbound
Cold email that invites her to try a new lead generation software
What might hold him back ✋
Already satisfied by her productivity
Not really looking for new tools nor sharing with her manager
Our game plan
After defining the two different targets we would contact, the next step was to find the real people behind the profile. Here’s what this process looked like for us:
1 Finding accounts
For the first value proposition, targeting tools that only integrate with specific CRMs, we went to google and looked for "Best add-ons to CRM".
Here we realized that there are specific categories of tools that integrate with CRMs.
Apps like:
- live chats
- customer support tools
- billing and invoice softwares
- project management tools
And once we picked a type of tool, we searched for the most popular one, then found some alternatives (to find more companies in the target audience).
For example, for the customer support tools, we identified Intercom as a market leader. We then searched for “Intercom alternative” on G2, Capterra, and Google.
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And for the second value proposition, targeting CRM platforms, it was a bit easier. We searched google and G2 to find relevant CRMs that had unique features (that they will be able to leverage thanks to Visum), but also that had enough reviews and client testimonials to make sure that our list was as relevant as possible.
This is manual work, but it all pays off in the end because we are able to super qualify these leads by finding tools that will really benefit from using Visum.
2 Look for buying signals
Think about the number of deals that say “try us again in 6 months” or “we’re not in a position to buy right now”. You obviously want to avoid this as much as possible so you don’t waste their time or yours.
So, after finding the companies that fit with the value propositions, the next step is ensuring the leads actually will be ready to buy what you’re offering. In this case, we used LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Crunchbase to look for growth indicators like recent fundraising or significant increase of employees over the last year.
And since we needed to make sure these leads would actually use the tool, we checked LinkedIn to make sure each company had a sales team of at least 3 people, increasing the chances that the team is doing outbound.
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3 Finding the right leads
Remember that we were looking for two types of people at each company: one sales decision maker and one sales rep.
To find this info you can do two things on LinkedIn:
- go to the company page -> click on “people” -> search by title
- standard linkedin search -> type in a title -> select “people” -> add the company name as “current company”
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So, for the decision maker, we searched for job titles like VP of Sales, Head of Sales, or Sales Director.
And for the sales rep, we looked for SDR, account executive or Business developer.
4 Polishing the list
After all this, we ended up with a list of 50 companies that integrate with CRMs and 50 CRM companies, totaling 100 accounts. This might not seem like that much to you, but this is where that manual work really comes in handy.
Thanks to our research, we were 100% sure these accounts can improve their processes with Visum, and that they are in a position to buy at this moment.
In practice, we used the lemlist chrome extension to scrape the LinkedIn search results, which adds the leads to our lemlist campaign. During this process, Dropcontact enriches the leads with their professional email addresses, and Bouncer cleans the list to avoid bouncing emails and hurting our email deliverability.
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Here’s our solution 💪
The campaigns featured here are the ones we created to target CRM companies. The goal is to highlight how Visum could save their sales team time on lead qualification (by knowing instantly if a lead uses a specific CRM) and increase outreach personalization (by knowing which value proposition they can highlight in their outreach).
Our first campaign was sent to the decision makers who would purchase the tool for their team. In the event that the first campaign was not successful, we sent a second campaign but to the sales reps (bottom-up approach). The idea here is to get a referral from him to the decision maker.
This approach makes a lot of sense when the end user of your solution is not the decision maker.
The relationship you can have with this target is much easier because it will be enterly focused on how you can help them and not how you can sell them your product (simply because you know, and they know that they aren’t the one who will get to choose).
Campaign 1: Reaching out to decision makers
Step 1
From the subject line, we are 100% focused on the leads, and not at all on Visum.
Then the body of the email is full of enticing info:
1. A personalized intro line to prove we did some research and that it isn’t just a random email. Plus, since our intro line is partially visible from the inbox, this will really stands out.
2. Instead of saying something sales-y like “You can use Visum to identify your prospect’s CRM”, we reversed it by asking a question - making it much more conversational.
3. Then he went right in with a real example, complete with black and white results.
4. The last appeal immediately addresses the “what’s in it for me” question, but again in an indirect way by explaining that he thinks it could help them save their sales team some time.
5. And finally, no harsh meeting request, just a simple “Worth exploring?” to make it easy to start a conversation.
Step 2
This step is a way to gently remind the lead of your email while also getting your name, face, and personality into their brain.
Your LinkedIn profile acts as a digital version of you, so if they click on the “YourName viewed your profile” notification they will get to know you better.
And keep in mind, the goal is to build a relationship, so letting your lead get to know you little by little is a really natural way to do this!
Step 3
This email follows the same idea as the first one, providing real examples mixed with a really casual tone that makes it seem like a co-worker or friend is reaching out.
The other key points of this email?
- Data backed proof
- Relevant problem
- Short message
- Anticipating needs
Step 4
The next step is focused on hitting the lead on a different platform to increase the chances to get a reply.
And since we’ve already added context with an email and shown who we are with the LinkedIn profile visit, we just need a short message to express interest in connecting.
The bones of this message is: Context about why we’re sending them a request + a reminder of our emails + tease for next step.
Step 5
Notice how each step revolves around the previous one? Don’t forget to make connections between your touch points, because your leads are really busy and probably won’t remember.
Also, be sure to add value with every step! This email isn’t just a reminder, but also provides the lead with a really short video that shows them how Visum can help them.
Once the lead clicks on this video thumbnail it will take him to a personalized landing page just for them.
Step 6
At this point, it’s been well over a week since the first follow-up (where we sent the coupon code for the lead) so this email was just a gentle reminder to use the code if they’re interested.
Nothing fancy, keeping it short and sweet and using the right language that highlights why the lead should take advantage of the offer.
Step 7
For the last step in your sequence it’s always best to simply state the info your lead needs.
In this case, that it was the end of the sequence, and that we would be reaching out to another colleague instead.
And this concluding email ties right in with their strategy, since we went for a decision maker first, now they’ll target the sales rep.
But instead of being shady, they put it out in the open! This is a great way to encourage internal conversations.
Campaign 2: Reaching out to sales reps
Step 1
Going into reaching out to SDRs, we started by sending a gentle LinkedIn invite and didn't waste any extra time personalizing, by leaving the invite without a message.
If you're thinking "Wait what? No personalization? We're talking about lemlist right?"... hold on, let me back up. After testing out LinkedIn invite strategies, we've narrowed down the 2 situations that get the best results:
1. hyper-personalizing your message for each and every lead
2. sending a blank (but relevant) invite
No one wants to be spammed in a LinkedIn invite, it just doesn't give a promising vision for future conversations. So you either need to use a 100% personalized message that establishes you know them, or just go with a blank option.
And since Simon needed to prioritize personalizing two separate sequences for each account, he went with the blank option to save some time.
Step 2
This was the first "hard" step for this leads, so we started out with some context about his previous outreach to the decision maker in their company.
He even included it in the subject line to make it really stand out in the inbox!
Then he continued the email just like he did for the decision maker with personalization and a real example.
The only difference in the body is the second mention to the decision maker he contacted and he also immediately gave them the code to check out.
Step 3
Next up was a LinkedIn profile visit just to grab the lead's attention on another channel.
At this point they would have seen our invite and email, so our name will start to look familiar and they'll think of looking back at their inbox.
Step 4
We used the same message for his follow-up to show proof and added value, but modified it a bit to fit the audience better.
We took out the part about helping their team, since here we were speaking directly to the person it would benefit.
We also took out the part about the coupon credit, since we mentioned this in the first email.
Step 5
Next up was another LinkedIn profile visit, again using the LinkedIn notification as a reminder for the lead to respond.
Step 6
In this last email, he follows up with a video demo (personalization + value) and adds a gentle reminder about the free credits.
Nothing pushy or too sales-y and keeping it short and sweet in length and copy!
Did it work? 🤔
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🤔Watch the
video! 🚀
Visum’s ROI thanks to lemHERO
Learn more about the ROI Visum was able to get thanks to the lemHERO program.
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