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Tips for building sequences and emails

Increase your conversion rate with well-structured emails

Updated over a week ago

Cold emailing is a real sales strategy. To be effective, you need to work upstream to deliver the right messages.

1️⃣ Define the main features and benefits of what you want to sell


Example for ZELIQ

🔎 Prospect Search

ZELIQ provides access to a database of 450 million verified prospects, allowing users to easily identify new leads for outreach. This ensures sales teams can continuously engage with fresh contacts.

🤩 Data Quality

ZELIQ's prospect enrichment feature keeps your CRM data accurate and up-to-date by regularly refreshing job titles, emails, and phone numbers. This increases your chances of reaching the right person.

🖥️ Omnichannel Sequences

Automated outreach sequences can be created across multiple channels like email,

LinkedIn, and calls. This helps sales teams connect with prospects on their preferred platform, leading to higher response rates and better engagement.

💚 CRM, Dialer, and LinkedIn Integrations

ZELIQ integrates seamlessly with top CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce, and syncs with LinkedIn. Prospects can be added directly from LinkedIn into ZELIQ, eliminating manual data entry.

And many more… 🍬

2️⃣ Create your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)


Creating your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a crucial step in building a successful sales strategy. By identifying the key characteristics of your ideal customer, you can tailor your sales efforts to target the right companies, address their pain points, and increase customer satisfaction and lifetime value.

Here are the steps to create your ICP :

🔬 Analyze your existing data

  • Collect data from your CRM and identify key trends among your customers.

  • Categorize customers based on firmographics such as industry, company size, revenue, funding, technology stack, and location.

  • Compare these attributes with their profitability scores and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores.

  • Look for patterns between certain firmographics and customer longevity, sales cycles, and churn.

💡 Understand your value proposition by answering these questions:

  • What problems are your prospects trying to solve?

  • Which of your current customers are getting the most out of your product(s) or service(s)?

  • What do your best customers have in common?

  • What do the customers of your closest competitors have in common?

⚒️ Build your ICP

  • Use the data gathered and conclusions drawn from your analysis to set the parameters for your ICP.

  • Specify the metrics and attributes that define your ideal customers based on your company's goals.

  • Create a clear and detailed ICP that represents the target companies that you want to focus on.

🔬An example of an Ideal Customer Profile for ZELIQ could be:

Targeted Industry

Growth-oriented technology company in a phase of rapid development.

Company Size

Growing SMEs (100-500 employees) looking to accelerate their adoption of technology.

Job Title: CEO, Head of Sales.

Needs and challenges

  • Need to streamline and automate business processes to boost operational efficiency.

  • Interest in adopting emerging technologies to stay competitive in the market and anticipate future trends.

Goals

  • Accelerate business growth by optimizing internal processes and delivering exceptional customer experiences.

  • Maximize the use of data to make informed, predictive business decisions.

Remember, you can have multiple ICPs if your company offers products or services that cater to different pain points. Once you have a well-defined ICP, you can align your sales and marketing strategies to effectively reach and engage your ideal customers. This will lead to improved customer relationships, increased sales, and overall business growth.

💡An ICP and a Persona are not the same. While an ICP focuses on measurable data and characteristics of the target businesses or individuals, a Persona delves into qualitative data, like pain points, goals, and personality types, to understand the kinds of individuals that fall within your Ideal Customer Profile.

3️⃣ Problems 👉 Solutions


With your ICP in mind, it’s crucial to outline the problems your ideal customers face and how your product or service addresses them.

Example for ZELIQ

Problem 1: Poor Data Quality

  • Issue: Sales teams often deal with low-quality leads in their pipeline, wasting time on unqualified prospects.

  • Current Process: Relying on manual prospecting or outdated CRM data.

  • KPI Affected: Lead-to-conversion ratio.

  • Root Causes: Inaccurate data, lack of prospect enrichment, and poor targeting.

  • Solution: ZELIQ’s prospect enrichment improves data accuracy by verifying contact details every three months, ensuring better-qualified leads.

Problem 2: Sales Teams Lack Efficiency Due to Admin Tasks

  • Issue: Sales reps spend too much time on administrative tasks, reducing their selling time.

  • Current Process: Manual data entry and prospect research.

  • KPI Affected: Productivity and deal velocity.

  • Root Causes: Lack of automation for routine tasks.

  • Solution: ZELIQ automates tasks like lead enrichment, prospecting, and follow-ups, allowing more time for sales meetings.

Problem 3: Difficulty Tracking Sales Performance

  • Issue: Sales managers struggle to gain a clear view of team performance due to disparate reporting systems.

  • Current Process: Manual data compilation from various platforms.

  • KPI Affected: Sales team performance.

  • Root Causes: Lack of unified reporting.

  • Solution: ZELIQ provides data-driven insights via its sales dashboard, helping managers track team performance in real time.

4️⃣ Email and sequence structure templates


The "Problems & Solutions" step helps you craft high-value Calls-to-Action that grab your prospects' attention right from the first lines of your emails. Below are key principles for effective email sequences, along with an example for ZELIQ. 👀

Number of actions in the sequence: Aim for 4 to 9 actions.

Subject line: Keep your subject between 1 and 8 words, and make sure to personalize it!
(A/B test your subject lines to see which ones perform best across different sequences.)

Ideal length for email body: Around 120 characters.

Is an attachment necessary?: No
(Even if you have a great sales presentation, including it in the first email isn’t the best approach.💥 Spam filters also tend to flag emails with attachments sent to new contacts.)

Email structure:

“Hi {first name},

Engage your prospect by pointing out something they could improve.

Reference the value your offer brings.

CTA / Propose a meeting.

Signature”

🍬 Example of a ZELIQ email sequence:

  • Step 1 - Email 1

Subject: Qualified leads?

Hi {First Name}, I noticed you're managing a growing B2B sales team. (icebreaker)

{Client Name} used to struggle with unqualified leads, wasting hours each week cleaning their CRM data. (Point out something your prospect could improve)

Since they started using ZELIQ to keep their CRM 100% clean, their qualified lead rate has increased by 50%. (Highlight a negative impact without your offer OR a positive opportunity with your offer)

Would you like to see how they did it? (Call-to-Action)

Signature

2-day delay

  • Step 2 - LinkedIn Profile Visit

4-day delay

  • Step 3 - Email 2

Subject: {First Name}, prioritize your prospecting actions

Hi {First Name}, following up on my last email.

{Client Name} improved their conversion rate by 45% using our AI-powered lead scoring system.

Can I explain how they identified their top prospects to close more deals?

Signature

P.S. Here’s a case study showing how they did it.

4-day delay

  • Step 4 - LinkedIn Invitation - Optional note

5-day delay

  • Step 5 - Email 3

Subject: Automating emails and LinkedIn actions

Hi {First Name},

Sales teams like {Client Name} have saved 5 hours per week by automating their outreach through multichannel sequences.

Can I share how they shortened their sales cycle?

Signature

To discover Valentin's email sequences, an SDR at ZELIQ, feel free to check out our case study here!

👩🏼‍💻 For further information, please do not hesitate to contact us:

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