![\"Greg](\"https:\/\/chartmogul.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Greg-Pietruszynski-CEO-kopia-300x249.png\")
This week we have a guest post from\u00a0Greg Pietruszynski, CEO & co-founder at Growbots<\/a> – A. I. for Sales. \u00a0Greg Founded 3 companies in China & Europe before Growbots, and is responsible for more than 200 web and mobile apps. He’s also an automation freak & growth geek.<\/em><\/p>\nFollow Greg on Twitter<\/a> or check out the Growbots blog<\/a> for more great sales-focused resources.<\/em><\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the statement that response rate is the only metric that matters. Open rate is a vanity metric. Why? Because cold email campaigns have a set of different rules to marketing email campaigns. In marketing email, you can\u2019t send a follow-up; a response isn\u2019t what is required.<\/p>\n Open rate is definitely worth watching, as it allows scope for improvements in subjects and time of sending, but it\u2019s not the most important thing. Every time the Growbots team achieves a poor open rate (less than 40%), we wait two days, and then send a follow-up. Do you know why? Because follow-ups in sales emails receive between 20% and 30% higher open rates.<\/p>\n Response rate and conversion from demo to deal are the numbers you should outperform. So the right question to ask now is \u201chow do we achieve high response rates?\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a sort of recipe for that, but before describing it, let me introduce you to AQC metrics. As the Close.io<\/a> team explains (http:\/\/blog.close.io\/which-sales-metrics<\/a>), AQC is a simple and easy way to control metrics. Behind this acronym stand Activity, Quality and Conversion. These three things will help you to track your performance and identify bottlenecks, and point you in the right direction. Here\u2019s an example of a cold email campaign:<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably the simplest spreadsheet you can get.<\/p>\n So how do we achieve high response rates? I\u2019ve prepared a step-by-step guide for you:<\/p>\n This is always the tricky part.<\/p>\n What do you measure in subjects? Open rate. Subject and preview have the biggest impact on open rates.<\/p>\n In marketing emails, you basically pick few slots and test which performs the best. In sales emails, the trick is to observe behaviour and make assumptions for your targets. I don\u2019t want to create any rules, because it\u2019s really a very specific field, and the best thing you can do is to test it yourself. Generally speaking, what we\u2019ve observed is as follows:<\/p>\n What to measure in timing? Time, obviously: a 24-hour performance graph will be useful here. Most tools provide such a feature.<\/p>\n Once more, response rate is something you should focus on. It tells you how attractive your copy was and how convincing your CTA was. After that, it\u2019s time to compare this metric with response rate and identify the effectiveness of your flow. When it comes to the content and structure of an email, personalization of the first sentence is a smart move.<\/p>\n This is especially when you are addressing a problem they are experiencing on a particular job position. Another useful hack is mentioning a few of their customers or mutual friends and telling them what they love about your product. Such \u201csocial proof\u201d increases CTR. What\u2019s really a bad<\/i> idea is writing who you are: \u201cHi, I\u2019m Greg from Growbots\u201d. Just don\u2019t.<\/p>\n What do you measure? Response rate. CTA has a strong influence on it, but keep in mind that benefits and social proof are your leverage. Convince people that it\u2019s worth investing their time.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the big news: you have to send 7\u20138 follow-ups to be completely sure the prospect is not interested. Unless you send 7\u20138 follow-ups, you simply will not get your full potential response rate.<\/p>\n If you want to get as many responses as possible, you should be persistent. Until no one will tell you to stop contact them you are good to go. Additionally, try to change an email subject 2\u20133 times: each time you make a change gives you an extra chance of getting someone interested. After sending four emails , the chance of getting a response in the same thread is almost zero. So, as I mentioned before, follow-ups in sales emails receive up to 30% higher open rates than first emails. But follow-up metrics don\u2019t differ that much from the first email. Open rate is important if you send a follow-up in a new thread. Still, click-through rate could be difficult to control, because part of the follow-ups don\u2019t include a link. So, in the case of follow-ups, the number of sent messages is something you should probably pay attention to.<\/p>\n Finally, I would like to give you a mini case study. At Growbots, we\u2019ve generated a 75% response rate after the first email. Twitter helped.<\/p>\n This technique is based on the idea of warming up your leads before emailing them. We started with Twitter. Make a secret list of your ideal customers and track their tweets. Retweet and comment \u2013 try to create interaction. The main purpose of this task is to create a foothold which you can mention later in your email. So, when you\u2019re ready, write an email, but this can\u2019t be a poor email built using your standard pitch template. This is the email which served us well for a very long time and brought awesome results:<\/p>\n I’m Greg (@pietruszynski) from Growbots. We have been tweeting about the article you shared: \u2018The power of personalization\u2019. I did some research and saw that you may be responsible for lead generation at XYZ, so I decided to get in touch.<\/em><\/p>\n
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1. Subject<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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2. Perfect Timing<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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![\"24hrPerformanceGraph\"](\"https:\/\/chartmogul.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/24hrPerformanceGraph.png\")
3. Content + Structure\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"SubjectPreview\"](\"https:\/\/chartmogul.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/SubjectPreview.png\")
4. Follow-ups<\/strong><\/h3>\n
So how did we generate a 75% response rate after the first email using Twitter + email?<\/b><\/h3>\n
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