5 Outbound Pitfalls Marketers (From Program Owners To Leaders) Should Avoid
You want to 2x to 4x your pipeline but it is not just a numbers game.
How do we get our potential customers (aka prospects) to open our emails and respond favorably?
We don’t.
The truth is, we can't control everything, like whether they're in a meeting, on vacation, or etc.
But we can control one thing:
💡Crafting relevant and compelling messages that convert to sales meetings and drive pipeline.
After contributing to over $200m in closed won deals, a $6.5b exit, and advising clients to grow pipeline 2x to 4x quarter-over-quarter, I've seen the HUGE difference it makes when we make the time to understand our customers' pains and priorities. Not just how they think about it but also how they feel about it.
When I led Global Outbound Sales Development and Global Account-Based Marketing at Auth0,
✍🏼I wrote over 90% of the outbound emails supporting the global SDR team's prospecting efforts and all Account-Based Marketing (ABM), Demand Generation, and Growth programs.
Within 6 years at Auth0, my team and I achieved:
Influenced over $200M in closed won deals
Grew ABM pipeline by over 60% year-over-year
Influenced over 45% of the global SDR pipeline
Influenced over 35% of the global Demand Gen pipeline
Outbound Programs that we created are still being leveraged at Okta today
How did we do this?
Teamwork, Culture, and Quality.
In today’s post, we’ll go over Quality by sharing my observation of the 5 common Outbound Email mistakes that everyone in Sales and Marketing (from program owners to leaders) should avoid to grow pipeline consistently.
Mistake #1: Sales Copy is NOT Marketing Copy
Many marketers misunderstand that writing Outbound copywriting is the same as Marketing copywriting.
This is wrong.
Sales copywriting aims to get time on our potential customer's calendar, allowing our sales team to learn about their problems, provide insights, and explore potential business fit.
Marketing copywriting often drives awareness, builds brand recognition, or simply stays top of mind.
Focus on solving your potential customer's problems to earn their attention and time.
Mistake #2: It's All About You (And It Shouldn't Be)
Effective outbound messaging is always about your potential customers.
Show how you can solve their problems, address their priorities, or offer a different perspective.
Your emails are to demonstrate that you understand them. Think of your outbound emails as fortune tellers explaining how their problems could be solved.
Show them that you know them.
Mistake #3: More Emails = More Booked Calls
More emails, more calls, more everything. It sounds effective, right?
It’s just a numbers game they say.
What if I told you that this approach is exactly why your response rates are dwindling, you’re likely ending up in spam, and your stress levels are skyrocketing?
Sending more emails doesn't necessarily mean more booked calls.
Quality matters more than quantity.
Personalized emails earn up to 4X the response rate compared to non-personalized ones. Sending 1,000 emails with a 25% response rate is better than 10,000 emails with a 1% response rate.
Prioritize quality over quantity.
Mistake #4: One Size Fits All Messaging
Traditional wisdom says, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” — Stephen Covey
For outbound emails to be successful, the messaging must be tailored to the right person/persona at the right level.
It should focus on problem-solving and demonstrating business impact.
Without understanding your customers' pain points and priorities, your messages won't compel your potential customers to respond.
Think about it this way:
You’d never speak Cantonese to someone who can’t understand Cantonese.
Mistake #5: Quitting Too Soon
Outbound takes time and consistent revision. It takes time to:
Refine our Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP).
Write effective messaging and sequences.
Understand the best cadence and follow-ups.
Anyone promising overnight results is selling you snake oil.
Experiment mindfully. Be willing to take risks, make mistakes, learn from them, and put in months of ground work to achieve your pipeline goals.
Operating from first principle and developing a strong Outbound foundation from the beginning helps ensure a pipeline that grows consistently.
As the surf adage goes:
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
The Workshop
To avoid these pitfalls and start generating more calls, I'm hosting an Outbound Email Workshop on the best practices for creating effective, relevant, and compelling outbound emails that grow pipeline month over month.
