Want some sales-ready, self-qualified prospects who are ready to work with you without you doing anything?
Sounds like you need a strong email sequence to convert cold traffic audiences into warm prospects on autopilot.
Your touchpoints within your lead generation play a huge part in how you’ll be converting prospects into clients.
Whether you want to educate them, provide value, or convert them into paying customers. You need to have solid social selling messaging in place. Ideally, automated.
Whether you use email or LinkedIn.
But if you’re not sure where to start, keep on reading!
Below, we’ll reveal converting social selling sequences (for email and LinkedIn) to convert your leads into paying customers.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- B2B Lead Generation and Email Outreach Funnel Overview
- 5 Staple Elements to Include In Any Email Sequence When Converting Prospects
- Email Outreach Sequences Overview and Top 3 Examples Breakdown
Table of Contents
B2B Lead Generation and Email Outreach Funnel Overview
According to the ChiefMarketer 2019 survey, finding leads that ultimately convert and engage the right prospects are the top challenges for B2B marketers.
Leads are the lifeblood of any business.
That’s why you need a strong B2B marketing funnel automation system in place.
So, first, let’s review what a proper lead generation funnel looks like to put things into context.
A lead generation funnel also referred to as a lead funnel, is a systematic approach to generating leads.
Done right, this will help you funnel your target audience through a set of different stages until they decide to make a purchase and convert.
Though you might have come across different versions of the marketing funnel, the “traditional” funnel, according to HubSpot, takes the buyer from the awareness stage to the decision stage.
When getting them from point A to point B, your goal should be to educate the target audience, provide value, and give them reasons to sign up.
Depending on your value proposal and industry, your funnel might be a little different.
But for the most part, you’ll be targeting people with a specific pain point and taking them down your funnel to convert at the end.
In the same way, cold traffic is where you get your most new leads.
But since not everyone will be qualified to work with you or be ready to buy straight away, warm traffic is where you’ll find gold and you will have leads qualified and prepared to work with you.
Now, to help you better build out your sales pipeline, here are some other lead generation and sales concepts you should know.
Lead generation and sales concepts to keep in mind
When building out your funnel, here’s what you’ll want to keep in mind:
- Inbound vs. outbound – Think of it this way: Inbound leads come to you (through content, SEO, socials, etc.) and outbound is when you reach out to your leads (through email, LinkedIn, ads, etc.).
- Marketing qualified lead (MQL) – Leads who have already engaged with your brand’s marketing but aren’t ready to get on a sales call yet. E.g., someone who opted in for your lead magnet
- Sales qualified lead (SQL) – Leads who have taken an action that signals an interest in becoming a paying customer. E.g., a contact who fills out a form curious about your product or service.
- MQL to SQL conversion rate – How many of your marketing qualified leads become sales qualified leads. If there’s a significant drop-off here, this probably means your marketing and sales teams aren’t aligned.
- Product qualified lead (PQL) – Leads who have used your products and expressed interest in becoming paying customers. Think: Free trials or freemium SaaS tools.
- Service qualified lead – Leads who have indicated to your service team that they’re interested in becoming a paying customer.
Now, as you might have guessed, these concepts might vary even more depending on your industry and niche.
And your email outreach sequence might look a little different too.
But fortunately, some things DO stay the same, no matter your offer.
And once you get this right, you’ll start seeing it in almost every email sequence or LinkedIn cold messages you’ll be sending or receiving.
Let’s look at that before we cover some email sequence examples below.
5 Staple Elements to Include In Any Email Sequence When Converting Prospects
While you don’t have to cram all of these in your emails together necessarily, it’s good to include some of these conversion-driven principles in your sequences.
And below, we’ll show different examples of sequences as well.
1. A strong hook
We covered this in our how to start an email article.
Essentially, if you don’t have a strong hook, it will be much harder to get your audience to pay attention.
Even if you have the best product or service in the world, no one will want to work with you if you can’t capture their attention to read your message all the way through.
A few ways to show you’re relevant and your email is worth reading may include:
- Using comedy or humor to stand out.
- Addressing relevant pain points.
- Talking about news in your industry.
- Using advanced, dynamic, and hyper-personalized images and GIFs in your outreach messages.
- And more.
Think of it this way: Your prospects get up to 100+ emails daily.
How is your email sequence different? What will you do to stand out?
2. Personalization
Personalization is a tried and tested email sequence proven to work in every industry or any outreach medium.
We’ve had successful results using personalization in our LinkedIn InMail outreach.
Think of personalization this way:
Your messages should be SO specific; they wouldn’t work for anyone else. For example:
This might sound time-consuming, but You need to show how this can completely change your outreach if done well.
Not sure where to look for these personalizations?
Consider:
Podcasts
“That podcast you did with John was so good, {first_name}! Loved your tactic on printing out pictures of people’s faces and using them as a video thumbnail!”
LinkedIn posts
“Loved your LinkedIn post about Facebook ad tracking, {first_name}! I didn’t know you could use Zapier to send over purchasers directly into custom audiences.”
Website “about us” sections
“It was inspiring to read you guys started the company in a basement, {first_name}! Incredible you’ve scaled to 50+ employees by now.”
News articles
“Just read about you guys acquiring Company X! Congrats, that’s a smart move!”
3. Relevant value proposal
Now, in most cases, you shouldn’t be selling in your very first email or outreach sequence.
But at the same time, they should know what you do at a glance.
How do you do this?
Well, you need to show the way you add value to their business.
There is no one-size-fits-all value proposition fit here. This will largely depend on your ideal customer persona (ICP).
So, try to narrow that down first.
- Pitching to journalists? Make sure you include relevant sources or data to capture their curiosity.
- Writing to a digital publication? Content or storytelling works well here.
- Reaching out to SaaS brands? Can’t go wrong with actionable messages and our best practices for social selling.
4. 1-2 Sentence case study
Another great way to show you’re serious is through succinct case studies.
You don’t have a lot of space in an email, and you don’t want to fill it up with fluff.
And the best way to show that you can help your prospects is to give them a summary of how you’ve helped companies similar to them.
This shouldn’t be longer than 1-2 sentences. Otherwise, your email might become too long. And in your case studies, you should include a lot of data and numbers to show what kind of results you can deliver for your prospects too.
For example:
- “Using our hyper-personalized outreach campaign, we’ve achieved a ~72% acceptance rate and up to 40% reply rate to the follow-ups. Would you be interested in a free demo?”
- “Hey {first_name}, we recently helped company X, an eCommerce store like yours, increase their Klaviyo email revenue 160% in one month with just a couple of small tweaks and I’ve got a few ideas that might work for you too.”
- “We helped Company X book 40+ demos in a week on autopilot with 0 ad spend. The secret? A highly-personalized outreach that targets your prospects on multiple channels. Glad to demo this over a free, 10-minute call!”
5. Call-to-action (CTA)
Finally, this may sound obvious, but your outreach email sequence needs to end on a strong, compelling CTA.
Yet, most people get this wrong.
Asking your prospects to pick a time when they’re free is the wrong way to end your email!
Instead, try to give them a few choices, so they don’t procrastinate and put it off for later.
Here are some examples:
Asking for a call
- “Do you have time for a quick call this Wednesday or Thursday evening?”
- “Do you have a scheduling link I can book a short call with if you’re interested?”
Video audit
- “Would you like me to send over a quick video explaining this with examples?”
- “I’ve put together a quick video going over the sections that I think could be improved. Let me know if you’re interested so that I can send it over?”
Reply
- “Is that something you’d be interested in?”
- “Would you like me to send over a video of how I’d do that for you too?”
And finally, be sure to always follow up as well!
Now that you have an idea of what to include in your outbound email sequences let’s take a look at some examples that do this right and their step-by-step messages.
Email Outreach Sequences Overview and Top 3 Examples Breakdown
Assuming your email is warmed up and you’re ready to get started, we’re going to cover some examples of outreach social selling sequences below – for email as well as LinkedIn.
A lot of this will be focusing on the first touch, the central part of the email sequence as the follow-ups are usually very templatized and can be easily automated.
Let’s take a look.
1. Mutual Facebook group cold email outreach sequence
Subject line:
Saw you in the Dux-Soup Facebook group!
Body text:
“Hey {first_name}!
I noticed your profile and wanted to reach out as I see we’re both members of the same Dux-Soup users Facebook group. Guess we have growth in common!
I’m working on a much safer tool for LinkedIn automation (It’s cloud-based, so LinkedIn doesn’t detect it), and to avoid making something useless, I wanted to find people who can help me by sharing their thoughts.
I’d love to get your feedback on it if you don’t mind?
Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send over my calendar so we can schedule a quick, 10-minute call.”
Results:
- 49% Reply rate to follow-ups.
- 42+ Booked demos.
Check out the full outreach strategy for more info and the rest of the email sequence follow-ups!
2. Personalization outreach email
Subject line:
Intro: {first_name} X (Your name)
Body text:
“Hey {first_name}!
{Personalization}.
When I first started a ‘done-for-you’ agency myself, my biggest challenge was unsafe marketing and outreach tools to either burn my domain or suspend our LinkedIn accounts.
I’m curious to know, do you have any processes in place to help your clients and eliminate email outreach deliverability problems?
I recently realized how complex email deliverability and getting a reply from your leads could be. At the same time, we found that some minor adjustments can skyrocket email open and reply rates (anywhere from 30% to 57%+ with small tweaks).
If you’re interested in hearing more, I’d be happy to talk about my methods.
Here’s my availability: [URL]
What do you think?”
3. Hyper-personalized outreach email sequence
Subject line:
Thanks for the connection, {first_name}
Body text:
Hey {first_name}!
I just wanted to drop a quick email, saying thanks for connecting on LinkedIn!
Using dynamic GIFs like the one below, we’ve managed to help our clients skyrocket their reply rate to as high as 55%+.
If I can help in any way, I’m always open to a chat and a coffee. :)”
Note: This email sequence would be omnichannel. Meaning it would automatically go to the cold prospect after connecting with them on LinkedIn. Learn how to do that here: The Power Of GIF Animations And Hyper-Personalization In Your LinkedIn Messaging: Skyrocket Your Reply Rate Up to 55%
Using Omni-Channel Email and LinkedIn Cold Outreach Sequences
Now that we covered the best sales outreach email sequences and templates, the only thing worth mentioning is using omnichannel outreach sequences.
Like the example above, this is simply a way to target your prospects on the main B2B channels: LinkedIn AND email.
If that sounds complicated – don’t worry.
You don’t have to write all the outreach sequence messages manually for each platform.
You can simply automate them based on simple “if-this-then-that” outreach flows using Expandi.
And because of how far tech has come, you can now also include personalization tags, dynamic GIFs, and other conversion-driven assets in your sequences without much work.
Now, finally, let’s recap email sequences:
- How many emails are in an outreach sequence?
Though there is no clear answer as to how many times you should email your prospects in your sequences, we’ve found that the reply rate tends to drop off after five emails. After following up a few times, you can mention any quick wins or relevant updates to your prospects. And if they’re still not replying after, you should ask if there’s a better time to follow up or end the sequence.
- Why do you need an email sequence?
An outreach email sequence is a great way to help your target audience go through their buyer’s journey. Depending on your email sequences, you can aim for lead generation, building a relationship, or getting them to take a specific action (e.g., join your community, quick call, etc.).
- How do you write a killer email sequence?
A killer email sequence targets the right people with the correct emails. If you want to convert a cold lead into a warm prospect, we recommend including the following in your email sequence:
- A strong hook.
- Personalization.
- Relevant value proposal.
- 1-2 Sentence case study.
- CTA and follow-ups.
- How to automate an email sequence?
Many different marketing tools can help you automate your email sequences depending on your goals. With Expandi you can automate both your email and LinkedIn outreach steps. You can target custom audiences, upload your spreadsheet of leads, and use the latest up-to-date omnichannel outreach tactics.
Ready to launch your own email sequence to convert cold traffic into warm prospects?
Get started with a 7-day, free Expandi trial and launch your own automated omnichannel social selling sequences today!
