42: My Cadence Strategy

High response rates, minimal personalization.

Dec 5, 2021

We’ve all heard the data, “it takes ~15 touches to engage a prospect”.

The question is, how do you create a cadence that stays relevant across 15 steps without being redundant or simply annoying?

That’s what I’m going to share.

This is the cadence structure I used to do 200%+ quota as an SDR and it’s what I use with a successful SDR team of 18.

Before we jump in, I want to shout out Patrick Joyce who I learned most of this strategy from (go check out his Patreon if you want to be an email wizard).

One last thing, I’m a Salesloft user so I will be saying “Cadence” instead of “Sequence”.

Just a heads up :)

Agenda

Cadence Targeting
Cadence Structure
Email Messaging
Why it Works

Cadence Targeting

My cadences are based on 3 things: Industry, Persona, and Trigger.

A trigger is something that indicates an account/contact has intent.

Common triggers:

New Sr. Leadership
Recent Promotion
The company is using a tool you integrate with
Actively hiring in the department you sell to
1st degree LinkedIn connections of your Executive team
Customer alumni (people that left a customer of yours & went to a new company)
And many more…

If the messaging of a cadence is based on a single industry, persona, and trigger, we can be hyper-relevant without having to add much (if any) personalization.

For example, say the cadence is targeted towards Software (industry), VP of Sales (persona), and New Sr. Leadership (trigger). We can send essentially the same email to 50+ people that fit those criteria and it will still be relevant.

Identify the top industries, personas, and triggers you want to target then create cadences for each combination.

Cadence Structure

The cadence contains 3, 3-day “clusters”.

Here’s what a cluster looks like:

Day 1: Call, voicemail, email
- Call their mobile # first
- Your VM should point to the email you’re about to send
Day 2: Call, LinkedIn touch, email (same thread as last one)
- Call their direct # this time
- I send a blank connection request as the first LI touch (blank connects = higher acceptance rates). Once you’re accepted, you can start sending messages
Day 3: Call, LinkedIn touch, email (same thread as last one)
- This time call their mobile # using a local dialer (mixing it up by calling directs/mobiles/local dialer = higher connect rates)
- If they accepted your LI connect, send a message that points them to your email. If you haven’t connected, simply view their profile, like/comment on their most recent post, or send an Inmail.

After day 3, give it a 2-3 day break and repeat this cycle 2 more times.

…

Each cluster has a theme focused on one relevant problem. To create your 3 themes, you need to know the top 3 pain points of your target personas.

If you don’t know this already, look at your current customers in that industry and read the CRM notes. Triggers are another great way of identifying a likely pain point. For example, if the trigger is “Actively Hiring” they might have growing pains that require more sophisticated software.

The goal is to hit the prospect 3 days in a row from 3 different channels talking about a single problem that you solve. If you don’t catch their attention after 3 days, you can assume that problem isn’t relevant and move on to the next one in your next cluster.

Additional notes:

If you’re not getting email opens and/or don’t have a good # for a prospect after the 1st cluster, remove them and replace with a new contact from that account.
Each touchpoint is executed together with 1 or 2 other touchpoints. Meaning anytime you send an email, you should make a call or do a LinkedIn touch at the exact same time. This increases your chances of being seen.

Email Messaging

The biggest problem SDRs have with email is they put all their eggs in one basket. Their first email tells the prospect all the problems they solve.

Two reasons why this is a mistake:

The prospect isn’t going to read through all of that. If you say too much, you say nothing at all.
If you explain all the problems you solve in your first email, what more do you have to say in future emails to keep your cadence relevant?

To avoid this, the first email of each cluster is your “value” email, containing only one problem you solve.

Here’s how I structure every “value” email:

Line 1: Context
- This line is most important since preview lines drastically affect open rates. Reference the trigger in this first line: “Hey prospect, saw you 3x’d your sales team over the last 2 quarters…”
Line 2: Value proposition
- Use minimal words, focus on one problem you solve, and support it with relevant social proof: “RingCentral was at a similar stage of growth when they implemented our contract automation platform to reduce admin time so reps could focus on selling.”
Line 3: Call to Action (CTA)
- My data shows “soft asks” get the most replies:
  - Would you be open to learning more?
  - If it makes sense, would you be open to a call?
  - Worth exploring?
  - Could I send over some more info?

…

The second and third email of each cluster is a “bump” email.

A “bump” is a short email (usually not containing much additional value) sent under the same thread as your previous email. It’s typically used to point the prospect back to your initial email and get a response.

Here are some examples of “bump” emails:

any thoughts on this?
Would it make more sense to get in touch with [colleague’s name] about this?
Just gave you a ring at {{mobile number}}, would it make sense to discuss this with you?
Before I risk interrupting w/ an unexpected call, here’s a piece of content I thought you’d find relevant. Would it make sense to connect further?

Additional bump ideas:

Videos
Images/gifs/memes
Content/case studies
Resend your last email with no content but change the subject line to “just called” or “my voicemail”

Here’s an example of using a meme as a bump email:

…

I’m going to make a controversial statement: I don’t trust Gong’s data.

Am I canceled now?!?

They say “bump” emails don’t work. I disagree.

My data (and many others) show that a bump after the first “value” email gets the highest response rate of any email in the cadence. Read that again.

And they aren’t just, “take me off your list” replies. If that were the case I’d stop doing it!

Anyway… this is why you should take all prospecting advice with a grain of salt (mine included!).

You can’t say whether something will work or not until you try it out yourself #alwaysbetesting.

And after using bumps for over a year, here’s why I know they work:

Bump emails help your initial “value” email get an extra chance of being seen
They’re quick, straight to the point, and easy to respond to (my highest reply rates are from bump emails)
They take little to no time to send (most can be automated)

Why it Works

This strategy works for two reasons: It’s aggressive and very targeted.

The aggressiveness works (more replies in less time) if your targeting is on point because it doesn’t come across as spammy. You’re being relevant.

However, if the messaging is off because you did a bad job targeting, you’ll still get a lot of replies due to the aggressiveness but they won’t be positive. That’s why targeting is crucial.

By spending more time upfront on targeting (industry, persona, trigger), it allows you to spend less time on personalization.

The goal of the aggressiveness is to get a “yes” or “no” from the prospect ASAP.

A “no” at least gives you an objection to handle instead of pushing them through a long, drawn-out cadence with lots of personalization only to be ghosted.

Or worse, get one of those “Love the email! But we’re not interested.” replies from your hyper-personalized email.

If you loved the email so much why not take a meeting???

Thanks for reading,

Jed