Coldlytics

Learn how Coldlytics drives more sales, by using SmartReach.io

Matt McQuin
Matt McQuin
: Co-founder, Coldlytics

SmartReach.io sends emails relevant to the prospects timezone, which I have never seen in some of the tools that I have used before.

You've been using SmartReach.io for some time now. Could you tell us what Coldlytics does? What do you do there?

Coldlytics is an email finder tool, and the way we work is with real people instead of automation. You log into the website at Coldlytics.com, fill out a form, and in 24 hours, we provide you with 1000 verified email contacts researched by real people with quality assurance and a quality guarantee behind it. We provide quality data, really fast at $0.30 per contact, and the reason we do this is that I came from a world of agencies that needed tons and tons of data, and it was always challenging to get quality data at scale.

We solved that problem by bridging the gap between working with outsourced freelancers and existing databases, taking the best of everything, and putting it in one resource to get people fresh data

I am the Co-Founder of the Coldlytics platform, my partner, Richard Francis is the genius behind the product you see today on Coldlytics.com

How do you approach Sales automation at Coldlytics?

Our approach to Sales automation goes back to the fact that you need to have quality relevant messages sent out to lots of people. (Many people overlook that you need to send several emails that can't just be a blast of 20 emails or 100 emails over a week). It's not enough. You need to be doing consistent volume to get a lot of business back. If you only need a 1 million dollar deal per year, maybe you only need to reach out to 20 people a week. If you are that good, then you don't require cold email software. If you are in this game, you need to do quality outreach at scale, and that quality component is often overlooked.

We are using SmartReach.io to send our outbound messages at scale. The things that stood out for me are that SmartReach.io sends emails relevant to the prospects timezone, which I have never seen in some of the tools that I have used before, and the ability to manage my team. My sales team can use the platform, and I can see what they are doing, what their stats are, and help them manage their campaigns without having to schedule one-on-one meetings to review their numbers. It's all right there for me to see. Those are the two big reasons for me to use SmartReach.io

We are using SmartReach.io to send our outbound messages at scale

Have you used any tools similar to SmartReach.io prior? Did those tools work for you, and if so, why did you change to SmartReach.io?

I have tested Replyify, Lemlist, PursueApp and GrowthGenius. Unfortunately, I could only use a handful of them. But I have used a lot of Replyify and Growthgenius. These are the two that I have used extensively before using SmartReach.io. Lemlist is of course a solid platform as well, and integrates with Coldlytics.com, we’ve added SmartReach.io to our roadmap for integrations.

The number one reason that I made the shift is not that I haven't heard great things about the other tools, and the other tools were great, but for me, I had two priorities. First, because I wanted to send a large volume of emails consistently, I needed to buy additional accounts at $100 each to send those additional emails. That didn't make any sense to me. I didn't want to spend $100 each for an extra email account. You guys have a pretty reasonable rate to add additional email accounts and an excellent system to manage those accounts. To me, that was a no-brainer. It just didn't make sense to pay five times the amount on a different platform.

You guys have a pretty reasonable rate to add additional email accounts and an excellent system to manage those accounts

Also, SmartReach.io sends emails in the local timezone of the person I am emailing; because it's not about me, it's about the person who is getting these emails. This software is focused on the end receiver as much as the user. This is not just about blasting emails; this is about reaching out to people and driving sales to focus on users' experience and the recipient's experience.

This software is focused on the end receiver as much as the user

In the past, when I have worked with many platforms, they have much emphasis on outbound operations but not really on the experience of the recipient and the user of the platform. So we kind of missed that mark in the past, and here at smartreach.io, I am really happy with how that works.

Do you use any integrations in SmartReach.io like those with Salesforce or Zapier?

I have used Salesforce in the past. It's excellent software, but it has too many things that we don't need. We haven't used a direct integration with SmartReach.io with CRMs. We don't want to track every lead as this doesn't make sales sense. We want people who have engaged with us, and that's where your integration with Zapier helps us.

One of the common things that people usually face with cold email outreach is deliverability. Did you encounter any issues with deliverability in SmartReach.io?

I had a similar experience to what I had across other platforms in this regard. If you abuse the system, you get the result that says you can't access the account; you have not warmed up your account correctly, your accounts will get penalized by Google or whoever your host is. I have experienced this elsewhere, and I have experienced it here as well. But I will say that overall, the ability to track unsubscribing and bouncing emails before we send the emails adds a third level of quality assurance for our process.

You caught something that other platforms couldn't. So very happy with deliverability.

Because in-house, all our leads are verified twice: once in the collection and once using zero bounce before they go out to SmartReach.io. Then your system will also send them through the third level of validation. Our two filters didn't pick it up, but this third one did, and of course, there is this whole rabbit hole of deliverability that I will not go into, but it's great to have that third checkpoint for us. You caught something that other platforms couldn't. So very happy with deliverability.

How do you measure success at your organization and any success stories?

I measure based on KPIs, and my KPIs are this: are my emails getting through to people like a no-brainer yes/no checkbox. Is it getting delivered, are there high bounce rates ( less than 5% bounce rate is good to go). Once that box is checked, then it's how many people are opening your emails. You don't need to skip to open rates because if they are not being delivered, then they won't be opening your emails. So we start with deliverability and then go to Open rates to check if the subject lines and my intro preview line are good enough for people to open my emails. I would like to shoot for over 40% open rates.

That's when I check reply rates. And this is where I can tell we are reaching out to the right people with relevant messages. Do they care about what we are saying, or are we sitting there and reading them a big presentation about who we are that nobody cares for? Nobody is asking who we are. All they are looking for is how they can solve their problems. Are we talking to them about those problems, and are we talking about solving the problems they have? That's where the honing in on the email copy comes into place.

You can break that down further and see if these replies are positive or negative. I am not going to scrutinize positive/negative replies too much, but are their leads that I can take and convert into business?

Sales is something that everybody seems to put into the automation bucket, but in my opinion, it is the wrong place to put that responsibility. It's not the automation tool’s job to sell the product, and it is not the script's job to sell the product.

It's great when that happens, but your product or your service needs to somehow sell itself. Sure it needs that human touch or some level of engagement outside of the automation software. It's not going to happen when they click, “they learned about me and they didn't sign up.” I mean, if it were that easy, we would all walk down the street screaming our company name, and we would all be rich. It doesn't work like that. So you have to put the effort in and don't just say, “I have sent 1000 cold emails, and nobody signed up.” Of course, they didn't sign up. No one signs up just like that after hearing about you for the first time. They’re usually still in the top of the funnel.

Maybe 60-80% of our business comes in follow-ups rather than the first email.

They might have to listen to you more than once. Maybe 60-80% of our business comes in follow-ups rather than the first email. Don't overlook the extra work on the backend. Lead generation is great, but you can't just put all the responsibility on the front part of the sales enablement software.

It’s called a sales process for a reason. Emphasis on process.

Could you tell us about any of your success stories?

We sent one email campaign to an enterprise company. They just completed a $150 million funding round, and as busy as they were, they were intrigued by our messaging, and they liked what they heard. We are still working that opportunity with a strong likelihood to close, but even if it didn’t, it’s an example of what happens when you run the process. This is a much larger potential client than our usual agencies and small business owners.

That came about just running the process and doing what works and we used SmartReach for the lead generation.

Here’s an example of the strategy I used to generate that lead. Not surprisingly, part of my process includes my own platform on Coldlytics.com. Recently, there was a post I read on LinkedIn about something relevant to our business. I thought it was a great post, and so I engaged with that post and several people engaged with it just like me. So I used my research team to pull out people who have made relevant comments and asked them to find their email addresses. I reached out to a little over 100 people, and that got us a reply rate of 33%, which is probably my highest reply rate to date.

So it's really about how you use the tools to get better results.

Remember, it is always about serving your prospective customers and not serving yourself. If you are not doing this, then you are just like the millions of other spammers.

Always try to sell by solving a problem and not by starting with what you want to sell.

Anything additional you are looking for?

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