How to Generate +30% Reply Rate Sequences with Careful Segmentation & Copywriting?

Why doesn’t mass outbound work? A careful data analysis you must read

First things first, let’s deep-dive into why we believe mass outbound doesn’t work. At LaGrowthMachine, we are fortunate to have access to incredible details of data about the outbound setups and performance of our users. And global data doesn’t lie.

Let’s deep-dive into the data points!

Proof 1: Decreasing reply rate as the audience size increases

A very interesting data point to start from is the average reply rate depending on the audience size extracted from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. As you would expect, the less segmented the audience, the worst the reply rate – with a steep decline of over 400 leads.

This is telling: the more you group people into a wider audience, the more likely you’ll have different personas within that same audience. As we will see later, each persona has different reasons for adopting your product and should be addressed separately.

When you regroup too many personas into a single audience, you end up having a copywriting that is so generic, trying to accommodate all personas at the same time, that in the end, said copywriting is not appealing enough to any of them. Thus generating barely enough conversions.

Proof 2: Long-lasting LaGrowthMachine customers don’t focus on volume

The other interesting data point to look at is what our long-lasting customers are doing using LaGrowthMachine. The hypothesis is that if they’ve been customers for a long time, then they’re getting value from LGM by generating leads!

Here are the two insights you can extrapolate from the graph :

• Long-lasting customers don’t do volume: on average, they activate 170 leads/week. If you take into account a 20% reply rate, and a third of that is positive, that’s 11 new qualified leads per week for sales!
  
  Clearly enough to maintain each SDR busy!
  
• People that churn within three months tend to do volume – and leave as they don’t get value out of LGM: on average, everyone seems to be tempted with volume when starting, but by month three, customers either realize that segmentation is key, or they double down on volume, only to churn later as they don’t get enough conversions

The classic learning curve: Realizing that segmentation is key

In the end, what the last chart also shows is that most of you share the same learning curve :

1. You are tempted to do high volume – why would you not? After all, It is possible and easy to do so with LGM, and gurus tell you it’s what you should do!
   
   
2. By the end of month 2, you realize you’re barely booking enough meetings with that mass approach. From then, you may take one of two following paths:
   
   
   1. Do even more volume to compensate for the lack of qualified leads.
      
      As the stats show, this is a losing battle: more volume means less segmentation and adapted copywriting. This in turn results in even fewer conversions, but also ends up in you burning valuable prospects…
      
      
   2. Acknowledge that volume as a strategy is a lie, and start investing time in segmentation and copywriting.

If you’re reading this before getting started, great, you’ve just saved three precious months!

If you’re reading this after getting started, it’s high time you chose the right strategy. Not all is lost, we will now teach you how to correct your strategy with strong segmentation and adapted copywriting.

Introduction to segmentation: Understanding the problem & who you’re solving it for

We’ve seen that segmentation is key to achieving great conversion rates. But let’s take a step back together to first understand what segmentation is really all about, and provide you with some frameworks to build your own segmentation.

Segmentation is about targeting the right person, with the right message, at the right time. It’s also about understanding a simple truth: not everybody will value your product/service the same way.

To segment, you must first :

1. Step 1: Understand the problem said segments are aiming to solve
2. Step 2: Identify clear pain points for each segment
3. Step 3: List who among all the segments struggles the most with said problem

When doing so and accepting our simple truth, you’ll eventually realize that they are as many possible copywriting to selling your solution as many personas you’ll identify.

To better illustrate this, let’s take LaGrowthMachine as an example and analyze our segments

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Segmentation done right: The right message to the right person at the right time

LaGrowthMachine’s value proposition is simple: saving users time by automating their multichannel prospection. When you think about it, such a value proposition can be attractive to many personas, including :

• Growth hackers
• Salespeople
• Company founders
• Recruiters
• Marketers

We could contact them all with the same sequence using generic copywriting. Yet, even for something as straightforward as LaGrowthMachine, that is not as simple.

If we deep-dive into each segment, we will see they have different characteristics!

The Growth Hacker is :

The salesperson is quite the opposite :

When we compared both of them, we can immediately see the contradiction in how they would value using LGM – if we were to regroup them into the same sequence, with a copywriting for both, we would end up shooting ourselves in the foot.

We must have two separate sequences for addressing them. Let’s continue with the other identified segments

The Company Founder :

Again, this will require specific copywriting to reflect this!

Next, the Marketer :

Not at all about cold outbound, but smart lead nurturing and marketing activities enablement.

Last, but not least, the Recruiter :

We could go on and on, but I think you get the idea: even for a service as straightforward as sales automation, we cannot take any shortcuts when it comes to segmentation and copywriting.

But wait, we made a big mistake here: we segmented only based on persona! What about company segmentation as well? The pain can be vastly different, even for a specific persona, depending on the company details.

When segmenting companies, you’ll find yourself with two types of characteristics :

• Prerequisites: mandatory characteristics for a company to qualify as addressable
• Sorters: classifying characteristics that will allow you to regroup the company into similar company profiles

LaGrowthMachine’s prerequisite characteristics for companies are :

• To be a B2B business – B2C cannot achieve good ROI due to the volume they need to do and the limitation of each outbound channel within LGM
  
• Selling a solution/service to a nuclear market – if your addressable audience is a few hundred people a year, you do not want to burn through all your leads with automation.

• To a digital audience – LaGrowthMachine is about multichannel automation. It only makes sense to consider multichannel automation if your leads are active on LinkedIn & Email.

If a company meets all of the prerequisite characteristics, we will then classify them based on :

• Their business model: a SaaS business will not have the same outbound approach as a service provider or an agency.
  
• Their industry: to adapt our social proof so we can showcase case studies and clients based on their industry. This is basically a great way of saying “people targeting similar audiences as you have had great successes, why not you?”.
  
• The number of salespeople (or recruiters?): companies will have a different organization of LaGrowthMachine depending on how many salespeople they have.

As you can see, we’re starting to have different strategies AND target persona depending on the maturity of the company. In our case, the maturity is closely linked to the number of salespeople, but you could use other maturity classifiers such as fundraised, company size, total revenue, etc…

Obviously, if you want to be thorough, you’ll have to merge your COMPANY segmentation with your PERSONA segmentation and end up with a complex MATRIX of opportunities to address.

The document below is a great framework you can use to build such a matrix.

We only show three of them, but in reality, we have +15 prospect types in our Matrix.

Looking into the details, you’ll notice that we can have several Persona for a given Account Type. That is entirely normal when you seek to have adapted copywriting!

Okay, so we have a huge matrix of our segments and a deep understanding of how to address them. Let’s now deep-dive into how to find said segments using LinkedIn Sales Navigator!

How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find each segment?

If you are targeting a digital-friendly persona, LinkedIn Sales Navigator will be a great source of leads, should you be aware of the risks of using it!

Use the wrong filters, and you may end up with up to 40% of bad results on a Lead search.

To prevent this from happening, you must start doing account searches, in order to implement real Account-Based strategies

Why should I use account search first?

If you’re attempting to do ABM, you’re probably doing research using LinkedIn’s Industry classification. This allows you to target companies working in the Computer Software Industry for example.

However, this information is wrong if used at the lead level! Why?

Data indicates that it can affect up to 40% of the search results, leading to almost half of your leads being wrong!

Now if you use the Industry filter at the account level, it solves everything!

The goal is to build a list of accounts within Sales Navigator to turn into a lead search. And you can do just that.

How to build a list of accounts and turn it into a lead search?

Better than text, a quick video:

Now that you know the basics, let’s deep-dive into implementing the result of our Matrix into Sales Navigator

Matrix – Account type into Sales Navigator using built-in filters

If you’re targeting Accounts using standard categorization such as Industry, Company Size, Department Size, or Open Job, Sales Navigator will make it easy for you

• Targeting per Industry? LinkedIn Sales Navigator includes a very detailed list of 2223 industries. Discover them here and address the right for you in the least filtering.

• Targeting based on the number of people in a specific department? Filter companies based on the number of people working in a specific department
• Selling a SaaS that scales per sale? Target per number of sales!
• Selling a SaaS helping the Finance team do their work? Target companies with a minimum of people in the accounting department

• Are you a recruiting Agency? Or do you want to target Accounts that are currently recruiting as a sign of rapid growth? You can filter them too

• Or even better, learn how to do Boolean Searches on LinkedIn.
  
  Targeting marketing agency? Try “growth agency” OR “marketing agency” OR “SEO” OR “SEA” OR “lead generation” OR “growth hacking” OR “digital performance
  
  In our case, for example, we will focus on SaaS companies
  
  
• Last, but not least, do not forget to target per geography

Matrix – Account type into Sales Navigator using CSV Imports

We have seen the basics, but sometimes, LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s filters will not be enough for you to target your companies. Let’s say you’re targeting eCommerce companies as explained in this guide, or any specific industry not listed in Sales Navigator. You will end up buying lists of companies from sources such as:

• Crunchbase
• Dealroom
• ZoomInfo
• Angelist
• And any other data provider

Do you have company names, and company websites, and want to turn them into a list of companies on LinkedIn?

You’re in luck. Sales Navigator Teams & Enterprise allows yous to upload a list of companies, and LinkedIn will automatically match it in its database and create the list for you to use

Upload, match the columns and you’re set to succeed :

With both features, you can now build your lists of Accounts according to your Matrix. Let’s now find the persona matching your account in your Matrix

Matrix – Persona type using Sales Navigator

As shown in the video above, you have saved many lists of accounts matching your multiple Account types in the Matrix.

Now it’s the easy part, translating it into a persona. Or so it seems. First of all, you need to be aware of the risks of using Keyword searches (must read). With that in mind, you’ll be targeting directly by JobTitle instead. However, you will have to be thorough in the job title as Sales Navigator isn’t smart enough to do so for you!

• Targeting Sales People? Be Thorough and include multiple keywords such as “Sales”, “BDR”, “Business development”, “Business Developer”, “Sales Development Representative”, “SDR”, “AE”, “Account Executive”, “Account Manager”, “Key Account Manager”.
  
  Obviously, you’ll have to adapt the language of these keywords to the geography you are targeting!

• If you’re unsure of the keyword, you can always use a mix of Department Filters & Seniority. Though, a piece of advice, this only works well if you’re targeting English-speaking profiles.

Play around with the other filters, and there you have it, the Matrix Account “5-10 Sales People French Companies” x Persona “Sales”.

Export the results using LaGrowthMachine so we can start activating them into a multichannel sequence!

How to automate your laser-focused Segmentation + Copywriting outreach in LaGrowthMachine?

We have a list of leads matching our sub-sections of our Matrix, we now want to outreach to them on Linkedin and via Email. Good thing you can use LaGrowthMachine as well for this!

LaGrowthMachine handles it all – from a selection of LinkedIn Profiles, we will :

• Automatically find their professional email and phone numbers
• Automate a suite of emails and LinkedIn Messages according to your copywriting
• Synchronize everything in your CRM for pipeline continuity

It sounds quite magical, right? Read our detailed guide to implementing multichannel outreach using LGM