Effective personalization is not just about inserting industry or persona-specific variations into your messaging.
Some of you may have tried personalizing your sales email by using templates like:
- Would you like to know how other {{job function}} leaders have saved costs while increasing their employers’ productivity?
- We’ve helped other {{industry}} companies generate $100K in additional revenue with a 7X ROI.
However, executives’ inboxes are sinking in hundreds of sales emails every week, and they hate it.
We agree with them. Personalization is not just inserting names and variables, but digging a few layers deeper. This article will show you how to effectively use research to personalize your outreach.
Using prospect-generated content as a source of personalization was 18% more effective.
If you can find content that your prospect has created online (examples below), mentioning it will increase your chance of booking meetings with prospects.
The examples of prospect-generated content you can search online:
- Article they wrote
- Featured interview article
- Podcast
- LinkedIn post
- Event/session where they were the speaker
Referring to prospects’ specific statements or comments in articles, podcasts, or interviews is an excellent opportunity to show why you reached out to them specifically.
We found that personalization with an emphasis on the prospect-generated content performed 18% better than other topics such as highlighting company news, how their businesses solve customers’ pains, or a prospect’s career/role-focused topics (though there are ways to effectively personalize your cold email with other topics as well, which we’ll look into later).
*Notes:
1The meeting booked % is not the overall conversion rate. It is a benchmark to compare the two groups' performances. This analysis was done using 1,703 emails that booked meetings, and 4,710 emails from the same campaigns that did not book meetings.
2Only the initial emails were considered for the personalization category as they are typically the most personalized messages, though we always send a few follow-up emails. We counted “meeting booked” as long as a prospect responded to the emails (the initial ones or the follow-ups).
3The categorization is based on the “emphasis” of personalization, as an email often includes some or all elements to some degree.
▼An example of a personalization based on prospect-generated content
*All of the examples below are modified to protect any personal information that can identify individuals or companies
▼An example of a company/career-focused personalization
▼An example of a prospect's customer-focused personalization
7 Examples of using specificity for effective personalization.
These guiding principals are used in the examples below to turn a piece of research into a very relevant and personalized email:
- Including a detailed yet concise reference of the researched information
- Using direct quotes and paraphrases from the referenced material
- Being curious to learn more about their thoughts
- Commenting on relevance to the writer
- Asking thought-provoking questions at the end
- Recognizing the recipient's expertise, leadership, and collaborative mindset
Here are the 7 examples of emails that booked meetings utilizing these guiding principals:
*We modified names that could specify the individual/company from our original emails
Analysis:
This example refers to the article's content using quotes, and adding the writer's takeaway. Also incorporating the content reference as a part of a thought-provoking question.
Principals being used:
- Referencing “an article about your partnership with…”
#1 - detailed yet concise reference
- Using a quote “five specific police contract clauses” from the article
#2 - direct quote
- “I’m curious to know…”
#3 - curiosity
- “How else …?”
#5 - thought-provoking questions
Analysis:
This example above concisely introduced what the article was about, and quoted a specific comment from the prospect that the writer found helpful.
Principals being used:
- “An older article that you wrote about…”
#1 - detailed yet concise reference
- Using a quote “Pain points mapping…”
#2 - direct quote
- "I’m curious to know what is…"
#3 - curiosity, #5 - thought-provoking questions
Analysis:
This example above effectively incorporated a topic that the prospect cares for, stimulating a feeling, and connecting to what the writer is curious to know more about.
Principals being used:
- Recognizing leadership and its value to society
#6 - recognition of recipient
- “...that must feel like…” shows the relatability of the feeling
#4 - relevance to writer
- “I’m curious to know your thoughts on…?”
#3 - curiosity, #5 - thought-provoking questions
Analysis:
This example effectively introduces relevance to the writer and hence why it makes sense to reach out.
Principals being used:
- Quoting the comment “collaboration and cohesiveness… company culture”
#1 - detailed yet concise reference, #2 - direct quote
- “What was the biggest…?”
#3 - curiosity, #5 - thought-provoking questions
- “I spent my time in this space”
#4 - relevance to writer
Analysis:
This example recognized the recipient's expertise in a specific topic and asked a question to seek expert insight.
Principals being used:
- Referencing the prospect’s podcast
#1 - detailed yet concise reference
- Showing agreement to the specific comment the prospect made
#2 - direct quote, #4 - relevance to writer
- Asking a question to hear more insights on an expert topic.
#5 - thought-provoking questions, #6 - recognition of recipient
Here are two examples that did not result in booking meetings (with explanations on how to make them better).
Analysis:
This email referenced the prospect’s research paper yet was missing detailed context.
It is unclear what was interesting or why the sender found it interesting. It did not result in a meeting.
To improve this:
Mention what specifically was interesting about the paper, and how that was relevant to the reason you reached out.
Analysis:
This one above also mentioned that the writer was curious to learn more; however, it is not clear why the program caught their interest and why the writer wanted to learn more. This email didn’t book a meeting.
To improve this:
Reference why the partnership appealed as a significant strategic move for the company, and why you wanted to learn more about the program.
6 Effective research sources if you can’t find prospect-generated content.
Unfortunately, not all prospects have their content available online. For some of them, it is very difficult to find.
When you can only find company-related research, there are still ways to effectively personalize your outbound emails.
Here are the types of research you can reference:
- The company’s recent news (ie. New features, awards, funding, etc...)
- Prospect’s involvement with the company (ie. LinkedIn profile, promotion, etc.)
- Company’s website (ie. case studies, mission, career page, etc.)
- Company’s Employee Reviews (ie. Glassdoor)
- Company’s Product Reviews (ie. G2, Trustpilot)
- Company’s Open Jobs (ie. LinkedIn, Indeed, industry job board, etc...)
On top of the principals we shared above, here are additional things to consider when referencing company-related information or prospects’ careers.
- Selecting the company’s recent hot topics (i.e. recent company news, new product launch)
- Referencing the prospect’s relationship/involvement with the company or the project
Here are two examples of emails that booked meetings and incorporated the tips above:
Analysis:
This email was sent right after a prospect’s company released a new feature, and the news was highlighted in the press release.
Principals being used:
- Selecting the company’s recent, hot topics
#1 - Hot Topic
- “ leveraging your expertise to support teams…”
#2 - Prospect's Involvement
Analysis:
This email was sent right after a prospect’s company released a new feature, and the news was highlighted in the press release.
Tips being used:
- Mentioning the company’s recent hot topic, “Innovation & Impact Award 2020”
#1 - Hot Topic
- Referencing back to the prospect’s relationship/involvement with the company or the project to make it more personal
#2 - Prospect's Involvement
Want to do high volumes of personalized outreach without spending half your day writing emails?
Despite knowing how to do personalization, reps face a trade-off between the quantity and quality of outbound emails. With manual research & writing for every person, it adds hours of work, and reps risk falling behind on their other equally important tasks.
To quantify this, we did a time study of high-performing BDRs doing personalized outreach. To engage 8 prospects with highly personalized messages, it takes the average BDR/SDR an hour of research & writing while switching between 180+ browser tabs.
The other under-discussed problem with this is the mental drain it causes reps and often leads to turnover.
So you can send relevant outreach that is unique to every prospect
in seconds, not hours.
If you want to ensure your outreach is relevant & personalized but aren’t sure how to make this scaleable, we can help.
Want help with building & managing entire campaigns?
Volley’s Outbound Service can own the entire top of the funnel so you just focus on closing deals and serving your customers.
Our “Outbound SWAT Team” will get a hyper-personalized campaign up and running for you in 2 weeks; including lead sourcing, sequence building, and advanced analytics.
Appendix: More detail about our analysis
We often write emails with the following structure:
- Personalized Hook - The purpose is to stimulate the prospect’s curiosity and get them to read the rest of the email. It is a great opportunity to show why we reached out to them specifically.
- Call-To-Action (CTA) - This section states what we want them to do (i.e. please let me know if you’re open to connecting, and I’d be happy to send over some time options).
- Email Body - This is where we introduce who we are, provide brief context on what we do, and more context into why we reached out.
We analyzed the personalized “hook” section of our emails.
