How AI-Generated Outbound Campaigns Can Boost Your Sales with Eric Nowoslawski and Varun Anand
With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), new and innovative ways of prospecting have emerged. AI is transforming the prospecting landscape from writing personalized messaging to targeting specific audiences.
In this blog post, we will explore some of the most exciting ways AI can be used for prospecting from the experience of Eric Nowoslawski, Founder of Growth Engine X, and Varun Anand, Head of Operations of Clay.
We will explore the tools and techniques to create customized messaging that resonates with potential customers. We will also discuss how AI identifies and targets specific audiences, helping businesses reach the right people at the right time.
Whether you’re a seasoned sales professional or a marketing novice, this blog post will provide valuable insights into AI-powered prospecting. So, sit back, relax, and join us as we explore some of the most exciting and innovative ways AI is used for prospecting in today’s digital age.
Episodic Prospecting
Episodic prospecting is a fairly common practice among sales and marketing professionals, where they spend a short period prospecting and then move on to other tasks, thinking that they have done enough to generate leads. However, this approach can be problematic for several reasons.
Firstly, by only prospecting for a short time, you may miss out on potential leads that could have been generated if you had continued your efforts. Many prospects may not be ready to buy, but they could be interested in your product or service in the future. You could be losing out on future business opportunities by neglecting to keep in touch with them.
Secondly, episodic prospecting can also lead to an inconsistent pipeline. When you stop prospecting after a short period, your pipeline can dry up quickly, leaving you with no leads to follow up on. This can be especially problematic if you are trying to build a new business or generate revenue quickly.
Relying on a large number of leads for an extended period can also lead to problems. The data can decay rapidly, and you may send irrelevant messages to people who have changed jobs or companies. The relevance of your messaging can change as the market and the target audience change, so it’s essential to keep the data fresh and continuously update your messaging to stay relevant.
That being said, consistency is vital when it comes to prospecting. Consistently reaching out to potential customers ensures that your top-of-funnel is always full and you have a steady stream of potential customers to nurture and convert.
Drip campaigns, where you send a series of automated emails to prospects over a set period of time, can be an effective way to stay in touch with potential customers and nurture them until they are ready to make a purchase.
The beauty of consistency in outbound prospecting is that it allows you to forecast your results predictably. By knowing your conversion rates, you can predict how many meetings you will get from a certain number of emails sent and, ultimately, how many deals you will close. This level of predictability is crucial for businesses as it allows them to plan and allocate resources accordingly.
Episodic prospecting may seem like a quick and easy way to generate leads, but it can actually harm your pipeline and lead to missed opportunities.
Using AI Effectively For Prospecting and Nurturing Leads
AI can be particularly effective in prospecting or finding potential customers for your products or services. However, as with any tool, AI has pros and cons, and if misused, it can do more harm than good.
One challenge many people face when using AI for messaging and targeting is finding the right balance between efficiency and personalization.
It’s easy to get caught up in using AI to craft the perfect message and spend way more time than you would have if you had initially written it. However, if used correctly, AI can help you automate many of the more tedious aspects of prospecting, such as finding pricing information or analyzing news articles for relevant details.
The key to using AI effectively for prospecting is to remember that it is a tool, not a replacement for human creativity and insight.
While AI can help you analyze data and generate text snippets, it cannot replicate the depth of knowledge and experience that a human brings to the table. Relying too heavily on AI to write entire emails or social media posts can lead to generic content that lacks authenticity and fails to resonate with your target audience.
For example, if you were to use ChatGPT to write LinkedIn posts for you three times a week, you’d probably end up with a ton of generic posts that no one will engage with or get value from.
As Eric points out in the podcast, to successfully use LinkedIn to engage with your potential audiences, you need to speak to something very niche and valuable to get their attention.
ChatGPT or AI, in general, don’t have the necessary context to create these specific posts or emails because you need to share your own real-world experiences, knowledge, and insights, and AI just doesn’t have all those things.
When you’re cold emailing people, AI doesn’t know the insights like you do about your customer. If it did, it would be giving away your business secrets to everybody because essentially businesses are just arbitrage. – Eric Nowoslawski
If AI knew everything about how to solve the problem for your customers, there’d be nothing special about your company. So when you’re sending a cold email, think: what’s the most notable thing you could say to get somebody’s attention?
You should not lean on artificial intelligence to write your entire cold emails or social media posts because it brings up many problems.
- It’s not authentic.
- The content is very generic.
- It’ll start making things up (potentially at random), and you won’t have control over what comes out on the other side.
Instead, the best approach is to use AI to enhance your insights and expertise.
For example, you might feed ChatGPT data about a particular company or industry and ask it to generate a few key phrases or talking points that you can use in your messaging. You can use a prompt such as:
I have [X] data about [Y Company], and I need you to [infer things at scale about this.] Then I need you to write content based on that inference.
Learning how to prompt AI correctly allows you to take advantage of its efficiency and scalability while retaining the personal touch that comes from human input.
Framework to Prompt ChatGPT for Campaign Ideas
One of the key benefits of using AI in outbound campaigns is its ability to personalize messages based on the prospect’s interests and needs. By analyzing data from the prospect’s website and social media accounts, AI models can generate ideas that are tailored to their specific industry, needs, and interests. This makes the messages more relevant and engaging, which increases the chances of conversion.
Eric explains he would give ChatGPT input on what the company does, and then with a lot of massaging and a lot of prompting; he was able to write creative, specific, and relevant outbound campaign ideas to prospects at scale, without having to review the text. (He did check the first 50 just to make sure!)
Eric’s favorite prompt response was using Red Bull as the example company because he wanted to test how B2C campaigns would turn out. ChatGPT responded with these campaign ideas:
- Target corporate executives to bring Red Bull on their corporate retreats to get everybody energized for the event.
- Target nightclub owners and teach them the interesting drinks that you can make with Red Bull.
- Connect with sports organizations to make sure that Red Bull is at every sporting event.
To this day, Eric and his team are still using this approach to send cold emails such as:
Hey {name}, I was checking out your website, and it looks like you target X, Y, and Z. Not sure if you’re running any of these campaigns right now, but Clay can help you automate these {ideas} or start them for the first time if you’ve never done them before.
- Idea1
- Idea 2
- Idea 3
At this point, I can’t think of anything more high leverage than being able to speak to your prospect and say, ‘Hey, here would be the benefits personalized to you about using our product or service.’ … And yeah, that’s probably the most interesting thing we’ve done with AI so far. – Eric Nowoslawski
To use AI effectively, he suggests using it to look at the data first, infer a decision, and empower your messaging!
The Best Use Case For AI in a Prospecting Sequence
According to Eric, the best way to use AI in a prospecting sequence is to first look at the data, analyze it, make an inference about that data, and then change the way you’re doing the copywriting in snippets (not the whole email at once).
“Get that snippet right to really speak to the problem and the relevance of what your product or service can do for somebody.”
You can check some of the prompts used by Eric to personalize outbound email campaigns using AI here.
Using Google Search Operators to Prospect
Google is sitting on top of all the information in the world and is the most powerful weapon you have next to artificial intelligence.
Google’s vast amount of data can be used to train artificial intelligence algorithms. With such a large data set, you can create more accurate predictive models, improve marketing and outbound campaigns, and make better business decisions.
Google’s Search Operators are valuable for gathering data and conducting research, which can help you automate your research and scale it, saving time and resources in the process.
Search Operators are pieces of text or punctuation that you can use to tell Google exactly what you want.
For example, if you want to determine whether a company is GDPR compliant, you can search for “site:clay.run” and “data processing addendum” in quotes. This tells Google only to return results from that specific website that mentions the specific keyword “data processing addendum”. If no results come back, it means that the company is not GDPR compliant.
This is just one example of how you can use Google Search Operators to gather data and make informed decisions. For instance, if you’re looking for a wholesaler, you can search for “site:jimshark.com” and “wholesaler” in quotes. This tells Google only to return results from Jimshark.com that mention the specific keyword “wholesaler.”
This hack can save you a ton of time and resources by automating the research process and then using that information to feed it to ChatGPT or whatever AI you use.
Using Google Search Operator to Index LinkedIn
Varun mentions that a common practice for recruiters is to use Google Search Operators to X-ray pages such as LinkedIn to find the right candidates.
For example, recruiters can search for specific keywords like Java or Ruby on Rails, and even search for education and location criteria. There are websites like Recruiter.net that can generate Google Operator Searches based on the criteria you input.
According to Varun, Google indexes LinkedIn content better than LinkedIn itself, making it a powerful tool that offers more flexibility, precision, and the ability to automate research at scale.
Conclusion
With AI, sales teams can quickly identify and prioritize the most promising leads, personalize their messaging to each prospect, and optimize their outreach channels and timing for maximum impact. This not only results in higher conversion rates and increased sales revenue but also frees up time and resources for sales reps to focus on other high-value activities.
While there may be some initial investment and learning curve associated with implementing AI-powered outbound campaigns, the benefits are clear. As AI technology continues to evolve and improve, it is likely that we will see even more advanced and sophisticated applications of AI in the sales and marketing space in the years to come.
If you want to learn more about the many ways you can use AI to level up your sales game, listen to the full podcast episode with Eric Nowoslawski & Varun Anand, all links below!
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