Outreach.io – Top 3 Features to Know and Utilize
I’ve been doing lots of research lately into Outreach.io and all its functionalities.
To be honest, I (at first) thought it was extremely similar to a CRM (Customer Relationship Management tool) with a tilt towards email marketing. However, after a little digging, I discovered that Outreach.io is actually what’s called a Sales Engagement Platform, or an SEP.
A former colleague of mine, Elizabeth Beeli, gave me a demo of the product as she uses it in her work, and I got to see the ins and outs of Outreach and all it can do. Again, I wasn’t sure exactly what made it different than a CRM, and then it hit me:
- CRMs are used to log data and keep a record of who you talked to (whether that be prospects or current customers).
- SEPs are used to organize and conduct a sales strategy. They’re MUCH more heavily focused on increasing sales efficiency and enabling a salesperson to hunt down new business and constantly improve their strategies.
Outreach has a lot of features that benefit the sales process from calendaring, email sequencing, a calling feature, tokens for personalization, and even AI learning to enhance strategies.
It even has statistic tracking so you can, over time, calculate when is the best time to make cold calls based on your call data, the best cadence for email sending based on your campaigns, etc. This information is extremely useful for creating a sales campaign, and it had the inner salesperson in me very excited even though I don’t even use it for my job…ha.
However, to get started, here are the top 3 features I’d recommend learning to use as quickly as possible:
1. Sequencing
A sequence is a step by step email campaign designed to automatically follow up with prospects if they fail to respond to your original email. For example, most sequences are 5-7 steps in length, and each step is sent 2-4 days apart. If the prospect doesn’t respond to your first email within the designated time, they will be sent the second step as a reply to the first email. Sequencing is a great tool to have at your disposal as a sales strategy.
The sequencing feature in Outreach.io can be split up into a lot of different parts – email campaigns, A/B testing, tokens, etc.
As a sales strategy, having email campaigns going out to prospective customers on a regular basis is rather important. However, manually following up with multiple prospects all the time is not easily scalable nor a good use of your time. Setting up sequences, which will follow up with automatic, semi-personal, replies when the previous message wasn’t responded to, ensures you’ll never forget to follow up with a prospect.
Create campaigns with multiple steps to get the most out of your outreach, and mix in some call touchpoints using tasks (see point 3).
Another useful thing to consider when setting up email sequences is A/B testing. It’s always good to check on the stats of your campaigns to make sure you’re getting desirable results. Create two campaigns that are similar, but tweak one call to action (CTA), subject line, or question to test which one gets better replies, opens, clicks, or scheduled calls/meetings.
Lastly, take advantage of tokens. Tokens are code variables placed within the email body that can change based on a set of rules you assign to it. For example, the most common token in Outreach.io is probably {First Name}. You could start your email with “Hello {First Name}, how are you?” That way, when you upload 50 contacts to enroll in this sequence, the software will automatically pull the field labeled “first name” in your list of contacts and place the appropriate first name in the email, ensuring you don’t have to type every single person’s name out every time.
Use tokens to make your mass emails more personalized with minimal effort. Outreach has a large variety of tokens to choose from (such as {Next Week Day}, {Company Name}, etc), making it easy for you to insert them into your messages and be as effective as possible.
2. Calendaring
Outreach.io has an amazing plug-in feature that allows prospects to book available time on your calendar using a simple link. It’s extremely user friendly and makes it easier for customers and prospects to sync their schedules with yours. You can also sync your Outreach.io calendar to your Google calendar account to make sure your schedule is all in one place and events will never interfere.
Ultimately, sharing your availability with your prospects makes it easier for you since you don’t have to haggle potential meeting times back and forth over email – saving time. You can even set up questions to ask prospects before they book a meeting with you so you can come to the meeting prepared.
3. Creating Tasks
Going back to sequences, setting up tasks within that sequence (in between emails) to call the prospect or establish some other touchpoint (such as connecting with them on LinkedIn or sending a manual email) ensures you’re doing everything you can to take advantage of your sequencing strategy.
If you’re going to email someone, it would also usually be in your best interest to try and reach them via phone. Setting up tasks in between your emails reminds you to follow up. You can even create lists to go from task to task and follow up with your pipeline efficiently.
Note that you don’t have to have a prospect in a sequence to create a task for them. Perhaps you don’t want to reach out via a sequence, but a few phone calls and a manual email or two instead. You can create a campaign that only has those types of tasks in it for that purpose.
I’d recommend this tool to anyone who wants to enhance their sales strategy and use data to make informed decisions regarding the flow of that strategy.
Outreach.io helps salespeople stay organized and focused on the goal: driving deals to close and producing revenue for the business.
For more information on Outreach.io best practices, and to learn how to use more of the tools it offers, check out their YouTube page.
– Hope Szymanski
