Pacing and Iteration

Congratulations on creating your first outbound campaign in Mutiny! You're off to a great start.

Now, let's keep the momentum going by getting these pages in the hands of your target accounts. 🚀

But remember, launching is just the beginning. The most successful Mutiny campaigns are an iterative process. A flywheel of learning and feedback. 

In this chapter, we’re going to look at what makes a great email and how to structure your campaign for easy testing and iteration. 

Writing high-converting emails

Even the most effective pages won’t convert if you can’t get them in front of buyers. That means your emails need to generate clicks and responses, or nothing else matters. 

After launching thousands of campaigns, we’ve learned that the best emails follow this structure:

• Personalized opening - Each email should start with a short, personalized opener. For example, incorporate your prospect’s company name or industry to make it sound like you’re speaking directly to them.

• Highlight and agitate the pain - People care about solving their problems, not about your features. Highlight a pain and agitate it further by pointing out the impact of not solving it.

• Introduce the solution - Position your product as the solution to their problem. Focus on a specific capability that addresses their primary pain point. This is also an ideal place to introduce your personalized page. Adding something like “we’ve built this personalized experience to show you exactly how our product can help”

• Social proof and CTA - Your email isn’t complete without a customer proof point. This provides supporting evidence and shows your buyer how someone like them is using your product successfully. Cap this off with a clear call-to-action, like booking a demo or scheduling a short call to learn more.

Here’s an example:

While writing your email, it’s also important to keep these copywriting best practices in mind. 

• Use attention-grabbing subject lines - Your email is one of hundreds hitting their inbox. You need a subject that catches their attention and makes them curious. Lean into what you know about this persona. Focus on a pain or objective you know is top-of-mind. 

• Write copy that is direct and straight to the point - According to Litmus, people spend only nine seconds looking at an email. So get to the point fast, eliminate filler text, and grab the attention of your reader. 

• Make it personalized - Using {first.name} in the title won’t cut it. Your emails should convey that you know this buyer, their business, and the problems they’re looking to solve. 

Grab our worksheet and follow along

For the remaining sections, we’ve created a handy worksheet you can copy and use to work through your own campaign. 

Grab the worksheet

Pacing your emails 

Once you have your first email drafted, you may be tempted to send that version to all 300 contacts. 

But, this is where the art of pacing and iteration makes all the difference. It’s the secret sauce that helps you get the best possible results from your campaign. 

Start by separating your target list into three evenly-sized groups. Your campaign will then run over a period of three weeks — each week dedicated to one group. 

You may be wondering “why not just email all 300 at once?”

First of all, blasting 300 contacts at once may flag issues with your domain. Second, and more importantly, pacing your emails creates time to measure performance and make adjustments that will improve the next batch. 

How to run an effective A/B test 

Popular email platforms like Apollo, Marketo, Hubspot, and Outreach each have some form of A/B testing capability that you can use to run your campaign. 

You’ve already gathered multiple pain points, value props, and customer stories for your campaign pages. Each of those, along with your CTA, are perfect things to consider for your A/B test.

Remember: It’s important to decide what single aspect you’re going to be testing in each email. Testing multiple things at once will make it impossible to pinpoint exactly what works, and what doesn’t. 

Reference part 3 of your worksheet to plan your email A/B tests

Once you have your emails written and A/B test setup, it’s finally time to hit send. This is where the fun begins!

Measure and learn

Performance metrics will soon start to flow into your email platform, allowing you to uncover areas of improvement for your next batch of emails to send. 

Every email has a natural funnel that you can measure to pinpoint areas for improvement. 

Here’s a breakdown:

• Open Rate - is your subject line compelling enough to get people to open your email? 50-60% is a great open rate, but if you’re seeing something closer to 20-30% then it’s time to rethink your subject line. 

• Page View Rate (or Click-Through Rate) - How many people clicked on your link in the email and viewed your personalized page? This is a great indicator of how well your messaging resonated and whether or not this prospect will book a call with you. 

• Reply Rate - How many prospects hit reply and responded to your email? This is also an indicator of how well your messaging resonated. You can learn even more from replies, but we’ll discuss that more in our next chapter.

• Meetings Booked - The ultimate conversion metric for your emails. How many prospects were interested enough to book a meeting. 

Monitor these metrics over each week and use them to pinpoint areas of improvement for your next batch of emails to send. That’s the beauty of splitting your campaign into three groups and giving yourself the time to test and learn in between.

By the end of week three you’ll not only have a funnel full of leads, but learnings you can apply to future campaigns.

Quantitative metrics aren’t the only type of data you can use to improve your campaign. Your SDR team is also a huge source of feedback. 

In the next chapter, we’ll discuss creating a feedback flywheel with your SDR team.