1. Social stalk with a lowercase “s”

I'm not saying to go like your prospect's Instagram grad announcement from 2014. But knowing them one level deeper than the fact that they interned at Deloitte and have generally posted about B2B sales on LinkedIn is vital. 

Do your homework and use AI to really understand your “who.” 

90% of your automation should be happening before an email ever gets sent to distill the type of person that actually has:

A problema. A problem that is actively keeping them up at night and preventing them from achieving their goalsi. A problem that they want to do the work to solve right now1.A problem that you can actually solve

Once you’ve set up workflows that up-funnel the pre-qualification process—

Well, now you’re left with a targeted group of people who are granularly aware of what you can help them achieve (Think: people who have gone to my website and their LinkedIn says that they are actively hiring for SDRs who match my ICP) and are hungry to achieve it.

You have to change the whole process from working like a hunter who is chasing the prospect with a spear to being like a fisherman who is laying out nets—capturing people who are actively looking for a solution.

You can use the last step of your personalization funnel to say something targeted that will actually invite a response. 

2. Match their energy

if sum1 types like this odds r they dont expect an oxford comma in their response 🤸 🤸 🤸 

The easiest way to meet your prospects where they are and have your model code switch if necessary is to teach it to be a digital chameleon.

Tell it to match a tone—casual, formal, playful, funny, direct, etc. Tell it to communicate with the most basic, simple languageTell it the exact phrases that the customer uses to incorporate in—shorthand like “lmk” or “EOD,” grammatical styles like using em dashes instead of commas, phrases like “let’s sync” or “game to jam”

3. Get relevant

People think that “personalizing” is all they need to do to fix all their outbound problems, but when done poorly it can actually reduce open and response rates rather than improve them. That’s because:

What’s relevant for one person isn’t going to be the same for the next. Like with summaries, the most salient pieces of information differ from person to person and company to company. Knowing all the information doesn’t mean that you know the right information. Addressing someone by their first, middle, and last name and mentioning that they were treasurer of their fraternity is a surefire way to out yourself as AI. 

At Valley, we're using AI to generate super specific use cases based on a company's industry, size, and tech stack. It's like saying, "Hey, I see you, I get your unique challenges, and here's exactly how we can help." We’re doing this by creating models that have 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level thoughts. 

The best sellers are reaching their customers' pain points by thinking, “How can I get this customer promoted,” so we’re building chains of thought that do the same with these increased input nodes that add complexity. 

4. Be cool

As we get better at personalization, prospects get better at spotting fake personalization. The key is to at least present genuineness. People buy from people. 

To do this, you have to battle that “something’s off” uncanny valley effect that comes with a lot of model-generated outreach. 

Do: 

Making your messages sound like a human comes down to the surface area that you prime the model with. Add inputs like what fundraising is like in the industry, the headwinds and tailwinds facing the industry, what KPIs matter to the prospect, etc. Remember that “The how is less important than the who.” Your email should be 2 or 3 sentences that answer: What is the pinpoint you think you can solve for me? What is your proof? What have you done for others like me?

Don’t:

Use the Re: or Fwd: reply or forward tag in a cold email. You’re not fooling anyone and you lose trust. Be verbose and write 3 paragraphs in your first email. No one wants to know the origin story of your company name. People want to know how you can help them.