Outreach.io is one of the most popular and powerful sales engagement tools in the world. Learn how Outreach.io best practices can increase your engagement.
The benefits to maximizing sales engagement are numerous. Not only does it help you build and nurture relationships with clients who are more likely to become customers, but it also helps you learn more about your sales process so you can adapt and adjust as needed. Of course, all of this leads to your ultimate goal: closing more deals and generating more revenue.
Using a powerful sales engagement platform like Outreach.io is one of the best ways to increase engagement at every stage of the sales pipeline. Its industry-leading features — like machine-learning-driven A/B testing, buyer sentiment analysis, sequence insights, and a sales execution report — help sales reps remain efficient and consistent through every customer touchpoint.
Let's take a closer look at how your team can utilize Outreach.io best practices to maximize your sales engagement.
Used by companies around the world, like Elsevier, Cisco, and Zoom, Outreach.io is a robust sales engagement platform that can help your sales reps increase engagement through functions like automation, personalization, analytics and reporting, app integration, and task prioritization. For your sales reps, it helps them stay organized and manage their workflow so that leads don't fall through the cracks. For your leads, it creates a seamless and positive experience that may influence them to become customers. Overall, it helps you optimize your sales process. All of this leads to improved engagement.
Outreach.io best practices range from properly setting up accounts when you begin using the platform to properly leveraging analytics to automating your workflow. When you combine them all, you supply your team with the tools they need to maximize engagement with leads and customers.
One way to get the most out of Outreach.io is to start off on the right note by setting up your account properly. This ensures your reps can start using it right away without any hiccups. Make sure you've chosen the right plan for your outreach needs. While all of the plans are beneficial, the "Engage" option is designed to specifically help drive engagement by making sales reps more efficient and effective. However, if you are on the fence about which plan to choose, one of our experts at RevOptics can always help you make a decision.
Once you're signed up, Outreach.io, you'll want to integrate your email account. The platform supports common email providers, like Gmail and Outlook. This allows the platform to send emails on your behalf.
Next, you'll want to integrate your CRM. Outreach.io uses bi-directional syncing to ensure all information is transferred between the two programs every 10 minutes, though you can reconfigure it for shorter periods of time if necessary. It's compatible with common CRMs, like Salesforce Lighting, Salesforce Aloha, Salesforce Console, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, and SKUID Overly. Syncing Outreach.io with your CRM ie essential for:
After making your integrations, you can then add your reps and other sales team members and assign them various permissions.
Once you've set up your Outreach.io account, you can begin focusing on optimizing your email sequences. Sequences are a wonderful tool for increasing engagement because they're personalized and consistent, and they allow you to nurture leads with interesting and useful content rather than just bombarding them with a sales pitch. The platform's innovative sequence and reply features help prevent your team from losing valuable leads.
Personalized emails are far more likely to grab a lead's attention. And when you have their attention, they're more likely to open your email, click a link, respond to your outreach efforts , and listen to what you have to say. Personalization also shows that you did some research and see your leads as individuals with unique needs, which can help you connect and build a relationship.
There are numerous ways to personalize your sequences. Some of the most successful ones include:
Personalization is one half of the equation when it comes to crafting effective email sequences. Timing is the other. Unfortunately, there is no secret formula for how to do it — it largely comes down to the types of sequences and your unique goals.
For example, when you send a welcome sequence to someone who signed up to be on your email list, you want to send your first email right away while you're fresh on their mind. Wait one to two days and send a second email telling them more about your product. Wait one to two more days and send them some more info and maybe an added incentive like a discount or a video demo of your product.
On the other hand, if you're sending a re-engagement sequence, you'll want to wait 30 days from your last interaction to reach out.
No matter the type of sequence, don't send too many emails in a short period of time or you might end up in someone's spam folder. Up to three a week is usually considered acceptable. When you use Outreach to automate your sequences, you can set your timing up by intervals or have them sent on an exact day at an exact time, which gives you one less task to worry about.
Outreach.io has a reputation for offering some of the best analytics and reporting among all sales engagement platforms. Tracking key outreach metrics is a must if you want to find out if your email sequences — and the rest of your sales strategies — are working. The platform offers three main types of outreach reporting: Team Performance, Sales Execution, and Sequence Performance.
Sales Execution reports contain metrics relating to the sales funnel, and it compares users, teams and timeframes. Sequence Performance reports can help you understand email sentiment and the way your sequences perform. Team Performance reports focus on activities, like emails, calls, meetings, and tasks completed.
These reports refresh every 24 hours, so you can use them to measure your monthly, weekly, and even daily performances. If you have a campaign that raises your engagement rates, you'll want to repeat it. If you have a sales rep who has much higher engagement than the others, you'll want to try to understand what they're doing and how other team members can duplicate it. If you find that leads are engaging with your emails best at certain times of the day, you'll want to automate your sequences to go out at that time.
Another area where you can utilize Outreach.io best practices to maximize engagement is through its many collaboration features. When your team collaborates, your leads and customers win. Ample ways to communicate, shared workflow, and access to certain metrics are just some of the ways you can help your team work together towards the common goal of increasing engagement and closing more sales.
Outreach.io allows you to have one centralized area where every member of your team can access important information. Through the platform you can also collaborate through features like:
Just remember that as the admin, you'll have to add your team members and give them permission to access various features.
One of the biggest advantages of using Outreach.io is that it automates various tasks, which means less time spent on administrative tasks and more time spent closing deals. Because Outreach.io automates tasks through AI, it also reduces the chance for human error.
For example, when you build your sequences, you can have the platform automatically send them at certain times. You can also set up triggers, or emails that automatically send to leads and customers when they perform certain actions. Those can be as simple as a lead opening an email rather than deleting it or sending it to spam. When they perform this action, you might want to set up a trigger to send them another email in 48 hours.
Finally, one of the best things you can do for your team is ensure they are familiar with the platform, its features, and its best practices. We've all been in a situation in which we had to learn new software, a program, or an app without much if any instruction, and it can be overwhelming, especially in a professional setting. Providing proper training and onboarding also ensures there are no disruptions to your workflow.
One of the best places to start is through Outreach University. It offers over 40 courses on the features of Outreach.io. There's also a path to becoming a Certified Outreach Administrator. Through the Outreach Success Center, you can read expert blog posts, learn through role-specific guides, and sign up for virtual sessions. The Outreach Customer Support page offers numerous guides on how to do everything from setting up your account to creating sequences to generating reports, and it even includes a special section on sales engagement.
Customer engagement is essential for closing deals, and there's no better way to maximize engagement than by using a powerful platform like Outreach.io. When your team implements Outreach.io best practices, like properly setting up your account, crafting high-quality sequences, leveraging analytics, enhancing collaboration, automating your workflow, and providing continuous training and development, it leads to better outcomes.
