How to increase the open rate on your outreach campaigns

The open rates for outreach campaigns decreased drastically in the past years.

Probably because it’s easier than ever to create a 10-email sequence using ChatGPT and send them in bulk for $50.

I searched for some benchmarks when it comes to outreach and it seems like if you manage to hit a 25% open rate you did a good job.

I would not be so happy with 25%, but that’s another story.

A while back we started a new Dream 100 Strategy for one of our clients and we managed to hit a 75% open rate.

I’ll dive into some details about how we built it and why we managed to hit a 3x more versus the average.

1. Quality over quantity

The concept of the Dream 100 Strategy requires by default a focus on quality instead of quantity.

This means we didn’t build a list of 10,000 random people. We invested a lot of hours into finding some dream 100 customers.

2. Warming up

The problem with cold emailing is that usually, people expect to reach out to someone who doesn’t know them, but yet be responsive.

That’s why we did a “warming up session” for about 1 week where we interacted and engaged with those people strategically on LinkedIn.

3. Messaging concept

I think 99% of the cold emails I ever got were identical: “Hi, we’re X, we can help you with Y, book a call if you’re interested.” – different words, but the same thing.

We crafted a messaging concept on a completely different idea, where the focus was on sharing something valuable with a funny touch.

4. Objective

(this is very important, so I will dive deeper)

Almost all emails I ever got were the same because when it comes to outreach people have only 1 objective: sell something as soon as possible.

This means reaching out to people who don’t want to buy or are not educated enough too. That’s wrong, so we defined 6 objectives based on the stage where the prospect is:

1. Generate awareness and engagement
2. Generate 1st party engagement
3. Marketing qualification
4. Sales qualification
5. Qualified meetings
6. Closing

This means we don’t try to force a sale until we have 1st party engagement or marketing qualification.

So basically we initiate a sales process (which is 1:1, highly targeted) only with people who are truly interested.

And that’s why it’s working and it’s 3x times better than the average. ✌️