For the above explanation of each of the four steps in the outbound system setup we used cold email as the example, but this same system is set up for a range of outbound channels.
We will cover three channels here so you can get an idea of what kind of results to expect.
We include our typical conversion rates for our marketing service to give you an idea of what kind of results you can expect as a B2B company.
1. Cold Email
This involves sending emails to those you think would benefit from your service.
Detractors call this channel spam because you aren't getting permission to send, I’m no lawyer, and this is just from my experience as an individual, it’s completely legal to do so in the United States and looks to be similar in other places.
However, some countries like Canada and New Zealand do outlaw any cold outreach over email so always double check the location of the people you are sending outreach.
We typically get a 15% open rate, 5% reply rate and 0.5% purchase rate. I have colleagues who get much better results than this, and some that get much worse.
It depends on the quality of your offer and how well your system is set up.
2. Direct Mail
Direct mail includes the letters you used to receive in the mail from random companies trying to sell bibles and insurance.
It may be less popular than it used to be in the B2B world, but direct mail can still drive superior results, simply because everyone else is so focused on digital right now that they miss the importance of tried and true methods like direct mail.
You’ll need to write some copy, build a list of quality contacts, purchase the required ink, paper, envelopes, etc. and even some items to make the packages bulky.
Here’s a reliable service we’ve been using for a long time to drive results with direct mail
The American Direct Marketing Association found in a recent study that Response rates for B2B campaigns were generally higher than for B2C campaigns.
In the study which analyzed Bizo and Epsilon data and found that direct mail achieves a 4.4% response rate, compared to 0.12% for email.
So it’s pretty clear that direct mail is far from out of the picture and could be a great channel to implement in your overall strategy simply because your competitors disregard it.
Always go where your competitors are not, so in this case direct mail meets that requirement fully.
You can safely expect great results with a direct mail piece if you put in the effort to design a great campaign and write excellent copy, which coincidentally we can help with.
3. Social Outreach
In terms of new outbound channels, I can’t think of one more new than social outreach.
You are building your audience on Social Media, Linkedin, youtube and elsewhere.
Then you're reaching out to warm and cold members of this audience with an offer.
The key with social outreach is to ensure that every step in the relationship involves you giving more value than you’re taking.
You can’t randomly reach out to every single member of your audience like a robot, and this is just setting yourself up for failure.
To build goodwill rather than destroy it, you must be picky about who you reach out to even if your messaging is excellent.
Ideally, you will be able to warm up your audience a little first by producing great content regularly, posting daily seems to bring the best results.
Once members of your audience see the content, you’re posting and perhaps even comment or like, you can then look into their profile and see if they match all of the criteria for a good prospect.
If they do, and only if they do, you can construct a highly targeted, personal, message and send it through to them.
Ideally, your message will not have a direct sales approach but rather be more of a question.
So after adding value in your message, you might say something along the lines of “How are your {Insert your service} (efforts) going right now?” or some question along those lines to be conversational.
Always remember in the social world adding value is king.