{"id":14979,"date":"2018-04-03T16:23:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.intercom.com\/?p=14979"},"modified":"2020-07-30T12:57:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T11:57:00","slug":"how-live-chat-can-warm-up-your-cold-outbound-leads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/how-live-chat-can-warm-up-your-cold-outbound-leads\/","title":{"rendered":"How live chat can warm up your cold outbound leads"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most sales teams, \u201cpersonalizing\u201d a cold email simply means referencing a person’s job title or company and sending them links to case studies or blog posts in the hope of generating a single click-through.<\/p>\n

The conversation typically ends after that click. As sales people we might follow up with lots of \u201cjust checking in<\/a>\u201d emails, but these can feel spammy, and there are minimal results to show for it.<\/p>\n

At Intercom, we tried something different. We knew from our own research<\/a> that leads are 82% more likely to convert to customers if they’ve chatted with you first. So we began using our live chat<\/a> tool \u2013 typically viewed as a tool for responding to website visitors \u2013 to continue engaging cold email leads. For instance, if you receive an email from me with a case study, and you click on the case study, you\u2019ll be greeted with a Visitor Auto Message, or a proactive live chat message, inviting you to chat with me.<\/p>\n

As an outbound SDR, this approach has drastically reduced the amount of time it takes me to schedule demos, and also creates meaningful, personal engagement at scale. I typically see near 100% open rates<\/em> for these types of messages and an over 25% reply rate<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll walk you through the full campaign and then show you how to set this up in Intercom.<\/p>\n

Bringing live chat into cold emails<\/h2>\n

As sales trainer John Barrows once told us<\/a>, our job is to create context around the content that marketing creates. In Sales, we\u2019ve built a catalog of content organized by the roles of our prospects and the problems they are looking to solve. Armed with the right collateral, we blend research, personalization and the content to write outreach emails.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example email to a Director of Demand Generation:<\/p>\n

Hi Sara,<\/em><\/p>\n

I noticed from your LinkedIn that you doubled ExampleApp\u2019s web traffic by 27% last quarter. Congratulations on that accomplishment!<\/em><\/p>\n

Your successful demand gen campaigns might actually be causing a conversion problem. As the number of form fills increase so does the length of time prospects wait to hear back from your sales team.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tradeshift<\/a> felt this pain too. They replaced contact forms with live chat to reduce lead qualification days from 21 to 3 and increased sales by 32%.<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you have a few minutes to chat?<\/em><\/p>\n

Cheers,<\/em>
\n Nick<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clicking on that link triggers the personalized VAM:<\/p>\n

\"sales\"<\/p>\n

A prospect might not engage with me the first time I greet them on the website. But a high-value prospect will come back or click another link in a later email. That\u2019s where a more direct call-to-action helps move them to the next step:<\/p>\n

\"sales<\/p>\n

When crafting the second message, we acknowledge that the prospect is visiting after receiving my email or note. A simple \u201cWelcome back!\u201d or \u201cThanks for checking out my email\u201d avoids the notion it was a coincidence that the prospect received the message. Soft call-to-actions like \u201cDo you have any questions?\u201d or \u201cHow can I help?\u201d have also been very effective for the first visit from a prospect.<\/p>\n

Using this process, I\u2019ve been able to have valuable real-time interactions with prospects where we can quickly determine if Intercom is a good fit. Our new scheduling feature<\/a>\u00a0makes it even easier to move the conversation forward;\u00a0I\u2019ve been able to qualify prospects and schedule meetings in under five minutes rather than the hours often spent on back and forth email chains.<\/p>\n

This is just a nice touch, but I also add a “chat with me” link to my email signature to give prospects a super easy way to engage with me:<\/p>\n

\"email<\/p>\n

Start this in Intercom<\/h2>\n

Naturally we run our emails and live chat in Intercom, but the process can apply to other products too. In short, we trigger unique Visitor Auto Messages<\/a> by triggering them from unique URLs. Here’s how:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Create a UTM code<\/strong> to the landing page URL you’re adding to your email. I generate unique codes for my personal prospects. To keep things organized, I use my initials as my personal UTM code: \u201c?nml\u201d. That way, each email recipient gets their own personal greeting.<\/li>\n
  2. Create a Visitor Auto Message<\/strong>\u00a0triggered by \u201ccurrent page URL\u201d with a match containing the personal UTM code:\"UTM\"<\/li>\n
  3. Add the unique URL<\/strong> to your email, and hit send!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    By modifying the triggers of the Visitor Auto Message, different messages can be customized with additional rules, like the number of times the prospect clicks or even the specific piece of collateral sent.<\/p>\n

    From outbound to inbound<\/h2>\n

    Most people view live chat as a tool for responding to inbound leads, but one of the most under-utilized benefits we\u2019ve seen on the Intercom sales team is to warm up the cold outreach experience.<\/p>\n

    A personal welcome on the website after a cold email provides the prospect with a familiar face and a way to continue the conversation. This new approach to live chat as a part of cold outreach has turned outbound emails into inbound conversations. Even better, these inbound conversations quickly become an opportunity to build a relationship with a future customer.<\/p>\n

    Looking for more resources about using live chat to capture and convert leads? Check out the following posts:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n