Outbound Email: Choosing Sales-Led or Marketing-Led

Take a random poll of 10 marketers to ask how skilled they are at outbound email. You’ll be lucky if you get more than one or two responses. After all, outbound is a sales function (selling), while other channels — paid media, content/SEO, organic social — are designed for marketing. Even email itself is a marketing channel, but mainly for inbound; think of onboarding emails after you sign up for a product, or monthly newsletters from your favourite consumer brand.

For early stage B2B founders, outbound email is often your best friend. Compared to other channels, it is:

• cheaper to test than paid media
• faster results than SEO
• simple to launch yourself (who can’t write an email?)

However, it is also one of the easiest channels to get ‘wrong.’ If you aren’t already running an outbound email campaign, it’s time to build a winning outbound email strategy. . If you are, read on to learn the difference between sales-led and marketing-led outbound email, and when to use each.

What Is Sales-Led Email?

If you’ve ever received a cold email from a sales rep or founder where they pitched you on a service and asked you to book a call, odds are you received a sales-led email.

Sales-led emails get to the point quickly, and drive you to a conversion action (i.e. demo, discovery call, etc.) that shows intent to purchase and/or use their product. They aren’t trying to educate you on the product or pain point — their goal is to show you that their product is the best at solving a specific pain, and convince you to use the product.

Why is Sales-Led Email Effective?

In your Total Addressable Market (TAM), there is always going to be a portion of prospects who are immediately ready to buy. For some, they are actively considering solutions to solve their problem, and hearing about your product will put you in the running. These are typically the sales cycles that close the fastest (whether won or lost).

Sales-led emails are especially effective when targeting an audience that is ready to buy. They don’t need to read blog posts to understand why they have a problem, nor do they want to hop on a call to chat or bounce ideas about the problem space.

If you are sending a sales-led email, your goal is to determine whether or not the prospect that you are targeting has that pain and needs your solution. For this reason, most sales-led emails follow this format:

• Introduction (1 line on you + your product)
• Pain Point (1-2 lines on the pain you are solving)
• Solution (1-2 lines on how your product solves this)
• Call-To-Action (1 line asking for a call, to confirm their pain, etc.)

Essentially, if you are selling a product that makes it easier for startup operators to access affordable office space, your email might look like this:

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Hi {{first_name}},

My name is Trevor and I run Office4Less, a service that helps startups tap into short-term office space. We’re built for founders who find WeWork and other co-working offerings too expensive, and want to split those memberships with other startups.

Here’s how it works:

• You tell us your ideal location (including setup of office, days required, etc.)
• We find other founders with existing office space OR a similar need
• We give you an office space that is 30% cheaper than WeWork, on average

Are you looking for more affordable office space for you and your team?

Cheers,

Trevor

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Improve the performance of your email campaigns. Book a consult now.

What are common challenges with sales-led email?

This format may look simple to follow, but it’s easy to get (horribly) wrong if you’re not careful. From targeting everyone from SMBs to Fortune 500 companies, here are the most common issues that founders have with sending sales-led email:

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1. You are targeting the wrong audience

Sales-led email is predicated on the assumption that your prospect has the pain point that you solve for, and is looking for a solution like your product. If either of these are untrue, your email may be less effective.

Prospects who have the pain but aren’t seeking a solution typically respond to sales-led email with “this is interesting, but not right now” or “talk to me in 3-4 months”.

Prospects who don’t have the pain (and therefore aren’t seeking a solution) usually have a more negative response; “unsubscribe”, “I don’t need office space.” etc.

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2. You have too many Call-To-Actions (CTAs)

Imagine you are at a fast food counter; you submitted your order and are ready to pay. When paying for your meal, the customer service rep asks if you want to pay now, in 5 minutes, or sometime in the future that works for you. They also ask you if you want to edit your order to have a smaller version of the meal, but you get a free sample.

Sounds frustrating, right? Now imagine you having 3-5 of those orders ready to go — will you pick the one that gives you your food the fastest, or the one that has 10 different options?

This is a very common issue with sales-led emails — you have very little time (9 seconds) to convince your prospect to make a decision, and if you have 3 different options, they might mark your message as unread and revisit it later (or more likely, never).

Simplify your CTA as much as possible to get a better conversion rate. Instead of offering a time to demo, ask your prospect point blank whether they have the problem or not.

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Supercharge your sales-led email campaigns. Contact us today. 

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What is Marketing-Led Email?

When you think ‘marketing’ emails, you likely think of newsletter or email nurture drip campaigns that you receive after signing up for a product, but a marketing-led outbound email couldn’t be more different.

For starters, the prospect is still cold — they haven’t opted into your message, meaning you aren’t using nicely designed emails (they should be plain text) as it needs to appear non-automated. However, from a content/targeting perspective, marketing-led outbound emails are designed for prospects who are not yet educated about your solution, or potentially, the pain that you are solving.

Why is Marketing-Led Email effective?

Cold prospects are guarded, meaning they are anticipating an ask or call-to-action in a cold email that they are ready to reject. When I get a cold email, my first reaction is “what about this email is wrong or mis-targeted?”, followed by immediately searching for the unsubscribe link.

In contrast, prospects aren’t used to getting marketing-led outbound email. When you lead with value, sharing knowledge by linking out to a blog post instead of a Calendly link, the reader may be intrigued. 

Our B2B SaaS email guide covers more information about the different steps you should take to streamline your email marketing.

Marketing-led email is also effective when targeting an audience who either doesn’t know about your product (solution unaware) or doesn’t realize they have a problem (problem unaware). Both of these qualities make for a good prospect, but they should be approached differently:

• Solution unaware prospects need you to establish authority in the space, and see you as a trusted partner. This often comes in the form of case studies or reports that your company has authored. Put simply, ‘bottom of funnel’ content.
• Problem unaware prospects need you to educate them on the issues they are having, or in many cases, validate the pains they have as valid problems. This often comes in the form of evergreen content on the importance of the problem and the consequences of not addressing it. Put simply, ‘top of funnel’ content.

One misconception is that your call-to-action is having the prospect read their article. This is false; your goal, as with any outbound email, is to get your prospect to respond and confirm that your assumption is correct. This means having a call-to-action that is typically geared at getting their thoughts and confirming if the content resonates.

With this in mind, your marketing-led email might this format:

• Introduction (1 line on you + why you are targeting them)
• Pain Point (1-2 lines on the pain you think they have)
• Value-Add (1-2 lines, and possibly a link, adding education around the pain)
• Call-To-Action (1 line asking for their thoughts)

Using the same example as above, see below for a potential marketing-led email:

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Hi {{first_name}},

I found your profile while looking for founders in the {{geography}} area, and I was curious how you’re thinking about office space? A lot of founders (myself included) want to go back to the office in some capacity, but can’t justify the cost given how expensive WeWork is.

If it’s helpful, I put together a list [link] of local co-working spots that are cheaper than WeWork, and offer similar amenities. They all have their pros and cons, but I think there’s something for everyone!

Let me know if it’s helpful or what else you’ve found re: office space options!

Cheers,

Trevor

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The article you link to should ideally be hosted on your site, as the goal is to have the prospect skim through your material after they’ve read the article. Of course, you should be amplifying the reach of your articles through content marketing efforts. 

After delivering value, you can follow up with more bottom-of-funnel content that aims to push your prospect from learning about your pain, to understanding why (and how) they can solve it. I.e. the next email may mention how many founders share office space (for X% less than WeWork) and mention that you are helping to solve that problem, without explicitly pushing your product.

What are common challenges with marketing-led email?

Since outbound email is designed to get responses (and generate pipeline) for your business, you might be surprised to learn that a lot of marketing-led emails fail. Here are the most common issues:

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1) You are targeting the wrong audience.

Similar to sales-led email, your prospect list is built using a variety of assumptions. If you get these wrong, your emails - despite adding ‘value’ - will likely fail. As an example, it’s possible that the prospect receiving the email above is fully remote with no plans to go in-office.

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2) You have a poor transition from marketing to sales

While your prospect will appreciate you leading with value, once they are educated on the problem, they will expect to be sold. If you send 10 articles and don’t mention your product or offer a time to chat, it’s likely you have lengthened your sales cycle or, even worse, the prospect has found a competitor who solves the problem instead.

This goes double for the opposite problem. If you transition too quickly from marketing to sales, the prospect may think that your original message was disingenuous, and respond negatively to your email.

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Facing any of these challenges? Book a consult today to improve your outbound email performance.

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When should you use marketing-led or sales-led email?

It can be confusing to decide when you should follow a specific email format, but there are some simple questions you can ask yourself to make it easier:

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1. Is your prospect aware of the solutions in the market?

If they are, then you may see results faster with sales-led email. They will either opt-in or opt-out to your sales funnel, so you can focus on prospects who close quickly and understand what you are solving for.

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2. Is the pain you’re solving for a time-sensitive one?

For many problems, the pain is acute and needs to be solved immediately. If you are hungry and need to buy lunch, you likely won’t spend several days evaluating your options and choosing the one that fits your (predicted) appetite for when you finally purchase. Instead, you will go with the first option that satisfies your needs.

If you have a pain that needs an immediate solution, and you identify an audience that has the pain, you may want to opt for sales-led email.

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3. Does your prospect take a long time to make decisions?

For Enterprise products or industries where the decision maker is a seasonal buyer (and it’s the offseason), sales-led emails may not be effective. There is no urgency for the prospect to jump on a call, and they may spend months gathering information before making a decision.

In this case, marketing-led emails may be most effective. You can leverage them to warm up your buyer until they are closer to making a decision, and keep your product top-of-mind if they aren’t currently in a buying cycle.

The reality is that many successful outbound sequences leverage both sales-led and marketing-led emails. For solution-aware prospects, a good sequence might lead with bottom-of-funnel or case study content to establish authority, before transitioning to a sale.

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Do you need help with your outbound email strategy or execution? Book a consult today with an experienced marketer. 

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