We’ve spent hours manually scouring LinkedIn Sales Navigator for ideal-fit companies. We’ve sent out thousands of emails and had our fair share of bounces. We know how important cold outbound email can be to winning sales, but we’ve also experienced how tedious and time consuming it can be (especially with a complex sales process and niche industry).
Through our experience with outbound email at Gorilla we’ve experimented with several tools to maximize our efficiency. We’ve identified four major approaches to building a well-targeted list of good-fit prospects:
- Do it manually
- Hire a freelancer
- Use an automation tool
- Commission the work of an agency
I’ll walk you through what each of these approaches looks like, what tools to use and what costs to expect. All this information will help you identify which method (or blend of methods) is best for your outbound strategy.
Getting started
Before you dive into any of these list building approaches, there are a few things you should know.
- Your goals for the outbound campaign: These will inform which approach you take, and shouldn’t shift too much throughout your process.
- Your target persona: Do you want to talk to sales professionals or C-suite executives?
- The risks associated with cold outbound: It’s important to obey pertinent email laws and follow best practices to avoid being flagged as spam. No matter which approach you take, you’ll want to cleanse your emails. We’ll discuss the importance of this more later, but we recommend the first tool you invest in is an email cleansing program like Webbula.
Once you understand your goals, target personas and associated risks, it’s time to pick your list building approach.
Do it manually
This is when you roll up your sleeves and do all the hard work (and grunt work) on your own. You’ll search for good-fit companies and personas and locate contact information manually. This may start with a wish list of companies you’d like to do business with, or a simple LinkedIn search based on industry, company size and keywords.
The manual approach can be a great way to get started, especially if you aren’t pressed for time or you are building your list on a rolling basis. We won’t lie — it’s time consuming and tedious, but it is the best way to ensure you’re getting the best contacts.
When I build lists manually, I get the best results from using a combination of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Prospect.io (and, of course, our trusty email cleansing tool, Webbula).
Simply conduct a search for your ideal contacts based on your criteria in Sales Navigator. From there, Prospect.io has features to find email addresses for individuals or in bulk through their Chrome extension. You can download lists from your Prospect.io account and upload them into the CRM of your choice.
We cannot stress enough how important it is to cleanse these emails before sending, though. Some of them may be harmful and cause your messages to be marked as SPAM. For example, honeypot emails are inactive accounts set up specifically to catch spammers. If you don’t clean your emails and you send to one of these accounts, any messages you send to that company will be flagged as spam and seriously damage your open and click rates. And that’s just one risk of not cleansing emails.
The key advantages:
- You can ensure good fit contacts because you handpick them.
- The work can be delegated and shared among a team.
- The initial investment is low, so if you aren’t seeing results you can change things up with minimal sunk costs.
Your toolbox and the price tag:
- One month’s subscription to LinkedIn Sales Navigator: $79.99.
- One month’s subscription to Prospect.io: $79.
- Bundle of email cleaning credits on Webbula: $1,000 for approximately 85,000 credits (1 credit = 1 email uploaded to be cleaned).
Hire a freelancer
If the manual approach is a little too time-consuming for you, hiring a freelancer may be the way to go. You’ll define the project, brief them on the deliverables, set a deadline and receive a list of contacts with little effort on your end.
We recommend the site Upwork to hire freelancers. The first thing you’ll need to do is post a job on the site that freelancers can respond to. Make this as detailed as possible. Here’s a snippet of the job posting we used to hire a freelancer for our list building efforts.
From there, you’ll receive proposals from interested workers. In our case, we were going with a freelancer we had worked with on a previous project, so we did not vet candidates (that’s why our posting says invite-only). You’ll want to pick the freelancer based on your own predetermined hiring criteria and budget.
Once you’ve hired your freelancer, you’ll want to have an onboarding call. This gives the freelancer a chance to ask questions about the project and allows you to better clarify what your expectations are. Note: Your freelancer may live and work in a different time zone, so be cautious of that when scheduling phone calls with them.
From there, we recommend you have the freelancer build a smaller sample list. You’ll pay them for this, of course, but it allows you to give them feedback and see the quality of their work before you sink too many hours and dollars into the project.
Once you feel they have a handle on the project, you can turn them loose and decide how you want to proceed with the project. You could give them two weeks to find 200 contacts or set a goal of 100 leads per week on an ongoing basis. Just make sure you are clear on your expectations going forward. Freelancers can be paid by milestone or by hour on Upwork, so you can choose the payment method that fits best with however you decide to proceed.
Reminder: You should still cleanse the emails you get from freelancers. Even if they say they clean the emails themselves before delivering them, it’s always a good extra check to do it yourself, too.
The key advantages:
- You don’t have to do any grunt work.
- You don’t need to subscribe to any tools (the freelancer will use their own methods).
- You still have some control over the project with the ability to give feedback.
- Can be cheaper than investing your own time depending on the freelancer’s hourly rate.
Your toolbox and price tag:
- Upwork: Rates vary based on freelancer.
- Bundle of email cleaning credits on Webbula: $1,000 for approximately 85,000 credits.
Use an automation tool
An automation tool is great if you are looking for a large number of leads quickly. Most automation tools work by having the user input specific criteria like industry, company size or job family. With this information, the program automatically generates leads for you by pulling from a database or by using artificial intelligence.
The major downfall of these programs is that they don’t always produce the highest quality leads. A company classified as “machinery” may in fact just be a distributor. Your team or a freelancer would catch that and omit it from the list, but an automation tool will go based on the data it has and add it. These tools work best if your criteria aren’t too specific.
We have personally used the FuzeBot feature on LeadFuze to automate our lists, but we have also done research into Growbots. They work in similar ways, allowing you to input your criteria so it can search for leads automatically. You can find a demo for LeadFuze here and several Growbots tutorials here. I’ve found Fuzebot works on more of a rolling basis and Growbots is better for bulk searches.
The key advantages:
- You don’t have to do any grunt work.
- You can gather a large number of contacts quickly.
- Cost per lead can be quite low depending on the size of the industries you are targeting.
Your toolbox and price tag:
- One-month subscription to LeadFuze: $147 for 500 leads.
- A plan with Growbots: $100 for one-month subscription to the platform (offers features beyond data collection) or $2,250 for proof-of-concept data package including 3,000 leads (this information was gathered from our demo with them. Schedule your own demo to discuss pricing options better suited for your business).
- Bundle of email cleaning credits on Webbula: $1,000 for approximately 85,000 credits.
Commission the work of an agency
Agencies can certainly help you with your outbound process, but they can also do so much more for your marketing and sales objectives. They’re the best option if you are looking for a long-term strategic partner that can provide insight beyond this one project.
A good agency will understand your business much better than the average freelancer. They will also be able to help you craft your strategy for the project, write copy for your outreach and help you set up a funnel to qualify leads you gather. Agencies provide a cohesive output, from strategy to list building to outreach, and they will seek your feedback and approval on deliverables every step of the way.
The best way to find an agency is to think industry-specific. Lots of them will specialize in a particular field and be more aware of the marketing environment your business exists in, rather than bringing general marketing expertise to the table. For example, our agency — Gorilla 76 — specializes in working with industrial companies (and in particular, midsized B2B manufacturers). There are other agencies out who specialize in healthcare, financial services, tech startups, etc.
The key advantages:
- You don’t have to do any grunt work.
- You’ll have expert guidance from start to finish and a cohesive end product.
- It’s a collaborative partnership, so you can still be very hands-on.
- They’ll have industry-specific marketing knowledge and a deep understanding of your business.
Your toolbox and price tag:
- We can’t recommend any specific agencies without knowing your business and objectives, but there are lots of options out there if you know what you are looking for. Keep in mind that many agencies can do excellent remote work, so don’t limit yourself by geographical location in your search.
- As for the price tag, rates will vary from agency to agency. You could be billed hourly or set up a retainer at a fixed rate. This is important to discuss with potential agencies as you are vetting them.
Our outbound journey involved lots of trial and error with each of these methods. We started out manually, then began pairing it with automation and now we work with a freelancer. The key is to understand your objectives, do your research, try platforms out and change direction when things aren’t working.
If you’re interested in talking outbound or list building strategy, consider requesting a consultation. We’d love to talk!
