6 ways you can use content blueprints to up-level your sales emails

Posted September 25, 2017

By Chelsey Feldman

Product Marketing at Outreach

If you’ve ever found yourself at work googling “how to write sales emails,” you’re not alone. Hundreds of sales reps have to resort to confused googling every day. And for good reason! The secret formula to a winning sales email blueprint can feel more secretly guarded than the nuclear codes. Not anymore - we’re here to make sure you know how to be successful, starting with Content Blueprints.

We recently built Content Blueprints to give you a library of expertly written and curated content that you can use in your own emails. And so far, Blueprints have been a hit with over a thousand customers who have used them to level up their emails! If you haven’t tried them out yet (or even if you have), read on. We’re sharing six of our top tips to help you make the most of our content blueprint library for your sales team.

1. Sequences aren’t just for SDRs

It’s no lie - sequences are the bread and butter of a sales development rep’s day to day task flow in Outreach. But that doesn’t mean sales reps are the only ones who get to scale up with sequences.  

Our most popular blueprint sequence to date is the event follow up sequence, which is key for an account executive’s toolkit. Especially useful for those giant conferences where you accumulate a stack of business cards thicker than a Harry Potter book, the event follow up sequence ensures that your post event emails don’t get lost in a Gmail black hole.

This sequence is mostly manual because you definitely want to add a personal touch when you’re sending an email to someone you’ve already met in person. What makes this sequence so powerful is that if your first follow up email isn’t read, subsequent follow up notes and calls are scheduled for you, so you don’t give up on that perfect qualified lead, even if they didn’t reply to your first note.

2. Revive your no-show

You’re sitting on the phone and your prospect was meant to join 15 minutes ago. Your deal is a goner, right? Wrong! I present to you our newest sequence, the “Meeting No Show,” designed to recover this exact situation as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

It was hard enough scheduling your meeting in the first place. Don’t waste any more time on scheduling logistics if you need to reschedule because of a no-show. We kick this sequence off with a phone call to check in and a manual email to remind your prospect why they were so excited to meet with you in the first place. Then the magic is in a perfectly tailored combination of scheduled follow up emails and phone call tasks to keep the ball rolling while still ensuring you connect. The phone calls are key because once you have your prospect on the phone, you can send an updated invite and ensure they received it while you’re still on the line to prevent another no-show incident.

3. Write that “holla-back” email

If you wrote the most perfect email, but still haven’t gotten a reply, don’t lose hope! The bumper reply is here to help in the form of another one of our top used blueprint sequences, called “Reply Follow Up - Auto”. Bumper replies are a very underrated, highly successful tool that can up your reply rates by 10% with no manual work. Bumper replies are a short and sweet follow up to your original email thread to - you guessed it - bump your conversation back to the top of your prospect’s inbox.

Because of their simplicity, these are the perfect email to automate within your workflow. In fact, the shorter and simpler they are, the better, as their main purpose is to get your initial email resurfaced and read. The magic with this sequence is scheduling the automatic replies every 3-4 days for about two weeks, so even if your prospect is going through a busy few days, there are multiple chances for your note to catch their eye.

Pro tip: are your working on one of your top tier accounts, a super detailed pitch, or a prospect that you want to show a little extra love to? We have a more manual follow up bumper sequence, too! Evaluate the scenario and choose which option works best for you.

4. Master the voicemail/email double play

When you leave a voicemail for a prospect, don’t simply cross your fingers and hope Siri transcribed it properly. Take action with our most popular blueprint template: the “Follow Up After Leaving a Voicemail.” By following your voicemail with an email, you significantly increase the chances that your prospect will get your message. The secret here is to not waste time being redundant. The voicemail follow up template is pretty high level and straight to the point, letting the prospect know you left a voicemail and how to get back to you. This leaves you with a quick and scalable way to consistently follow up voicemails with emails.

Remember, two is better than one - especially when it comes to sales touchpoints.

5. Keep it customized with variables

Want to master the art of personalization at scale? It’s easy with variables! We get it though - getting the right syntax down can be as confusing as that freshman year college calculus course that still gives you nightmares. That’s why we’ve created a snippet blueprint library with different variables that you can insert into your own templates and sequences with ease!

We’ve created:

  • Either/or availability
  • Availability with conditional formatting
  • Conditional formatting for missing first names
  • And natural language company variables (so you don’t sound like a robot by saying “Apple Inc.” instead of just “Apple”)

Is there a variable you’ve always wanted to use but don’t see in our blueprints?

6. Always have an elevator pitch in your back pocket

If you’re like our reps, you’re constantly explaining what your company does. When you work in a newer or growing company, you might need to explain what your company does to a prospect. That’s why we created a snippet for you to insert your elevator pitch into an email in seconds.

No, we didn’t write your pitch for you. But we know this is something you’ll need so we gave you a snippet that you can easily update and save with your own company’s pitch. That way, you’re saving time by not retyping the same pitch over again, and all your reps use consistent messaging. If there’s only one snippet you ever use, it’s this one! (But actually, you should try them all because they’ll make your day so much easier.)

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Remember, there’s no need to recreate the wheel every time you send an email. Content blueprints are a great tool to utilize to ensure every email you send is a winning email! Have a great blueprint idea that you don’t see here? Email us or leave us a comment!


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