Ever felt like your sales team is doing everything but selling? LinkedIn did some digging and found that less than 30% of their time is spent selling. The rest of the time? It’s eaten up by boring stuff like manual sales ops tasks. But guess what? We’re here to talk about how the right cold email software will change the tide in your favor especially considering productivity.
Learn how to add $81,241 in pipeline revenue for every sales rep. The upside is crazy. Imagine saving a solid 12 to 15 hours per rep per week. Yep, it’s not just a dream; it’s real. So, if you’re all about making things smoother and seeing those extra hours appear out of thin air, this is the read for you. We’ve got facts, tips, and tricks coming your way – let’s dive in!
Effects Of Not Having Cold Email Software On Productivity
Meet Alex, a Sales Development Leader (SDL) with big dreams – he’s about turning cold emails into red-hot leads. His sales team is in the trenches, manually crafting emails to connect with potential clients. But let’s face it, it’s not all smooth sailing.
Imagine this: every morning, Alex’s team dives into crafting email after email, striving to personalize each one. Sounds great, right? But the reality is, it’s time-consuming and often feels like a shot in the dark.
Take Amy, for instance, one of the SDRs on Alex’s team. She’s got the task of reaching potential customers through emails, and here’s the twist – these emails can’t be generic. Each one needs a personal touch to make the recipient feel special.
Amy begins by digging into each prospect’s background – LinkedIn, company websites, and social media profiles. She’s on the hunt for details that help her connect. With these nuggets in hand, she starts crafting an email. But it’s not just about the content; she makes it sound genuine, like a true conversation starter.
Here’s the kicker: this process takes almost an hour for each email. You can imagine the time it eats up sending out 20 emails in a day. And it doesn’t end there. Amy must stay on top of follow-ups, juggling who to contact next – a daunting task with dozens of prospects in play.
But it’s a tightrope walk. On one side, there’s the drive to send as many personalized emails as possible – more emails, more chances. Yet, each email needs a human touch, and that’s where the team feels the heat. They wonder, “Can we reach enough people without losing the personal connection?”
And let’s talk about the grind. You’d see the team copy-pasting, formatting, and triple-checking email addresses. It’s like a never-ending loop. But here’s the thing – managing emails isn’t just a challenge; it’s crucial. Technical hiccups can throw a wrench in the works, causing emails to go astray. And when it comes to sending emails, balance is key – sending too many from a single account might raise the spam flag.
Now, imagine this challenge multiplied when SDRs like Amy are managing multiple email inboxes. Each inbox has a limit on how many emails can be sent per day for optimal deliverability. When they’re running cold outreach campaigns using 5 to 10 email inboxes, juggling between these becomes not just time-consuming but a potential minefield of missed opportunities. Stan, another SDR, juggles platforms like email and social media, each demanding separate logins.
Multiple manual tasks are eating into the team’s day – small chunks of time adding up. If only there were a way to automate these processes, a simple click replacing those 25-30 minutes they lose daily.
Yet, despite the hurdles and missed opportunities, Alex is undeterred. He sees the promise in cold emails – the doors they can open, the relationships they can build, and the business they can bring. He’s determined to find a better way.
Alex knows that to scale, he needs to hire more SDRs or embrace automation tools like CRM systems, sales automation, cold email software, and sales intelligence tools. Because in the sales world, every minute saved is an opportunity gained, and Alex is ready to seize it.
If you were Alex, what would you do first? Hire reps or embrace automation
Let’s talk numbers to better understand the gravity of Alex’s situation.
Calculate the average pipeline value per SDR: let’s say its $1m
Then divide by the typical number of hours worked in a year, i.e., 1920 (2,080 hours -160 hours [4 weeks of paid leave]).
-So $520.83 (1mil divided by 1920) is the estimated pipeline value generated per hour per SDR
Now let’s check a few of the manual tasks that could be automated
- Manually sending the emails – 5 hours/week
- Sending follow-up emails – 3 hours/week
- Checking for any bounced emails – 1 hour/week
- Manual prospect management – 2 hours/week
- Keeping track of positive & negative responses – 1 hour/week
- Handling emails on multiple accounts – 1 hour/week
Total: 13 hrs/week
Now multiply this number of hours by the amount of revenue generated per hour:
13 x $520.83 = $6770.79 per week per sales development representative.
$81249.48 per year per sales development representative.
That’s a lot for Alex as he manages a 10-member sales development team.
Cold email software? How does it help?
Cold email outreach – you know, the classic way of reaching out to prospects. Would you believe that for every dollar spent on this, you get back a whopping $36? And guess what, even in today’s digital age, 80% of people prefer getting emails.
Here’s the best part: businesses use Cold Email Software to make things smoother. It’s like having a helper that automates many tasks to save time. Think automatic emails and follow-ups, making emails personal, setting up times, tracking things – even helping you close deals. It’s all about getting things done faster.
Oh, and those insights about how prospects are reacting to your emails? It’s like having a guide telling you what’s going well and what needs a tweak. That way, you’re not just guessing but making smart choices that get more responses.
Here’s a fact for you: a significant 45% of deals closed start with an email outreach. It might be an old trick, but it’s still good. So, when sending out those emails with the right tools, you’re not just saying hi – you’re opening up a chance for severe opportunities. Email might be old, but it’s still a winner. It’s like putting your best foot forward and saying, “Hey, let’s talk!”
SmartReach: Cold Email Software to make your Sales Team Productive
Do you agree that managing cold email outreach takes too much of your team’s time?
That’s where SmartReach.io comes in. It’s a powerful cold email software designed to boost productivity by simplifying the entire process. With features like prospect management, personalized email templates, and automated follow-up sequences, it takes the manual work out of the equation, allowing your sales team to engage with a larger audience efficiently.
Plus, its analytics give you insights to fine-tune your strategies for better results.
In short, SmartReach.io lets you focus on what truly matters – building relationships and making strategic moves. So let’s understand ways its key features help make your team more productive.
Email Automation & Follow-ups
This cold email software for the sales teams can effortlessly send personalized emails to a broader audience, saving time, ensuring consistency, and increasing team productivity. SmartReach is not meant to send emails in bulk (as such, email sendings typically end up in spam or promotional inbox).
When you send out these emails, you want the prospects to open and read them, right?
Yeah, so once a campaign is started, it sends emails one at a time after regular intervals. This human-like sending automation helps avoid spam filters with the idea of reaching the primary inbox of prospects.
Imagine setting up your email campaigns and follow-ups in advance so you don’t have to send each one manually. Not only does this free up your time, but it also ensures that your outreach is consistent and timely. The software also adapts to different time zones, sending emails at the perfect moment for maximum impact.
According to a study by HubSpot, around 80% of sales need at least 5 follow-ups. So, you can see why automation of follow-ups is essential. It’s like having an intelligent teammate that never forgets a task.
Email Deliverability
Remember Alex, he started using a cold email software and went ahead with SmartReach.io and asked Amy to set it up, which took her not more than 10 minutes. While exploring its features, they came across multiple features that boost deliverability, such as email validations, email warmup, campaign soft start, spam test, spintax, and more.
While digging more profound into email deliverability, she learned that emails, when delivered directly to prospects’ inboxes instead of spam folders, increase the likelihood of prospect engagement significantly. High email deliverability rates reduce the need for manual follow-ups and re-sending emails that might have been missed due to being marked as spam. Let’s see what she learned.
Email Validation
Amy loved that SmartReach automatically verifies the validity of email addresses in her prospect list before sending out emails. This proactive step helps her avoid wasting time on emails that might bounce or go undelivered, sparing her from the effort of manually identifying and rectifying invalid addresses later.
Email Warmup
Amy was also fascinated by the email warmup feature that gradually builds a positive sender reputation with email service providers and increases the chance of your emails landing in prospects’ inboxes rather than spam folders.
She informed Alex that this step was necessary for new email domains and because other email domain emails were going to spam. By doing it right, Amy had set herself up for success and ensured that her emails were now delivered to the primary inbox.
Spintax
When Amy read about the all-new Spintax feature for the first time, she was stunned. As she now knows how SmartReach Spintax helps create dynamic variations of a specific section within an email, she just loved that each recipient would receive a slightly different version. She tried out a few versions before sending them out to her prospects; after playing around with it for 5 minutes, she turned pro. This is what it looked like
Input:
{% spin %}I love|I enjoy|I like{%end spin %} {% spin %}{hiking|exploring{%end spin %} in {% spin %}the mountains|nature{%end spin %}.Output:
“I love hiking in the mountains.”
“I enjoy exploring nature.”
“I enjoy hiking in the mountains.”
“I love exploring nature.”
“I like hiking in the mountains”
When Amy informed Alex about her findings on email deliverability, he could visualize his sales pipeline turning green. He was impressed that “spintax accelerated cold email outreach by automating the process of making every email unique, which then betters deliverability to primary inbox.”
AI-Generated Content
Tanya, a new team member in Alex’s team, found it challenging to craft emails and hence spent hours creating compelling drafts. Alex realized that this feature would benefit her a lot.
On Alex’s recommendation, Tanya started exploring SmartReach’s new AI-powered content recommendations, designed to automate and optimize content creation. She was ecstatic with the results of the content generated. And was impressed by the input-based approach, where she provides inputs on her target audience, the context of the email and writing style, and how SmartReach’s Content AI recommends high-quality, engaging content for her email campaigns in seconds. This saved a lot of time she spent gathering ideas and crafting emails from scratch.
Alex also learned that SmartReach provides an option to generate AI-based responses to inquiries received from prospects.
Hyper-personalization
When Amy started personalizing her emails, they became more interesting, and prospects started paying attention.
One day when having lunch with Tanya, Amy explained about personalization, “Imagine you’re writing a letter to a friend – you’d talk about stuff that matters to them, right? Well, with cold email outreach, it’s the same idea.”
“Companies that capture more value from personalization grow faster”
– McKinsey & Company
Tanya also learned how cold email tools, like SmartReach, would add a name for each prospect via merge tags. She can also add a short personalization text referencing a prospect’s post on Linkedin, their blog, or a football game score.
Tanya understood that once emails are personalized, the need to send many follow-ups or repeat the same things reduces. This would save time and make her emails much better.
A/B Testing
Amy informed Alex that in SmartReach.io, the A/B testing feature allows her to add and analyze up to 5 variants of email: subject line and email body to test various content combinations.
This data-driven approach eliminated guesswork and allowed the team to make informed decisions quickly.
Alex realizes that instead of running prolonged campaigns with uncertain effectiveness, his team can make real-time adjustments based on the test results, translating into more efficient and targeted communication.
Progress View
While exploring SmartReach, Alex noticed it provides a visual progress bar that offers a clear snapshot of ongoing campaigns and team performance, helping him to identify performance at a glance every morning. He and his team can now monitor campaigns that may require attention due to factors such as the campaign being paused or encountering technical difficulties.
He noticed that Progress View minimizes the time and effort required to identify areas or team members that need coaching or campaigns that need adjustments. He can swiftly have his team address issues, reallocate resources, or fine-tune strategies, ensuring campaigns remain on track and efficient.
Workflows
Alex learned about SmartReach.io’s Workflows, which helped him establish customized sequences of actions based on specific triggers. Triggers include events like email responses, auto-replies, and email open rates. When these events occur, the workflow can automatically perform actions such as removing, adding, or moving prospects from one campaign to another. You could set a workflow to move unsubscribes to a DNC list etc. The possibilities are endless and these are already built into the software.
Alex, Amy, and Patric (his sales ops manager)discussed and started a campaign to test how the workflow works.
Amy ran an email campaign called “Website Signups” to nurture the prospects. The campaign involved a series of emails that redirected prospects to the blog site. She then set a condition that if a prospect opens the email, they will be seamlessly added to the “Webinar Campaign” promoting a product feature”.
The entire team (including Alex) now understands the power of workflows and how it helps minimize the need for manual intervention and ultimately save man-hours.
This is particularly beneficial when the team manages large volumes of emails and follow-ups.
Workflows provide consistency to the cold outreach sales process. It ensures that every prospect flows through the pipeline per the sales playbook, and none are missed.
Multichannel Outreach
Let’s say you have enriched your prospect data. Out of 200 prospects, you have additional information like their Linkedin profile and phone number. Can you increase your chances of getting a reply using a multi-channel tactic?
“In today’s competitive landscape, a multichannel outreach strategy isn’t just an option – it’s necessary to reach and engage with your prospects where they are.”
– Jeb Blount, Sales Expert, and Author
SmartReach’s multi-channel feature centralizes communication efforts across various channels like email, Linkedin, Calls, WhatsApp, and Text.
Instead of managing each channel separately, Stan from Alex’s team can use SmartReach.io to coordinate emails, social media messages, and other forms of outreach from a single platform via its Task Manager. He starts his day with an overview of his daily task and a focused approach to task completion, saving almost an hour every day. This eliminated the need to switch between different tools and platforms, saving time and reducing potential errors.
SmartReach provides complete end-to-end automation for email and Linkedin.
Teams can create unified campaigns that target prospects across multiple channels simultaneously, ensuring consistent and coordinated messaging. The automated follow-ups across platforms and centralized responses across channels ensure timely interactions without constant manual intervention.
“As per research, only 7% of the companies respond within 5 mins of a query being raised. With shared inbox, you can also come under that 7%. “
Amy is in love with SmartReach’s Shared Inbox. She can’t stop pushing all team members to add their email inboxes to the Shared Inbox. What’s so different about this feature?
Typically Amy would be juggling different prospect emails in different inboxes. It’s like trying to keep track of multiple puzzle pieces, but everything is in one place with the Shared Inbox. Amy was able to manage and reply to all those critical prospect emails from this inbox.
And hey, the best part? No more email forwarding or copying messages between teammates. Alex doesn’t have to play the “Who has that email?” game. That’s time saved and confusion avoided. And when Stan was on leave last month, she was overburdened with managing his inboxes separately; the Shared Inbox took care of this, so now she and Alex had access to Stan’s inbox and vice versa.
A few months ago, Tanya, the new SDR, missed out on two mil deals, as the response came back from someone other than the prospect. The response fell through the cracks as Tanya was on tracking replies from the prospect pool. SmartReach categorized prospects and non-prospect replies, so now, Alex can sleep peacefully, knowing that will never happen again.
There’s an additional layer of awesomeness. “Reply Sentiment” feature. Think of it as your virtual reply sentiment analysis assistant. It automatically categorizes each reply as positive or negative.
Positive sentiment replies provide invaluable insights for your pipeline forecasting. You can spot potential deals on an encouraging trajectory, making your planning more precise. And those negative sentiment replies? Reveal areas where your prospecting strategy might need adjustments, helping you fine-tune your approach.
CRM Integration
Alex asked Patric to set up the CRM integration feature where SmartReach allows two-way data syncing with all top CRM like Salesforce, HubSpot, PipeDrive, Zoho, and more. So changes in one system reflect instantly to the other – it’s about maintaining that sweet data consistency. It was set-up in less than an hour.
Alex was so happy with SmartReach and thought to himself: instead of bouncing between different tools, everything comes together in one place when you integrate the CRM with SmartReach. Contacts, chats, and info – all in one spot. No more back-and-forth or searching around. You’ve got everything at your fingertips.
Alex knew that his team had got more productive than before.
Prospect Management
Amy now keeps all the prospect details, their past interactions, and engagement data at her fingertips with the help of SmartReach’s prospect management. She doesn’t have to search through spreadsheets or tools – everything is neatly organized and effortlessly accessible. Amy finds a few prospect management features interesting and shares this learning with the team
- Duplicate Prospect Management
SmartReach.io’s prospect duplicate detection feature saves her time by preventing the inclusion of the same prospect in multiple campaigns. It also allows her to ignore or assign opportunities already assigned to other campaigns.
- Prospect Tagging & Categorisation
These features provide Amy with an organized way to categorize and manage leads. It enables her to assign relevant tags or labels to prospects based on their characteristics, behaviors, interests, or stages in the sales cycle. By categorizing prospects, she can quickly identify and target specific prospect categories, eliminating the need to sit through large lists to find relevant prospects.
Reports
Alex realizes that the key feature that helps him as a Sales Leader is SmartReach’s reporting and analytics.
With SmartReach, Alex and his team aren’t just sending emails into the void – they send them purposefully. And that’s where the Reports and Analytics come in. These aren’t just numbers and graphs; they are Alex’s guide to understanding what’s working and what needs a tweak.
Alex now has campaign reports that spill the beans on how his team’s email outreach is doing – instant insights on how they’re shaping up. No more guessing. He will know which campaigns are striking gold and which might need a nudge.
But wait, there’s more. Team Activity Report – this helps him drill down on your team’s outreach activities like email, calls, task status, and accounts or prospects added. This kind of insight is pure gold for sales development leaders. Alex now sees what’s resonating and provides tailored recommendations to the campaign and his team members for maximum impact.
And here’s the real time-saver: the Hot Prospects Report. With a click, Alex can generate a list of the hottest prospects. It’s like having a spotlight on the most promising leads.
Alex also gets deal health insights from the Deal Grid report, he now ensures that his team prioritizes high-value deals to get the most out of the active opportunities in the pipeline and identify deals at risk
Now, Alex doesn’t have to spend hours manually analyzing campaigns and figuring out which ones are making waves or pulling him down. With SmartReach’s Reports and Analytics, that time is cut down drastically.
So, in simple words, SmartReach.io makes understanding emails easy.
Suming up cold email software influence on productivity
In the sales world, time is money. Productivity is the secret sauce that helps you get more done in less time. By using cold email software like SmartReach.io, you’re not just saving time but increasing your chances of success. SmartReach.io handles the heavy lifting, so you can focus on building relationships and closing deals. With every task you automate and every moment you save, you’re making space for more opportunities to land in your pipeline.
It’s not just about sending emails; it’s about seizing the moment, reaching more leads, and hitting those sales goals you’ve been aiming for. So, get ready to work smarter, not harder, and let SmartReach.io be your ally in the quest for sales greatness.
Your journey to enhanced productivity starts now.
