How to optimize your Outreach sequences

Guest post by TJ Macke, SVP of Strategy at Sapper Consulting & REGIE.io

Creating an effective outbound Outreach Sequence isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. From understanding buyer personas to utilizing the best sending times, there's a nuance that makes a Sequence sing. After building 6,000 Sequences over the last 3 years, we’ve studied and pinpointed 4 key ways that you can continually optimize your outbound process to meet your unique business needs.

1. Optimize for the Right Metrics

Optimization always boils down to what you measure. Many marketers get stuck pouring their energy into the wrong metrics: opens, replies, clicks, lack of unsubscribes, etc. While each of these metrics plays a role in the big picture of your campaign, none of them are indicative of your actual goal.

Whether you’re seeking to increase sales meetings, form fills, or revenue, you need to disregard vanity metrics, define your ultimate outcome, and run towards that. Outreach Amplify's machine learning can help by automatically classifying email replies into positive or negative replies, which provides significantly more insight into next steps than simple vanity metrics like open and reply rates.

2. Be an Outreach Scientist

There are several approaches that might resonate with any given buyer persona. From tone and voice, to channel and call to action, you have multiple variables available to create your perfect formula.

Rather than A/B testing against the nuance of a few words, interchange these variables dramatically and gauge your results. If you’re reaching out to titles like Finance or Operations within an organization, you might lean towards straightforward messaging in a professional tone. Other factors to consider include testing how the same prospects respond when you interlace your value proposition with a subtle yet witty demeanor, or how they respond when contacted via LinkedIn compared to email.

Your audience likely enjoys multiple marketing flavors. By testing inherently different strategies, you’ll continue to hone in on the perfect Sequence for your audience.

3. Move Fast

When optimizing your Outreach Sequences, don’t hesitate to turn off what isn’t working. Before you begin testing, define the minimal variable to prove or negate your test. For instance, maybe you want to contact 200 prospects to establish that any given step has been tested. If your strategy doesn’t create the impact you wanted, it’s time to start something new. This is why it’s important to have a contingency plan waiting in the wings--if you can’t pivot quickly, your results will suffer.

4. Focus on Your Formula

The best people in the space live in an efficiency equilibrium - they are always looking to improve conversion rates but are always going to hit their goal because they understand their own formula. They know how much fuel is needed for a powerful engine. By understanding your campaign’s efficiency, you’ll always set yourself up to hit your quota.

Efficiency depends on your conversion rate. If it takes 20 prospects to get one meeting and you need 15 meetings this quarter, you’ll need to design a system to reflect that. There is a certain amount of ‘fuel’ or prospect volume needed to make any given campaign successful.

However, if your buyer persona is narrow and you only have a few prospects to engage with, you need to see a high conversion rate. Without it, you’ll run out of fuel long before your prospects convert. If you find yourself with both low conversion rates and a niche audience, you’ll need to rethink your strategy. Identify why your campaign is not converting and scrap the whole Sequence or create a broader buyer persona that can take you towards your meeting goal.

Iterating an Outreach Sequence takes time, expertise, and strategic thinking. That’s why REGIE.io created the Sequence Coach, allowing you to strategize, optimize, and launch a campaign in under 5 minutes. Our latest update to the Sequence Coach can create a custom or Agoge Sequence for your team. Curious? Don’t hesitate to reach out and let our experts assist you.