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Tag: Email Marketing

How to Build an Intentional Outbound Engine for Predictable Growth

Posted on by Amanda Larson

The fundamental mistake most firms make is treating their pipeline as a series of unrelated tactics. Pipeline control is achieved when you design an intentional system that converts curiosity into confidence.

What’s an intentional outbound engine? A multichannel, intelligence-led sequence that converts prospect curiosity into client confidence through a sequenced, value-first cadence.

At localhost:10008/, we recommend using a simple three-part design to fuel your engine:

1. The Foundation: Establish Credibility 

The Problem: Waiting for random discovery is a high-risk strategy. As clients use AI for instant answers, generic digital intent becomes commoditized.

The Solution: You need to establish credibility and proof of expertise by developing compelling content that instantly validates your authority when a prospect searches for you.

2. The Engine: Control Timing 

The Problem: Outbound that is not hyper-personalized is spam. Without deep intelligence, you’re gambling on timing. The only difference between successful outreach and mass failure is a compliant, well-defined process.

The Solution: You must control the timing. Outbound is the offensive mechanism that drives the prospect directly to you. This starts by eliminating volume and replacing it with intelligence.

3. The Result: Build & Track Trust

The Problem: Traditional cold outreach fails because it pitches services too early and lacks a trust-building sequence. It prioritizes tracking immediate sales, not measuring engagement.

The Solution: The objective is to build trust before services are ever pitched. This requires a rigorous, metrics-driven sequencing system that forces accountability and tracks sequence health over the long sales cycle.

Targeting the Right Person & Knowing Their Intent

Execution is where this design comes to life. It starts with intelligence and ends with accountability.

Remember, effective intentional outbound is about hyper-personalized relevance built on proprietary data (e.g. market impact analysis). Select a manageable number of elite prospects—let’s call them “the 100”—and reverse-engineer their needs:

  • Pain Points: Identify the specific financial pain they are experiencing (e.g., trust headaches, complex stock positions). Don’t pitch products. 
  • Offer Solutions: Every message must prove you’ve done your homework and offer immediate, actionable insight related to their unique situation.

Executing a Multi-Touch Sequence

Outbound for sophisticated clients is a multi-touch, value-first sequence designed to build trust before services are ever pitched.  

  • High-Value Cadence: The first three to four touches must be pure value—a unique market observation, connection to a specific regulatory change, or a value-add content piece.
  • Multi-Channel Sequencing: A strong intentional outbound engine requires coordinated efforts across channels: Email, LinkedIn, Phone, and Direct Mail. High-touch follow-up is reserved after the client has engaged with your intellectual property.

Now, let’s put that into action. Here’s a high-level, three-touch example sequence for a firm targeting high-net-worth founders (remember, you have to segment these folks): 

  • Email That Delivers Insight: A unique chart on the impact of a recent tax bill on carried interest taxation—a direct and painful financial headache for that founder.
  • Social With Gated Tool: The firm’s proprietary Business Succession Readiness Test, a gated diagnostic tool.
  • Phone Call/Text for Personalized Engagement: Reserved only for those who download the gated tool, offering a personalized analysis of their specific risk profile. This transforms a cold call into a follow-up on a known point of interest.

The sequence builds an engagement journey, forcing the prospect to raise their hand when they are truly ready, eliminating wasted time on unqualified leads.

Ready to move beyond the inbound illusion? We can design and execute your intentional outbound engine. Contact us to learn more. 

5 Tools From 5 Brands to Turbocharge Your HubSpot Strategy

Posted on by Zohray Brennan

If you know localhost:10008/ then you know that we’re HUGE fans of shiny and new — but it has to work. We jumped on AI right away, cutting through the hype to get to the actual substance. Because we keep an eye out for trends that aren’t just hype; they have to yield results. Our industry — and its success — is not about just the brand and being cool. It boils down to actual results that translate into keeping customers engaged, converting prospects, and driving revenue, while also being perceived as cool. 

So it shouldn’t come as a shock that as a Platinum HubSpot Partner (humble brag) we are just as dedicated to uncovering the tools that will integrate well with HubSpot to drive efficiency, creativity, and ultimately, tangible business results. 

Before we get into the tools we use, I want to review how we pick them. Our selection process involves a mix of in-person research — like HubSpot’s annual Inbound conference — and we conduct extensive online research and stay on top of the latest tech trends.  

Our criteria for the tools is pretty stringent.

  1. Has to integrate with HubSpot
  2. Needs to have an intuitive and elegant interface (similar to HubSpot)
  3. Must have a low learning curve
  4. Has to integrate well with HubSpot

If you can’t tell, the emphasis on the integration is key. There are so many platforms, tools, and apps that say they “integrate” with a CRM but it’s not until you dive deep into the backend that you get to truly understand it. And even then, it’s sometimes challenging to understand all the nuances to get proper buy-in from everyone who uses HubSpot.

The List

Long story short: These are the 5 top tools from 5 startups that we at localhost:10008/ are using ourselves or planning to. 

 

1. Lead Qualification Tool: Chilli Piper

 

 

There is nothing worse than sales wasting their time on leads that us marketers pass on only to get them rejected. There’s also nothing worse than trying to figure out if your marketing dollars contributed to the sale. With Chili Piper’s platform that integrates within HubSpot seamlessly, we’re able to consolidate form routing, chat, lead distribution, AND scheduling for your inbound and outbound channels. We’re testing it out now and will share our experience and the results when we have them — but we are confident this will help our lean sales team in weeding out the time wasters.

 

2. Event Tool: Hapily

 

 

Running successful events is HARD. Fun but hard. Hapily is absolutely adorable and easy to use but — most importantly — it’s in HubSpot so you’re able to quickly see who’s scanned your event QR code, RSVP’ed or registered, and/or attended across both virtual and IRL events. Plus you’re able to recognize deal attribution automatically — something that is tough via the list uploads or Zoom integration. So having everything within HubSpot instead of the different platforms has been a Godsend.

 

3. Texting: SalesMsg

 

 

Salesmsg is a great, easy-to-use texting tool that integrates within workflows, and allows you to text prospects and clients within HubSpot, ensuring that all communications are captured within the contact record. We use Salesmsg and like it for its transparent pricing and ease of use. We’ve cut down on no-shows to meetings and the fact that we can incorporate it into a nurture workflow has also created efficiencies while still allowing us to be personable. And if you know us, we are nothing BUT personable!

Bonus Tip: If you need a sophisticated call and texting solution then Kixie should be your go-to.

 

4. Productivity: Asana

 

 

What’s not to love about Asana? It’s an easy-to-use project management tool that allows you to have one task across multiple boards: a critical feature when you are dealing with multiple teams. The integration with HubSpot takes it to another level: when a deal is closed with a sales rep it effortlessly creates a task within Asana, that notifies relevant team members via a workflow that also triggers off associate automation. You’re also able to integrate Asana tasks within HubSpot workflows so that no one has to “remember” to create a task.

 

5. Data Enrichment & ABM: HubSpot’s Breeze Intelligence

 

 

WE ARE SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS! For one thing, with Breeze Intelligence, you can enrich your contacts’ data immediately with a simple click of a button within the record — so adding a missing phone number, email address, etc. This was not super surprising as HubSpot had acquired Clearbit, a data enrichment tool last year. 

What was a nice surprise was the ABM tools that they layered on top of it via buyer intent which allows you to match the people who are on your site with your target accounts. In our opinion, this is critical to have if you do advertising, have a number of companies you are targeting to convert into customers or are trying to convert individual advisors that work at larger firms. There are more sophisticated tools such as Apollo.io, which we also love and handles outbound email marketing to protect your domain, but if you don’t need much more, this is perfect.

 

These features are currently in beta with the official launch slated for October but if you want to use them now, just click on your profile pic (upper right-hand corner) then scroll down to “product updates,” and search for buyer intent. Oh, and while you’re there, check out the slick new lead-scoring tool too!

 

Of course, not every tool is perfect for every company; it comes down to needs and budget. So feel free to reach out to me and let’s chat. Oh, and if you’re looking to jump to HubSpot learn more about our services here.

August 2024 Newsletter

Posted on by Grow Intentionly

Every month, we’re addressing your growth questions — from determining the right leadership structure to evaluating your marketing agency to getting better results on LinkedIn. Ready to dive in?

 

How to Link Your CTAs to the Buyer Journey

Posted on by Kelly Waltrich

I’m an impulse buyer. Any and every toy for my kids? Yes, please. The air fryer that’s all over Instagram is definitely in my kitchen. And let’s talk about the checkout lane. I can always use more candles, a new phone case, and coffee mugs.

But when it comes to big-ticket items, my buying journey is very different. My path to purchase is a process and I rarely raise my hand until I’ve done some research. 

If you find yourself nodding your head, you’re not alone: 81% of consumers research online before making a purchase. And SaaS buyers complete 60%+ of the buying process before engaging a vendor. 

We know the buyer journey is full of twists and turns and it’s our job as marketers to deliver the right customer experience at each inflection point. Ultimately, our goal is to guide consumers through this journey so they make a purchase from us. 

The right CTAs encourage our audience to take action. Gartner calls this “buyer enablement” — providing information to customers in a way that enables them to complete critical buying decisions. 

The wrong CTA can turn potential customers away — something I see many of our clients struggling with. Many of us think using “Get a Demo” or “Let’s Talk” is the only way to go. But accelerating the buying journey is as if you’re serving the dessert before the appetizer. 

We need to guide prospects through the buyer’s journey, not steer them off course. The first step is to understand the buyer journey so we can reach our customers where they are in each stage. Then we need to develop a robust content marketing strategy that presents content for each stage of the buyer’s journey with CTAs that encourage the appropriate action and drive growth. 

Aligning Intent to Action 

It’s important to align our calls-to-action to the buyer journey to optimize performance of our campaigns. Sure, we might get lucky to land a handful of demos, but we’re missing out on prospects who are early in their buying journey. 

We can all relate to these frustrations when our executives ask why the numbers have dropped off. Why would the “Get Demo” CTA bring in leads last quarter but has been falling flat now? These conversations made me think of my recent buyer journey.  

Problem: My best friend from college bought an RV to prioritize creating experiences with her family. My husband and I thought this was a great idea and began our shopping journey. 

Awareness: Our research was focused on understanding the different types of RVs and price ranges, and we even started looking into family-friendly RV destinations. 

Knowledge: There’s a lot we don’t know about RVs so we dug in even more: floorplans, new or used, ways to tow an RV, etc.

Consideration: Then we started to think about our budget and discussed what other things we might need to put on hold to afford our investment.  

In this process, we’re searching for answers to: 

  • What is the challenge I have to solve?
  • What are my options for solving this problem?
  • How do I sort and filter those options to meet my very specific means?
  • How do I compare the options?
  • How do I figure out the ones that are best for my budget, lifestyle, business, etc.?
  • How do I fully understand the options?

For each type of question above, we (marketers) need to craft the correct CTA to match the intent of our audience: Whether they’re researching their problem, solution, options, or different brands. Presenting a “Buy Now” offer will fall flat because the customer hasn’t reached a decision yet. This is the time to serve up helpful content to educate and provide answers to their questions. 

The Right Content for the Right Stage

Marketing is impossible without great content. Buyers need to engage with 8-13 pieces of content before making a decision. That’s a mix of first- and third-party content in the forms of social posts, blogs, earned media, reports, etc.   

Consider the information below, which shows the different types of content you need to be thinking about for the different stages of the buyer journey and the different types of leads you have.

AWARENESS KNOWLEDGE CONSIDERATION
HOT Needs expertise Needs to know how a specific offering can solve a problem Needs to test-drive offering
WARM Needs frameworks Needs to understand problem Needs to evaluate options
COLD Needs answers to questions Needs problems resolved Needs solutions to solve problems

 

Awareness

  • Users focus primarily on learning more about their problem. They’re not interested in your product and certainly aren’t ready for a demo, but they want to find a solution to eliminate their pain points. 
  • Serve them content that educates, such as blog posts, social content, videos, and ebooks. Show them how your product can eliminate or reduce their pain points. 
  • CTAs can be “Subscribe To” “Follow Us” “Find Inspiration”

Consideration 

  • These prospects have already learned a lot about their problem, discovered some potential solutions, and are evaluating their options. 
  • Deliver content that will position your product as the best solution, such as case studies, webinars, and comparison guides. 
  • CTAs can be “Watch Now” “See How We Stack Up” “Read Case Study”

Purchase 

  • These buyers know what they want. They’re looking for the right features, support, integrations, and cost. 
  • This is where you can splash “Request a Demo” and “Free Trial”

The End Result: Great CX

The buying process is always happening, regardless of the good or service — candles, air fryers, RVs, software, etc. But, the time to move through the buying process is different. While we can’t force prospects to skip steps, great marketer’s find creative ways to accelerate the process.

Tying the CTA to the customer journey should make sense to those stages. Because great experiences delight customers, happy customers keep coming back for more, and they spread the word. 

I encourage you to study and understand the buying journey, develop your funnel around those inflection points, and create a content marketing strategy that maps content to each phase of their journey using the right CTAs. 

I should know. After researching the RVs, I finally raised my hand and reached out to an RV dealer. Our first trip is going to be to Nashville, TN, in a few weeks.