I often get asked: is it worth the time to personalize my emails?
The case study above blew my mind (source: Outreach).
The team that sent all personalized emails had ~10% of the email volume, but almost double the meetings.
There's no doubt that personalization increases the effectiveness of your emails. And yes, it takes more time, but the best SDRs I've ever coached have this down to a science.
The key to personalizing emails at scale is to realize that it's a massive if-this-then-that equation. Spot the top 10 triggers for personalization, write templates for each of them, then pop them in and out with slight tweaks.
Get good at it you'll write amazing personalized emails in under 3 minutes.
Let's break it down in three steps.
Step 1: Build your "first is best" research stack
Jot down the top 10 things that could mean a company or prospect is more likely to buy.
I like to break this down into two categories:
- What would make a COMPANY likely to buy
- What would make a PERSON at that company likely to buy
The easiest way to do this is to reverse engineer it from past prospects who've taken meetings, had the most painful discovery calls, or eventually bought your product... and try to find more people that look like them.
From there, stack rank the top 5 research triggers top to bottom. When I was at Pave selling compensation software, I broke it into company triggers and person triggers. It looked something like this:
- Company: Job posting for a compensation hire
- Person: Posted anything about equitable pay
- Company: Raised a round in last 6 months
- Company: Grew by XX% in employees
- Person: Went from big company to small company (fewer resources)
When you're doing your research, run the list top to bottom and use the first one you find to write the email. That's why it's called "first is best."
Step 2: Build your 3x3 email template
We covered how to write good sales emails a few weeks back, but a good cold email is 3 bodies of text, no more than 3 lines each when read on your phone.
But for personalization at scale, we're going to break 3x3 to add one personalization paragraph upfront without changing the rest of the email:
Personalization attached to a problem- Problem you solve
- One sentence solution
- Low friction CTA
Here's an example 3x3 email I used at Pave without personalization:
Most people leaders hate merit cycles because they spend 72 hours buried in spreadsheets auditing compensation mistakes.
Pave pulls your equity, salary, and performance data together so you never have to run a merit cycle in sheets again.
Open to learning more?
This will serve as our initial frame. Now, let's add personalization.
Step 3: Personalize with trigger templates
Now, watch the magic. The key to adding personalization at scale is that the personalization must be attached to the problem you described.
If you do this right, you can create 5 trigger templates that allow you NOT have to personalize the rest of the email.
Here's an example using the first trigger from my list earlier: they're hiring a compensation person:
Noticed Acme's job posting for a compensation hire -- I'm glad you're getting some help on comp because merit cycles usually become your full-time job when you're handling them on your own!
Most people leaders hate merit cycles because they spend 72 hours buried in spreadsheets auditing compensation mistakes.
Pave pulls your equity, salary, and performance data together so you never have to run a merit cycle in sheets again.
Open to learning more?
Notice that we built the segue to the problem into the first paragraph so that the transition was seamless. If you state the personalization trigger but don't segue it to the problem, it feels super robotic.
Remember, you only need 5 trigger templates. So take the time to master that super smooth segue.
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Whenever I'm helping a team start their outbound motion, there are two things I give them: a sequence and five trigger templates.
If you're missing a good sequence as a starting point, over 6000 people have downloaded Charly Johnson's Cold Email Drip and it's completely free.
