Context
Sarah Mitchell was a content marketing manager at a mid-sized B2B SaaS company specializing in customer data platform solutions. She and her team targeted marketing directors and CMOs at e-commerce and retail companies with 100-500 employees. The company had good revenues and was rapidly expanding, but Sarah faced a typical challenge for many other professionals in her field.
She created four to five pieces of excellent content every month—a whitepaper, a case study, a webinar, an industry report. And yet, distribution was a pain. In other words, it was manual and took four hours a day for three to four days a week.
She had to send emails to individual prospects and copy all sent emails to a Google spreadsheet to track opens and clicks with live notifications and set a reminder to follow up in case of no reactions in a few working days.
And still, 3-4% remained her engagement rate. The VP of Marketing sat the Q3 goal of doubling the number of MQLs. She decided that she wouldn’t be able to do it using her manual approach and started searching for an alternative.
Introduction
Sarah discovered SignalHire’s Email Sequences while researching marketing automation tools. After watching a product demo, she saw exactly how to automate her content distribution while maintaining personalization.
Her goals were clear:
- charge the distribution to a SaaS platform;
- remain as personalized as possible;
- replace the annoying manual tracking;
- not to think about how many times she could A/B test instead of sending emails.
She had a choice of alternative tools, but she cane to SignalHire for three reasons. Firstly, she was using her Outlook, and she wanted the software not to be web-only. Secondly, she didn’t want to pay separately for content and emails – it should both be available on a subscription basis. Finally, she supremely liked the user interface and supposed that the tool would help her do things quickly without training.
Solution
SignalHire’s Email Sequences delivered everything Sarah needed. The tool automated multi-step email campaigns while keeping messages personal and relevant.
Sarah found the following functionality the most useful. Automated follow-ups, with a customizable delay between emails. She strategically spaced out her messages based on how her prospects were reacting.
The feature also automatically stopped once it detected a reply from the prospect, avoiding the awkward double-message situations. Personalization variables elevated each template to unique messages. Sarah had the software automatically fill in company names, job titles, industry details, and content topics.
Her emails looked hand-written, even though most were sent at scale. Real-time analytics, present with open rates, reply rates, and bounce rates for each sequence. Sarah learned what subject lines worked, what content got her responses, and what timing brought results. Lead List integration allowed Sarah to categorize her prospects by industry, company size, job title, or content interest.
She could put entire curated lists into the sequence at one time. No more manual transferring. Smart scheduling, Sarah knew exactly when to send. Tuesday mornings for the executives. Thursday afternoons for the marketing managers. The software was on autopilot to convert my timing to the prospect’s time zone.
Process
Sarah started with a pilot campaign to sell a journal to 120 marketing managers at e-commerce companies.
Here is how she made it, step by step.
Step #1. Finding and Verifying Contacts
She discovered contacts, specifically marketing and cash managers of companies in all different industries and size ranges through the SignalHire database. She then filtered by job title, industry and company size — and saved all contacts to a Lead List named “Q3 E-commerce Marketing Managers.”
Step #2. Building First Sequence
She built her first sequence around publicizing a new, “never-peen-you-preeviously peen-kneek-gay double p reports on the best industry benchmarks.”
Step #3. She called it something plain:
“E-commerce Benchmarks Report — Marketing Managers Q3.” The presentation helped her group rescue and christen the various sequences together.
Sarah crafted a 5-email sequence. Every email had its function.
- Email 1 presented the benchmark report, with an unexpected observation about e-commerce. [company]’s competitors do this differently (And they’re killing it) [insert article image here]Subject Line: “{{company}}’s competition takes a different approach.” The email was 89 words. Direct and value-focused.
- Email 2 showed up in my inbox three days later. It accompanied the report with a specific data point and an industry comparison. Sarah employed variables to industry-fy it. Value was given in the email without need to download.
- Email 3 dropped four days after the second. It spoke to the myth that adopting new customer data strategies presents significant barriers. Sarah maintains a conversational yet supportive tone.
- Email 4 came five days later. It was offering a free, 15-minute consultation discussing your particular data challenges. No sales pitch. Just expertise offered upfront.
- Email 5 was another gentle touchpoint a week later. Two sentences inquiring if they’d rather she followed up down the line.
Sarah only scheduled sequences for weekdays. You send these emails between 9 and 11 in the morning recipients time zone. She used “stop on reply” to help sequences automatically pause when contacts responded.
She tested the sequence on five internal email addresses. In it, she tested code formatting, variables replacement and timing. Everything worked perfectly.
She imported her 120 contacts from the Lead List. One click imported everyone. The series premiered the next Tuesday morning.
Sarah reviewed analytics daily. Email 2 had the highest open rate of 44 percent. Email 4 received the highest number of replies — 9 direct responses. She made a note of these observations for future campaigns.
Upon receiving replies from potential customers, she replied to them herself within two hours. The series automatically paused for those contacts. She pushed people who showed interest into her CRM for sales follow-up.
Outcomes
The results exceeded expectations. On 120 prospects Sarah averaged a 41% open rate. Double, almost, her previous hand to hand campaigning at 23%.
More importantly, 21 prospects replied. That’s an 18% response rate — five times higher than her manual method. 14 of those responses came from real potential customers who were intrigued about the platform.
12 consultation calls with Sarah were scheduled from this single sequence. Eight of the calls led to product demonstrations. 5 demos becoming qualified opportunities for our sales team.
Time savings proved equally valuable. Sarah managed to get outreach down more than four hours a day to just 45 minutes. So, she reinvested that same time with where the content is created, in strategy. She got better at creating the right content and targeting it, and her general marketing became more effective.
The analytics revealed surprising patterns. Open rates for Wednesday sends were 22% higher than Monday sends. The best-performing subject lines had between 4-5 words. Feature-centered emails were less effective than Email 2, that was populated with numbers.
Sarah then used that information to put together her second sequence. She was tweaking send days, truncating subject lines and leading with the data sooner. Her second campaign, she got a 23% response rate.
By the end of three months, Sarah had developed 11 sequences. Each was focused on particular job roles or industries. She automated campaigns for more than 1,100 clients. Her marketing qualified lead count increased by 4.2x over the last quarter.
The Verdict
Sarah found that you don’t have to sacrifice personalization with marketing automation. The proper tool magnifies human effort instead of replacing it.
Her success was not only about technology. She took the time to write good messages. She studied data and honed her own technique. She was an eager follower whenever prospects did engage. Already the tool didthe dirty work for Sarah and she could instead concentrate on strategy, partnerships.
For other advertisers grappling with the same issues, Sarah has three tips. Begun small, with a pilot campaign. Test and refine before scaling. Keep a note of what your audience is responding to. Automate so you have time to do the strategic work that really matters.
SignalHire Email Sequences became the game changer for Sarah and converted her from being a reactive marketer doing content distribution by hand into a proactive pipeline builder setting up systems that make an organization have qualified leads every day. Her spreadsheet tracking is gone. Her calendar reminders are obsolete. She is sitting on a stronger marketing qualified lead pipeline than one could dream of.
Please note that SignalHire Email Sequences offer similar positive outcomes for the sales and recruitment specialists. The tool’s universal nature is tailored to the needs of different audiences out there.
Start your free trial today and transform your marketing outreach into an automated pipeline engine.
FAQ Section:
Q: What is an email sequence?
A: Email sequences in the SignalHire are automating this routine process, now can save time and forget about following up with potential candidates manually. Instead of reaching out individually and manually, recruiters can create personalized campaigns that target a multitude of candidates, at scale, while still adding that touch of warmth.
Q: How do I track the results of my email sequences?
A: SignalHire includes native tracking and analytics for each sequence. You will be able to see: volume of emails sent, actual number of messages delivered, open rate (%), reply rate (%), and bounce rate (%). If your opens are strong but your replies are low, tweak the body copy, value proposition or call to action. Compare results across sequences and audiences to optimize targeting & messaging.
Q: What are the Best Settings for Your Email Campaign?
A: Keep default settings in SignalHire so that delivery is maximized. Set a sending limit e.g 200 per day or you may get flagged as spam. Turn on Stop Cadence on Reply to handle overeager respondents. Best days to send: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Avoid weekends and late-night sending.
Q: How often should emails be sent in a sequence?
A: For content marketing sequences, it makes sense to separate your 1st and 2nd outreach by 2-3 business days. Fan out subsequent emails 3-5 business days apart. Don’t last more than 3 to 4 weeks of campaign – momentum is everything. This is the period where prospects can devour your content and stay obsess with it.
