🎯 How to win at outbound emails

4 articles to bookmark

• A killer go-to-market slide for your company (Link)

• When you miss the tools you used at big tech (do you build or buy them) (Link)

• The most underrated technique to turn new signups into power users (Link)

• The ultimate guide to B2B cold email copywriting (Link)

3 reads on outbound emails

Does outbound still work?

The short answer is – Yes, buyers still respond to great emails. However, it’s true that the traditional playbook where dedicated SDRs send mass generic emails doesn’t work today.

Instead, sales teams need to revisit the primary reason we send outbound emails – to add value to the reader. Here’s a tip, subscribe to your company’s outbound emails. Would you find them valuable or do they read like spam?

Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr [outbound]

How to automate signal-based selling

Traditional GTM motions started by buying target account lists, adding them to your CRM, and sequencing them. The accounts are cold and the messaging is the same. Generic.

However, there’s a new way to sell into markets today. Start by prioritizing companies that have expressed some signal that they could be a customer. There are two types of intent signals.

• First-party signals – the company takes actions directly on your website, blog, or free tier

• Third-party signals – the company has a recent event or announcement that's related to your value-prop (e.g., hiring for a new role, launching a new product, posting about a topic)

Once an intent signal takes place, the account is immediately sequenced in an outbound campaign.

Brendan Short @ The Signal Club [outbound]

How to automate signal-based selling

The modern outbound tech stack has these three layers.

1. Intent Signal Provider/ Account builder (e.g., Koala OR Keyplay)

2. Data Orchestrator (e.g., Clay)

3. Email Sequencer (e.g., Outreach)

With these three tools, your sales team can scale outbound emails – all without an SDR team. This is exactly what Thena, an AI-powered customer success platform, did to revamp its GTM motion.

Here’s a quick rundown.
👉 Thena used a tool like Keyplay to continuously refresh and prioritize account lists for the sales team.

👉 Then, with a data orchestrator like Clay, the company sent targeted outbound emails on behalf of AEs (replacing SDRs).

👉 At the same time, the AEs would send custom personalized emails to high-priority accounts.

Kyle Poyar @ Growth Unhinged [outbound]

2 growth reads

Growth at Dropbox

A successful growth motion extends beyond just PLG plays but relies on the right culture and team setup to enable it.

Here’s a breakdown of the Growth team at Dropbox and the metrics they track.

• Acquisition – total sign-ups

• Activation – number of sign-ups that reach set up/ reach the first habit loop

• Monetization – conversions from free to paid + retention + sales-handoff

• Engagement – weekly active users + 12 month retention

Elena Verna @ Elena's Growth Scoop [growth]

The marketing strategy behind AppsFlyer’s rise to $2 billion

The multi-channel playbook that helped AppsFlyer, a marketing analytics platform, scale. Here’s the rundown of the different channels.

• LinkedIn – the main channel, posts slideshows and frequent long-form text

• Facebook/Meta – not a priority channel, posts infrequent videos

• Instagram – multiple handles, posts images and short videos multiple times a week

• Twitter/X – cross-promotion posts from LinkedIn, emphasizes comments and replies

• YouTube – saw some success with commercial-type videos

• Medium – caters to a technical audience, the main channel for DevRel

Chris Meabe @ Foundation [growth]

Podcasts I'm listening to

• Madrona | How Writer CEO May Habib Is Making GenAI Work For the Enterprise: Link

• Mostly Metrics | Rippling CFO Adam Swiecicki on Building a Compound Startup and Channeling Ambition: Link

SaaS Weekly Resources

1) The SaaS Weekly Database: Search Thousands of the Best SaaS Articles and Resources

2) Generative AI Tracker: B2B SaaS Companies Adding GenAI Capabilities

SaaSy Social Posts

Last issue’s most clicked links

• 5 interesting learnings from Datadog at ~$2.5 billion in ARR (Link)

• In search for your ideal customer profile (ICP) (Link)

• Your first 90 days as a growth marketer: what you need to know (Link)