B2B Cold Sales Development Email — Marketo

The RevBoss team found another SalesyEmail to sink our teeth into.  This email, while it didn’t need as much help as previous posts, definitely provided a few opportunities for discussion.

As always, send your collection over to SalesyEmail.com.  We like a challenge!

The Email

February 10, 2014

Subject – {{First_Name}}, is your marketing automation tool working for you?

Hi SalesyEmail,

I understand you may currently be using Pardot as a marketing tool, and I was wondering if you’re experiencing any difficulty with it. Pardot users often find that they need a more scalable solution as their business grows, and as a result we’ve seen many customers switch to Marketo in recent months. These customers see immediate increases of 30-100% in productivity and a dramatic increase in leads – purely because they get much more capability in an easier-to-use package.

Why are Pardot users switching? Marketo removes the limitations that held them back – some of the major benefits that these customers have experienced with Marketo include:

• A much more productive, intuitive, and flexible interface for creating marketing campaigns (ranked #1 for user experience by independent analysts)
• Ability to quickly report on pipeline, revenue, and ROI by marketing campaign or channel
• Flexible lead scoring – which includes scoring models by product line or division, and automatic score reductions when your leads are inactive
• Drastically improved ability to leverage lead intelligence solutions inside your CRM

For a limited time, we are also offering special pricing packages to make switching incredibly easy and attractive.  Please reply to this email or click here if you’d like to set up a time to talk about whether Marketo makes sense for your business. Or, learn more here.

Regards,

SDR

Phone

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FEEDBACK

Paul

• The subject line is a major “no-no”.  It IMMEDIATELY gives the prospect the opportunity to say NO before they ever even open your message by asking this closed-ended question.
• I think that pitching your service by mentioning how much better you are than a competitor, rather than simply stating what YOU offer, is a bad idea.

Kelsey

• Overall they have some well communicated ideas, but the email is just too long.
• These bullets are too long and could easily be cut down into a shorter value prop.
• The “special pricing” section isn’t necessary in a cold email — I would wait to talk pricing when I know they’re interested. This seems salesy and would be a turn off to someone who doesn’t know you…if they even continued reading that far down.
• “Click here to schedule time with me?”  This is too impersonal and the SDR should handle this instead of passing it off on the prospect.

Barnaby

• Showing social proof of the tool’s usefulness is going to go a lot farther than verbally vomiting the features and benefits. The balance is not overselling what the service does because it will scare prospects away.
• “Why are Pardot users switching?”  This could be positioned in the very beginning to get the prospect thinking, then bring in the value proposition of Market with social proof.

Eric

• I’m not a fan such a directly competitive approach — too aggressive and likely to turn off most recipients.
• If I’m not having any difficulty with Pardot…then the conversation is dead before it even starts.

Kelly

• Too many opportunities for the prospect to say “no” in the first few sentences.
• Assuming the “learn more here” link is informational–it is helpful to have a link to “some more info”. But needs to be positioned better.

REVISED / REWRITTEN EMAIL

Subject — Marketing automation @ {{Company}}…

Hi {{first_name}},

I’m {{SDR}} with Marketo — we provide a marketing automation tool for growing businesses like {{company}}.  I noticed that you’re currently using a similar tool so I thought I’d reach out.

Our customers who have made the switch to Marketo have seen 30-100% increased productivity and a drastic increase in sales…purely because they get much more capability in an easier-to-use package.

I assumed that you might be the best person to connect with.  Do you (or someone from your team) have 10 minutes for a quick call next week to chat about how we might be able to help out at {{Company}}?

Let me know either way, would love to hear from you.

{SDR}

Digging a little deeper

Taking a look at the comments from the RevBoss team, it appears that the most impactful take-away here is that the email is simply too long.  There’s actually decent content here, but it’s way too lengthy and quite frankly, too much of a task to ask of someone whose inbox sees no shortage of these cold emails.  We took the original message, chopped it down a little, and made sure that we:

1. Made it clear that we’ve done at least some research on their company.
2. Included some form of social proof.
3. Acknowledge the fact that we may not have the right contact.  Even if you are sure its the right person, it provides yet another opportunity for them to respond in one way or another.
4. Made it a point to omit things that came across overtly “salesy”, like including what basically was a coupon.

Lastly, if you take the time to craft this long email, then definitely take the time to ask for a meeting instead of leaving it up to the prospect to click a link.  Follow through.  😉