A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:37:07 · Pablo Srugo
[00:37:07] S1: So let's change gears here and jump to kind of tactical number two. The first year, especially, like, you think about 2023 to 2025 and maybe still now, but but especially the beginning, it was kinda pure outbound as I understand it. And you had a system for driving experiments in outbound. Obviously, everybody's told you got a b test. So, again, these are things everybody knows high level, and yet when you look at operators, there is a very big difference in terms of execution and how well some people do it versus others. Tell us a little bit about how you structured outbound in order
00:37:35 · Tushar Mishra
[00:37:35] S0: to have experiments and figure out the messaging that worked, what converted, what didn't, etcetera. So number one, we actually made it made it almost very, very experimental and very handcrafted. What we did was we created a list and we divided that list by multiple different parameters. So one, by number of location, which is the size of business. Second, by industry. And third, by the actual role of the ICP in those companies. And there were different permutation of these different roles. We then had multiple emails that we had written down. And for each of the email, we had two sets of subject lines that we were testing. And then in the email copy, we try to keep the messaging consistent for a specific sort of ICP or a specific kind of email and experiment with what grabs their attention in terms of the use case. Like what do I reach out to you to solve like that actually works. So don't change that I'm selling instead of a franchise operating system, I'm selling LMS, but try to change within that franchise operating system, what are things that grab your attention more. And we started measuring sort of the open rate, response rate, all of those things and started sending out these emails like by hand. We did that. Along with that, we also reached out to these people on LinkedIn and tracked that all on a sheet. And at the end of every day, we would track how many opens do we have on them and you would call these people. Because we would know there's some kind of interest and we would call these people and then also note like what are we learning on those calls. So once you start to do this, you get a very good sense of what from a messaging perspective sort of good work. So for the first year 2024, all of the leads that we generated, majority of the leads that we generated were just through outbound emails that we were sending out and doing a little bit of calling on that customized or that curated list that we had.
00:39:30 · Pablo Srugo, Tushar Mishra
[00:39:30] S1: I don't know if you have it in front of you, if you can remember, but I'm curious on hearing some of the differences. Like, you know, what did your best email look like versus your worst email, you know, or best subject line versus worst subject line? Do you do you have some of those examples you could share? [00:39:45] S0: Yep. So number one, most replies actually came from email three, not email one. So we would send a cadence of email. That was one. Second, our best performing email was actually the one where we added a screenshot of our mobile app with the brand's logo on that screenshot. Because how a lot of people, they're just scrolling through, but if they see their brand on that screenshot, they feel that somebody has put actual effort in sending this out and they actually now read it because there's so much noise now more than ever because now AI STRs are writing all emails. But that gave us that right to attention, which is now they were paying attention. So that was sort of our best performing. The worst performing email was where we made outrageous claims. So oftentimes when we think of when you send out an email and say, I can help you make this much. I get hundreds of these email a day. [00:40:42] S1: Yeah. I can I can help you double your views? I can help you double... Whatever. Some big, big thing. [00:40:46] S0: Sure. You can. I mean, I'm I'm doing this, and this is my 100% of focus. If I can't, what magic sauce do you have that you can?
00:40:53 · Pablo Srugo
[00:40:53] S1: It's interesting. It's like we all have obviously a bullshit detector. We always always have like a spam detector, like built in all of us because we get so many emails and whatever. So you're trying to find a way for you to not get... Yes. Like, don't wanna get caught spammed by the actual email provider, but you also don't wanna be flagged as spam by the person. And and I don't mean them actually flagging you as spam, but it's kinda like, you're scrolling through your email, and you're like, yeah. Yeah. That's spam, spam, spam. This person's sending a thousand of these. Why would I even read it? Like, if you didn't take the time to write it, I'm not gonna take the time to read it. Until you find the one, like in your example, for example, these... This is ever changing because the bar for personalization just goes up. It used to be if you just had a first name in there, you're like, oh my god, they know my name. They must be... You know, I've done research. Now, obviously, that's not the case. But like in your case, when you were sending these out, having a screenshot with a logo in there was different enough and implied somebody took time and sent me a one personalized email. Okay, maybe I'll stop on... Like, oh, interesting. And maybe I'll actually read what this person has to say just because they took the time to reach out to me. That kind of signals that there's a reason for it. And so it's worth me investing my time as well.
00:41:57 · Tushar Mishra, Pablo Srugo
[00:41:57] S0: Absolutely. And so personalization I've seen done so poorly because sometimes you would just be, look at their LinkedIn or some AI tools also do this. Hey, you went to this school. I am a great fan of that school. Yeah. So so so that didn't become... And this is why we actually had to do it manually because we were literally in the night, I would create those screenshots, add them to the email and send it out. What are you [00:42:20] S1: finding works today, by the way? So maybe that's a good question because things have changed. Like, what are some of your best outbound, whether it's email or LinkedIn or whatever, what's what's your protocol these days?
00:42:28 · Tushar Mishra
[00:42:28] S0: So today, at least on the email side, hyper personalization down to the level of, okay, I understand you're a VP of ops. I have other VP of ops that I can reference, like, within my customers and what they are doing. Looking at the last few posts or LinkedIn posts that you have, looking at open job roles that your company has, we do a lot of this enrichment through Clay opening or looking at number of locations that you opened last year, number of locations that you're opening now. We actually also look at the FDD data. So, this is FTC mandated document that efragizer needs to have where they have a lot of details about like what the tech fee is, how much revenue does the location make. So, we take all of that data in and then personalize it. So now it doesn't look like generic, hey, you're from x school, but looks very... I have done enough research on your brand. Even if I haven't personally written that email, at least I've done that research in going through the depth of finding different information about you and putting them all together. That, but better than email, what works for us today is calling. Calling and along with calling, doing hyper personalizations in terms of sending them something. So, we've started to do dinners in cities and we send them a postcard inviting them to dinner. We had this golf ball that we personalized for that nameless that we sent out. So that level of personalization and actually sending them sort of something, especially for the contacts that are engaged that are now in my list. So almost have an approach. So you have email. There are certain people who will engage with that. There are certain people who already booked, which is great. Now there are these people who engage with that, so I'm going to call them. Now I call them, I get some insights about them. Some of them book, a lot of them don't. But now I have more material on them where I understand their business better. So now I do one more level of personalization versus now I'm sending them something personal. Right? I'm sending them a text message. I'm sending them a gift card. I'm sending them something to sort of bring them in. So almost like that's target approach, but just relying on email today is probably not the best approach just because there's so much noise there.