The Importance and Challenge of Personalization at Scale

‍Key takeaways:

• Personalization requires knowledge of the account, persona, individual contacts, and your own solution. This level of research is difficult to do manually across a large number of targets.
• With AI and tech, you can automate research, surfacing insights on accounts and contacts from troves of data. This powers accurate identification and targeting.
• AI can also help draft customized messaging for each prospect at scale. By combining research and drafting, AI enables truly scalable 1:1 personalization.
• More effective personalized outreach improves connect rates, sales conversations, and closed/won revenue. AI-powered automation frees up seller time for higher value activities.
• Adopting the latest AI and orchestration technologies allows sales teams to execute high-quality, high-quantity outbound prospecting at scale.

Personalization at scale in outbound prospecting is critical yet very challenging to execute effectively.

Successful personalization requires having in-depth knowledge of the target account, relevant personas, the decision-makers involved, and your own company's unique value proposition.

Without personalization, outbound campaigns often fail to garner engagement or result in closed deals. Generic outreach treats all prospects the same rather than recognizing their individual needs. However, personalizing every piece of communication at scale is extremely difficult.

It demands researching accounts to understand their growth strategies and pain points. It means identifying the specific senior-level buyers responsible for initiatives relevant to your solution.

And it requires tailoring messaging to resonate with each prospect's priorities.

The lack of personalization is why response rates for typical outbound campaigns hover in the low single digits.

But the manually intensive work needed to personalize across hundreds or thousands of targets at once seems insurmountable. Solving this dilemma is imperative for marketers and sales development reps who want to stand out from the noise and have meaningful conversations with their ideal customers.

The rest of this guide covers strategies to overcome those hurdles through better research, targeting, writing, and leveraging AI.

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1. Conduct Thorough Account Research

To write personalized, effective outreach, you first need to research the account.

Look for public information on the company's growth strategies, initiatives they are betting on, and challenges they're facing. You can find helpful insights by looking at recent funding news, new hires, press releases, and other public information.

Analyze the account's hiring patterns to identify growth areas and initiatives. See where they are expanding teams and investing. Review new funding rounds and how the capital will be used. Follow press announcements about new products, services, or partnerships. Track acquisitions that indicate consolidating markets or acquiring capabilities.

This research will uncover an account's strategic bets, priorities, and pain points.

You can then use those insights to personalize messaging that speaks directly to their goals and challenges. Thorough research is essential to move from generic outreach to truly tailored prospecting.

2. Identify the Right Personas

Identifying the right decision-maker personas is a critical step in effective outbound prospecting.

Many sales teams rely on outdated or incomplete prospect data, ending up targeting contacts that have switched roles or left the company. This results in wasted time and frustration.

The key is using accurate tools and data enrichment to reveal the real buying team. Look for senior-level roles like Chief Revenue Officer, VP of Sales, or Head of Business Development.

Focus on those leading growth initiatives or dealing with the problems you can solve, based on your prospecting research.

With precise technographics and organizational charts, you can identify the right contacts despite role changes. This avoids wasted emails to outdated prospects. The most effective prospecting focuses on senior people with real authority to buy, not just any contact at an account.

You want your message to reach someone that can take action.

Advanced sales intelligence tools, fueled by AI, allow immediate access to the right contacts and roles.

This enables precise targeting and personalization at scale, supercharging outbound prospecting. With up-to-date org charts and persona insights, you can cut through the clutter. The key is identifying real decision makers, not just spamming every email address you can find.

3. Write Short, Personalized Emails

Personalized emails are more likely to get opened and elicit a response. The key is to keep them short and tailored.

• Know your prospect and their company. Do your research beforehand so you understand their role, needs, and challenges.
• Speak to their pain points. Mention the specific issues they face in their role or industry. Show you get what they need.
• Explain how you can help. Connect your solution, product or service to fixing their struggles.
• Make a clear CTA. Tell them exactly what you want them to do - book a demo, have a quick call, check out your site, etc.
• Keep it short. Personalized prospecting emails should be just a few sentences. Get to the point quickly.
• Use a warm, helpful tone. Write conversationally and focus on assisting them.

With preparation and research, you can craft customized emails that feel like they were written just for your prospect.

This results in more opens, clicks, and conversations.

4. Leverage AI to Enable Scalable Personalization

AI and automation provide the key to unlocking scalable personalization in outbound prospecting.

Rather than relying solely on manual processes, leveraging AI enables sales teams to automatically conduct research, accurately identify the right buyers, and draft customized outreach - all at scale.

With the latest AI technology, it's possible to research target accounts to uncover growth opportunities and challenges.

AI can also process huge customer data sets to automatically surface ideal buyer contacts within those accounts. And advanced natural language generation models allow for automated drafting of short, personalized emails tailored to each prospect's specific context.

The ability for AI to handle time-consuming manual tasks provides sales reps with more capacity to have higher-quality conversations.

Reps can focus on relationship building rather than administrative work.

Overall, AI-powered automation makes it possible to conduct outbound prospecting at scale while still maintaining crucial personalization. This empowers sales teams to drive significantly more pipeline and revenue.

Leveraging AI to Scale Personalization

In prior frameworks, delivering personalized experiences on a large scale seemed an unattainable ambition, especially as customizing communications to fit the context of an individual customer was a manual and time-intensive endeavor.

Scaling these personalization efforts across a complete outbound team? That was a pipe dream.

However, the advent of AI and automation technologies has reinvented this space.

These advancements have made it feasible to streamline many of the monotonous tasks while allowing representatives to concentrate on value-add personalization. Below we explain the transformed process:

Step 1: Automated Account Research

With AI, account research is revolutionized, turning what used to be a tedious exercise into rapid, actionable insights.

Instead of representatives dedicating hours to unearth growth drivers and pain points for a single account, AI swiftly navigates through a sea of data— from earnings calls and funding announcements to customer reviews—surfacing the right data that counts.

This enables your CRM to autonomously deliver comprehensive account profiles brimming with first-party data to inform personalization strategies.

Step 2: Identify True Decision Makers

Stale contact information can sabotage marketing efforts before they even unfold.

With individuals frequently moving between companies or positions, the likelihood of an email reaching the intended recipient has traditionally been slim.

AI can adeptly utilize dynamic consumer data sources to ascertain who presently holds relevant positions, ensuring your messages reach the correct decision makers and align with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Now, your marketing campaigns can engage customers with assurance.

Step 3: AI-Generated Email Copy

Even when equipped with detailed account intelligence and prospect information, representatives can find themselves at a stalemate when drafting targeted emails.

The essential elements for a personalized digital experience may be present, but the act of blending them into coherent form is not always straightforward.

This is where AI-generated copy comes into play. Guided by proven frameworks for length, structure, and calls to action, AI swiftly produces initial email drafts, offering a foundation for personalized marketing messages and removing barriers to creativity.

Step 4: Representative Final Touches

With the grunt work of research automated, key prospects identified, and preliminary copy crafted, representatives can redirect their focus to areas where they truly excel: refinement.

Using their emotional intelligence, reps can enhance these drafts, enriching them with personalized customer experiences that truly resonate.

The final, polished communication can then be disseminated through the preferred channels, aligning with customer expectations and elevating customer engagement along their journey.

In this revamped model, data analytics serve as the cornerstone, supporting marketing teams as they navigate the customer database to both deliver personalized experiences and foster lasting customer journeys.

This modern approach to personalization strategies promises not just to meet, but transcend, evolving customer expectations.Conclusion

Personalization is critical for effective outbound prospecting, yet incredibly challenging to implement at scale. By leveraging AI and automation, sales teams can conduct thorough research, identify the right buyers, and draft personalized outreach - enabling greater quantity and quality of outreach.

Time to Get Personal

The importance of enhancing outbound prospecting through personalization can never be overstated.

The heart of delivering personalized digital experiences lies in a well-orchestrated personalization strategy that encompasses precise research and identification, ably intertwined with context-specific messaging.

Personalizing at scale can become a Herculean task, hence the role of artificial intelligence (AI) becomes pivotal.

AI, coupled with automation, creates a powerful synergy that not only assists in identifying the right prospects and comprehending their specific needs but also aids in drafting coherent and personalized messages that resonate with them.

Most importantly, automated personalization, powered by AI, liberates time for representatives to engage in meaningful conversations with their targets, paving the way for a uniquely personalized customer journey that provides value at every step.

This amplifies the potential for better connect rates, stimulating sales conversations, and maximized revenue.

Incorporating AI and automation into your personalization strategy is the way forward to formulate high-quality, high-quantity outbound prospecting that truly connects and converges.

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