4 Definitive Reasons Why Targeting Drives Cold Email Outreach

Master the art of targeting and you’re bound to unleash the full potential of your cold email campaigns. Here are 4 good reasons why targeting should become your core practice for cold emailing, because it influences everything from locating customers to crafting personalized messages that engage and convert.

This is a guest post by Piotr Zaniewicz, CEO @RightHello. If I was to create a list of experts on lead generation, or B2B outbound sales process, Piotr and his team would definitely be in top positions. If you’re not sure what targeting is and why you need it for your cold email campaign, make sure you don’t skip this one.

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You don’t want to launch a cold email campaign if you aren’t 100% sure that every single component works. Whether it’s a sophisticated messaging tool or killer copy, you’ll need to pay an equal amount of attention to all of them. But there’s one component that can either make or break your cold email campaign right from the start – targeting.

Good targeting is key to building a foundation for effective cold email outreach. Some companies never realize the importance of targeting and generate leads that aren’t qualified, or worse, deal with a complete lack of leads.

Those that take extra care to build an efficient targeting process, in consequence engage the right customer groups that provide a solid level of conversion.

It should be clear by now that sending messages to random professionals and companies won’t bring you any closer to reaching your business goals. To make it in B2B sales, you’ll need to take all necessary effort to build mutually beneficial business relationships with clients – and targeting is the first step to achieving it.

So, why is targeting worth your attention?

Targeting is not exclusive to cold emailing – in fact, it’s the first step in any marketing campaign. Have a look at these 4 reasons to see why cold email outreach campaigns can’t work without a strong foundation in targeting.

1. It helps you locate potential customers

Narrowing down your target helps – the smaller your target groups, the easier it will be to find your customers. Many marketers cringe at the thought of prospecting – without prospecting software, it becomes a tedious and time-consuming process. It takes a lot of time to google keywords that match your potential customer groups or prospect on Linkedin.

A good target groups contains upwards of 5.000 companies around the world. This means that weekly you’ll be mining data about at least a 100 companies to keep the campaign going and benefit from the compounding effect of introduction emails and follow-ups.

That’s why there’s a lot of benefit in using software solutions available on the market to generate up-to-date contact data of companies that match your ideal customer criteria. Approaching several companies operating from the same location, you can bet that word will get around.

This makes room for network effect to happen on a smaller scale. This means that new clients will, in theory, deliver 1+x referral leads once you do a great job for them. It’s very hard to achieve on a global scale, that’s why you want to start small.

2. It helps you write emails that convert

Without knowing the similarities that connect the people and companies you’re approaching, you stand no chance at creating email content that engages or converts. Targeting helps to save time because from the start you’ll be looking for professionals that share job specifics and pain-points. Once you do your research, you can unashamedly approach cold prospects with slightly customized messages based on the same template.

As long as you’re relevant and nail the voice, tone and pain points that resonate with your target group then your emails won’t be spammy. Targeting is the most crucial practice for better personalization of your emails.

3. Targeting is the first step to email outreach automation

If you want to engage cold prospects all over the planet, expect sending hundreds of emails every week to become challenging quickly. Just think about addressing customers living in different time zones and you’re bound to realize that targeting is a stress-saving solution.

Narrowing down your target group to a single region you can easily automate the process, ensuring that your messages reach customers at the right moment – definitely not when they’re asleep or just out of work and dying to get home.

4. It makes room for efficient lead qualification and sales

Once your cold emails start to generate responses, the first priority is to qualify these leads. But how to do that and keep the conversation engaging? Consumer insight!

Targeting will help you interpret “yes” and “no” signals and better recognise patterns in customer buying behaviour. Analyze reasons customers give you for buying or not buying your solution, and you’ll access a host of valuable insights to make your sales process quicker and more effective.

A good target is how you make sure that your sales team gets only pre-qualified, quality leads that won’t be a waste of time to chase.

Now you see why good targeting is the foundation of any effective cold email outreach.

Are you trying to define a good target group and aren’t sure how to do it? Read my latest article – “How to get leads? Supercharge sales with a proven targeting process”.

Target, but know when enough is enough

Narrowing down your target group is a proven path to learning more about client needs and creating truly personalized messaging to improve conversion from leads to paying customers.

Don’t go overboard, if your target becomes too specific then you’ll find that you can only address a number of companies around the world that perfectly match your criteria. If your target really is a niche like that – there’s no point in organising a cold email campaign, you’d just approach each of them personally.

Your target group has potential for cold mailing if it contains more than 5,000 companies worldwide. Focus on this group and you’ll be on your way to improving your cold emailing performance and engaging more potential customers in meaningful conversations.

Guest post by Piotr Zaniewicz, CEO @RightHello.