How to Use Video in Your Email Marketing to Generate New Leads with Connor Haakenson

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 261. Today I'm sitting down with Connor and we're discussing how to use video in your email marketing to increase deliverability and generate new leads. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and today I am super excited to bring to you, Connor. We had a very powerful advanced conversation on how to use video in your email marketing to increase your deliverability, which means increase your email open rates as well as generate more qualified leads that are more likely to not only open your emails, but to convert to clients. And we talk all about that inside of today's episode. He's currently the head of sales for Orbit, their outreach product. That's a tool designed to create personalized video presentations. And he is going to share with us how he uses this tool at scale so he can send them to many people. And he also shares inside of this episode how he has used sales, specifically the communication component of selling, to communicate the right offer to the right person at the right time. And he's breaking it all down inside of today's episode. So without further ado, let's roll that interview. What's up, Connor? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm doing fantastic, Beverly. Thanks for having me here.

I'm super pumped to dive in today. I cannot wait. I love sales. I love talking about money conversations. So I am really pumped to get into our conversation today. So for those of you who are tuning in and haven't been introduced to the pleasure of your work, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there.

Absolutely. So basically, I work in the world of online sales, actually built our own tool called Orbit, Orbit Reach. And it's been quite the process to getting here. When I got outta high school, which was actually not last year, I know I've got like a baby face, but it's been, it's been a few years, I was actually gonna Go pursue becoming a commercial pilot. Decided that that was not the path for me. I know, pretty big change. But I did go and get, I got my pilot's license nonetheless. Didn't pursue the commercial side, but through that process I got connected with a local here in my city that was a door to door salesman with a massive company, telecom company here in Canada and presented me with a really unique opportunity to actually go knock doors, which if you have never done, is one of the most challenging, difficult jobs on the face of the earth. And it was amazing. I learned so much about sales and I realized that sales is actually what I'm passionate about. Because in my opinion, sales boils down to a couple things. Number one, communicating, number two, adding value and number three, providing outstanding service, experience and like building your character in terms of, you know, providing value to your community. And I think a lot of salespeople get a bad rap because they're not, they're not talented and they don't do a good job at serving. And that's what I really, really enjoy in that process. So I went through that string of work for quite some time until Covid shut down our operation. We served a couple provinces here in Alberta. So I was traveling all over the place between BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan. It was phenomenal. But then afterwards I actually went into the automotive world. I'm a big car guy, so I got a chance to sell some high end vehicles, luxury vehicles, and that was amazing, but a total. Another crazy, crazy industry to be in. Then I found myself working in the corporate world and through this time I was. I always had something going on on the side. I've always had some form of side income, everything from. I ran a very small logistics company where I was moving people's furniture with a truck that I purchased. That was a crazy little business. Had a couple of e comm stores. So I was always in the tech space but never really found an in that st. And then just in the last year now, I ended up partnering with a very, very good friend of mine from a long time ago. I used to work for him actually and he had this brilliant idea. We were running a online agency so we were doing consulting, that sort of thing. And it was in his scope of knowledge. I was just there to help with sales and whatnot. And we started by sending. Are you familiar with Loom videos? L O M Loom. Mm, amazing. So we would send Loom videos to get our clients and the response rate was insane. And the reason why it was so good is because when you send Loom videos that are going over your clients, your website, their social media. You're almost doing a brand audit, you could call it. They take that incredibly well. And it's a lot of perceived upfront value and a lot of perceived upfront work. And what we found is we'd get a lot of email responses that we could turn into demos or calls. And we got so good at it that we realized, well, we have to outsource one of these. We either outsource the closing, doing the appointments, which we didn't really want to do, or we outsource the video production. Because making loom videos as you, I'm sure you know, takes forever. It can take like, it was taking us about four hours a day to make 30 each. So we were sending 60 loom videos a day. So this is a big blast campaign, right? So we actually built a tool completely from scratch, all coded ourselves, that we call Orbit now. And Orbit's been around, I want to say, just about eight months in terms of development to where it is today. And it basically allows you to send personalized videos to all of your clients at scale, with no. No limiting capabilities. So you have a list of a thousand clients that you all want to solicit the same message to. You can plug all of them into our system, and it will personalize each video. No two videos are the same. They're all different. And that is what we are now in the business of selling. So I hope that wasn't. That wasn't too long of a tangent, but it should give you a rough idea.

That was amazing. I can't wait to dive in. So I have some questions. Right. In terms of. A lot of people will say things like, you know, oh, I don't want to be sleazy or false or blah, blah, blah. And so I'm curious from your perspective, you know, using an automated component like Orbitz, right. And adding in the. Adding in the customized component, how are you able to maximize leverage and. And actually add in the customization and do it at scale without having any hint of, like, oh, this is automated false and not real. And your clients that. That have that, you know, have that trepidation, how do you move through that and navigate that conversation?

That is a very good question. I like it. Lots of parts. So to dive in, I would say it comes from us doing so many loom videos that we figured out a way, even when we were doing loom videos, to automate it. So the biggest trick is you have to create a message that has what we call Specific generality. So it has to be specific enough for a certain individual, but general enough that it could apply to any scenario in terms of, you know, wherever they're at. And I know in the fitness world that might be a little bit different than the B2B world, but serving businesses. For example, our campaign right now is only going to chief sales officers or chief marketing officers. We go straight to the C suite. And our message has key elements in it that resonate with them. So we talk about certain subjects in their industry that are relevant. For one, I can tell you a lot of major big player big companies, billion dollar companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in CRM technology, which I'm sure you're familiar with. And the problem is is all that does is organize your clients. It's just an organization tool, but they don't capitalize on turning that information that has cost them. I don't even want to think about it. Hundreds of hundreds of dollars per person in some cases to build that data, build that data and then they just don't, they don't use it. So our message is very much crafted to that pain point. It's all about really knowing what your clients struggles are. And when you craft a message that speaks directly to that pain point, well, now you can target a lot of people with that same pain point, especially if it's a big pain point like CRMs. In terms of the fitness industry, I know that there's a couple pain points I can think of. I'm not in the fitness industry, I've never worked in it. But targeting that message, crafting it to really resonate with a key audience is the trick. In terms of how we make our videos look so unique and personalized, I can't dive into that entirely. I'd be happy to show you one afterwards. But essentially we have technology that mimics human interactions. So if you're on a client's website, it scrolls through the website automatically. It literally looks no different than someone is doing a recording a loom video. So we spent a lot of time engineering that. And then in terms of the introduction, we actually use a little bit of AI. We're not huge AI fans, but we actually train AI on the person reading the script's voice. And we'll have it do a first name introduction. So when our videos start, they'll say something like, hey Beverly, I'm just on your website right now and I can see that there's a couple things that may make you a good fit for our business. And I would go into Whatever your pitch is, but that is a huge component as well. So really adding those touches of personality personalization kind of separates you from the herd in terms of sending out a generic video. Sending someone to like a YouTube URL for a video that you recorded three years ago versus doing something live today that's relevant to them now.

Okay, that's amazing. So now what I'm curious, are you using this tool, this Orbit tool, in terms of, in terms of prospects so connecting with potential clients, or are you using this tool to serve your current clients?

Another great question. We use it for both. Orbit is by far the best outreach tool I've ever used in my entire life. In sales. It's way better than cold calling. It's way better than cold emailing with text based emails. I personally think, in fact our entire company thinks that this is going to be a breakthrough in the sense that video content is so important in today's day and age and people have almost been indoctrinated into that expectation of dopamine through a video. You almost have to get away from traditional outreach methods. So we use it to prospect for ourselves and then our clients that we have on board, they use it to either solicit their current client list, so people that fell through the cracks maybe a few few months ago, they haven't had a chance to follow up, they can send them a video leads into a very nice introduction. And for we have a couple clients are using it for cold outreach as well. So if they're trying to find new prospects in a certain industry, you can send a video message to showcase your offer and kind of build the next steps of the conversation. Because as I'm sure you know, the real key to sales is getting in front of and having a conversation. And unfortunately, a lot of ways that you can choose to do outreach do not always effectively get that conversation going. So for us, we found that the response rate is incredibly high on videos. People interact with them a lot better. So it's just a natural fit for any sort of sales cycle.

Okay, I love it. Would you mind expanding on, on your outreach strategy and can you, if you wouldn't mind, share with us a little bit of the statistics? Especially for someone who's been in sales for as long as you have, you have some data regarding, you know, the different outreach methods that are typically taught and you know, what are the actual percentages of conversion to actually conversation and what are some of the ways that you have seen orbits increase that.

Absolutely. So I can talk a bit about, you know, I told you already. I knocked doors, I've knocked a couple thousand doors. I probably made a few thousand phone calls. I kind of lost track in the last few years, if I'm being honest. And I'll tell you one thing, cold calls, they're terrifying. More people should do them because the more you do them, it's like working out. If you get the reps in, it's not that hard, but it is a key part of your business. We still do cold calls, but I'll explain on how cold calling is a lot different. When you send people videos. In terms of the data on cold calls, you can make a hundred phone calls in a day and book two appointments. You can make a hundred phone calls in a. Oh, go ahead.

And just to clarify, when you use the term cold calls, what, how specifically do you define cold? Are you just going through the, you know, how do you define cold?

Sure. So I would say that anyone who would be classified as a cold prospect is someone that you have either interacted with zero times or maybe once a very long time ago, and they do not know you as an authoritative figure in your, in your position or they just don't know you very well.

Cool. Thank you. Sorry.

Keep going.

Yeah.

No, no, no. So, yeah. And cold calling, like I said, it's all about your skill and your volume. That's all it is. It's, it's kind of like when we were working out. It's, it's calories in, calories out. If you put in a lot of time making a, a lot of phone calls, you're going to get better at it. You can close more appointments, get more deals. If you're not very good at it, you're going to make, you're going to have to make a lot. And it's a tough learning curve. On the flip side, a lot of people are scared to do that. So they do like LinkedIn, DMing and Instagram DMing. And they'll, they'll text and they'll avoid it like the plague. And unfortunately, if you are going to avoid cold calling like the plague, you're going to have to really differentiate yourself in the inbox or in the DMs because everybody is sending, you know, unique messages. Everybody has a unique message, but unfortunately it doesn't cut through the noise. So what we found, I can pull up some of the stats here on orbit, is that our click through rate, our open rate, our video view rate is way higher than any form of outbound sales solicitation. That's like currently on the Market, just for example, I don't know if you guys run email campaigns, but you know, we'll send anywhere from 200 to 250 videos a day. Like, this is our, this is our game. We do it better than everybody. And our click through rate is in the realm of 60%, which is ridiculously high. Of that we typically get about 40% viewing the video, another 20% responding, and then a booking rate of that 2 to 5%. And that's the thing, if you're doing a big volume play, that is where you have a chance to now follow up. And follow up is a huge part of sales that is very much neglected. It usually takes about 7 to 12 touch points to get in to get a deal across the line, depending on your industry. It once again really does depend on your industry. We find for us it's about five or seven follow ups. But the beautiful thing about when you send personalized videos to somebody is that is no longer a cold call, especially if they've already viewed it. So typically every afternoon I'll go through our tool, I'll see who viewed our videos because we have tracking on it. And I'll just call them and say, hey, you know, it's Connor here, you might recognize my voice. I saw that you, you know, you clicked through our video, you watched it. And the beautiful thing is when you send a video, there's only three responses. Number one is I saw the video, I want to book an appointment with you, but I just didn't get a chance to get in touch with you. Great. Number two, I didn't see the video, but I will go find it. Or you know, I didn't, I didn't get a chance to watch it yet. Or somebody else did and you can follow up them again. Or number three is I saw the video and I'm not interested. And that's good because now you've opened the door to ask, why are you not interested? Is it my face? Is it the offer? Does it not make sense? You can kind of make a joke out of it, but it's a lot harder to do that. It's a lot harder to have those conversations when you're just doing blanket cold outreach because you haven't built trust with the client. They don't see you as an authority figure and they don't know you. So when you send a video, they kind of already know you and you've already bridged that gap a little bit.

It so good. So now, you know, so many people have a visceral reaction when it comes to sales, any type of. Any type of conversation around, you know, making a case for their offer, people will tell, will say things like, I don't want to be slimy. I'm afraid of what people won't think. And, and, you know, I love for you to share, you know, some of the. The worst experiences you've ever had. Like, what is the worst case scenario and how often in the volume, in the amount of volume that you do. In all honesty, how often does that happen?

So that's a great point to touch on. And I'll be honest. I'm going to start off by saying that the worst stories at the time are terrible, but months down the line are some of the funniest stories you can bring up when you're having a conversation with friends or you're out for dinner or you're at a party. So I actually value really negative or funny experiences because they always, they're. They're always something to learn and laugh about in the future. But you are right, they do happen occasionally. And really, and truthfully, they are pretty rare. I mean, people are people. And this is the problem. A lot of people get really weirded out. They think if they're in a selling position, you know, there's this obligation, I think sometimes, not always, but I think sometimes people are afraid to sell because it's an ego thing. They think their product is really, really good. They think everybody should just be lining up to buy it, but they maybe haven't added enough value. So I think just taking a step back, trying to look at it like you're your own client can make a big difference in terms of confidence going into sales. But, yeah, it's definitely something that people get way too scared about and shy away from for no reason. But I can definitely dive in and tell you some of my worst experiences if you want to. Oh, I think I lost you.

I mean, here's why I'm asking, right? Is because so many people, it's kind of like the boogeyman in the closet. And I, you know, I have kids, so that's the reference that I use. But they, they make it up to be that, like, people are gonna, like, throw eggs at them or, like, you know, come through the phone and, like, punch them. And they make up these, like, really big, like, stress, you know, reasons to be like, I just don't know. I just don't want to. To have this awful thing happen. And the reality is that, number one, all you're doing is encouraging someone to say yes to Themselves, that's it. And number two, that these awful things that they think are going to happen on a small, on a scale, it happens like, well, maybe 1% of the time. And they become these funny stories because they happen so infrequently. So, you know, I'd love to hear. You don't have to tell us like the worst things, but maybe like something that happened that when you look back on it, your biggest takeaway is something that you could share with someone who is like, if you're new to sales or you're feeling nervous about it, here's what happened to me, here's what I do differently.

Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I honestly, I love being sold. Number one, I think anyone in sales can appreciate being sold, because if you are being sold something, somebody is so good at communicating and usually really passionate about whatever they're talking about. And I find that if you're in an industry where you are selling something that you're passionate about, it just comes across natural. You can really have that energy, bring that excitement and convey the message of what your product or service does incredibly easy. And they can pick up on that energy. In terms of tips for things that I've taken away from sales, I'll tell you, number one, anything is easier than door knocking. That is the biggest invasion of privacy, hands down. You are going to someone's business or home and trying to convince them to make a change. You know, it's already a lot of things going on that are invasive and you have to break that trust barrier very quickly. But in terms of just talking to people, if you're at a gym and you're trying to get find clients that way, you know, you should be excited to talk to them. You're an expert in your industry. If you are really passionate about what you do and you know everything about what you do inside and out. I always look at it like being a consultant. So when I hop on sales calls, I usually lay out the framework very quickly. I say, by the end of this, I'm going to know exactly what you do, where your problems are and how I can help. And on the flip side, you're going to understand exactly what I do, what our capabilities are, and I'll be transparent and tell you if we're a good fit or not, because I know of a lot of other services and products in the industry that I'd be happy to put you towards if it's the right fit for you. And I think having that conviction, knowing you're an expert, knowing your competition, being able to differentiate yourself from them, but also being transparent enough. And this is where the big sleazy part comes in. A lot of people don't like salespeople because they. If you. If you think that that salesperson is just doing it for a commission, of course you're not going to trust them. But if it's your business and you're passionate about what you're doing, your job is just to put them in a better position by the end of the call or by the end of the meeting than they are right now. And if you make that explicitly clear, you're never had a bad sales call from doing that. It's actually impossible. The only time I've had bad sales conversations is when I didn't understand my product fully inside and out. And basically you just get. You get trumped. There's something that you don't understand or you get put into a corner because of things that you say. So don't lie, don't talk about things that you don't understand, and you will not put yourself in a bad position. I think it's really just that simple.

I mean, one of the things that you said that I want to just reiterate, you know, for me, one of the biggest misconceptions people have about sales calls is that you're going to be doing the con, the talking.

No, it's the other way around.

It's the other way around and people miss that.

Yep.

Right. You know, you're not going to put yourself in a position to lie because you're not going to be talking.

Exactly. And you want to be very transparent off this. Like, the way I broken down at the start is I always talk about the client first and then a second. And that's how the call leads. And it starts with me asking very general questions. This is probably the biggest piece of advice I can give to anybody who hasn't done sales is ask really general questions and let them talk. And if they are talking about something and they haven't, maybe you haven't got anything out of it that you were looking for when you asked the question. A great tip that I found. I actually learned this back when I was like 19, and I use it all the time, is I will say back the exact thing that they ended with and then. And say, tell me more about that. Just repeating. The other weird thing about repeating is when you. When you're, you know, if they say, for example, I'll try and relate this to the fitness world. If they're like, I was on a high Protein diet. And I felt like I didn't have any energy when I was eating a lot of protein. You could say, okay, so you're eating a lot of protein and you were really tired. Can you tell me more about that? And it sounds really cliche, but this is how you start building that trust. Because they're going to know that you are listening to them. They are, they are heard. And you're going to be able to open up that conversation. I think the biggest problem with a lot of sales, especially done over zoom, is that people don't ask enough questions. They don't really know the true pain. They don't really know the problems that the client has. And then they go into their pitch and their pitch is the general pitch. It's the same one that they use on absolutely everybody. And that is not the way to do it. You have to understand where your client is at and then take everything that your product or service does, find the things that align with their pain points and reiterate that back to them. And then you can go into your presentation and talk about more about what the product does if they're curious or your service. But the fact finding, as we call it, is what is so important in that process that really I think a lot of people miss out on. So understanding your clients needs is number one priority in my opinion.

You know, I love it, I love it. It's so good. So now I'm curious. You know, speaking, speaking of, you know, volume and, and the fact that you do this all the time, right. What I have noticed to a lot of sales reps is that we tend to get into ruts, especially when we start to do this over and over and over. Two things tend to start happening is something I noticed. Number one is that we stop doing listening because we're starting to anticipate and be like, I know what this person is going to say. We start assuming. Okay. The second thing is that if we go through like a number of 10 calls and we don't close or, or we really, you know, mess up, we run the risk. And when I say mess up, okay, that's like in your opinion, people will perceive that they've messed up or that they're feeling, but then they internalize it and they start to slide down this hill and be like, going into their calls with this energy of like, I'm terrible, I suck. So what do you do when you start to notice that you're in a, an unusual pattern that is sidestepping you?

Perfect question. So number one thing I would say if people are doing sales calls and they feel like they're getting in a rut is watch your sales calls, record them, watch them back. You're going to pick it off immediately. Where the conversation went sideways, it stands out like a sore thumb. And, and watch as many of them. If you go through a route of five of them, watch all five. If they all slipped off at the same point, well, now you can diagnose that problem problem and figure out what it was. Is the flow not there? Did you not ask enough questions? Were they not a qualified client to begin with? There's a, there's a bunch of factors. The other thing too is you should have some form of framework. I think a lot of people, when they get on sales calls or they haven't done a lot, they. And maybe, maybe this is more prevalent in your industry, but they almost think of it as it's a hobby. It's a hobby business. It's not a real business. And real companies, real corporations have systems, sops for everything. You should have some form of a framework. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to have some crazy, elaborate slide deck and you have to, like, structure it like you're some, like, government official doing a talk. But you should have some level of questions that you always ask because they yield the best answers and there's great tools to help you do that. Now, until this year, we didn't have ChatGPT. You can literally take ChatGPT, put in your information about what you do. It will help you target your ideal market, and it will literally help you write questions to qualify that ideal market. So these days, there's no excuses. There's not.

That's true. It's true. You know, I, what you're saying is so powerful because I think a lot of, I think a lot of things, especially for fitness professionals, is they get into this mind the moment that you, that you take on a client, you've become a business. And in their mind, they are a coach. And they have this like, but I'm not a marketer, I'm not a salesperson, I'm a coach. And they have this hope that if I'm just a good enough coach that's going to sell my product enough, especially in the Internet world where everyone's like, no, like and trust and just add a ton of value. And the truth is that you put a buy button on your website, you're not making a strong enough case for why your client needs it and why your client needs it now. Because if that worked, then sales would be obsolete and not, no one would be struggling. Right. Which you know is just plain and simply not true. And so people are like, I don't want to, I don't want to use a script, I don't want to, to have these questions. I don't want to sound like a robot. So then they end up over teaching and everything goes sideways. And when you look out into your favorite movies, you know, all these actors that you love are all reading scripts and the scripture, yeah, the script is that framework, you know. So in your process in terms of before we even get to the call, right. You're still selling, you're selling every moment. So for your program orbits, what's the framework that you're using in your messaging to increase to get those 60% open rates and the book calls?

Great question. So some of these are in house secrets, but I will share a little bit of information.

Lucky us.

I'll tell you guys, number one, if you make a compelling subject line, and I like to say short and sweet is the best, if you just put question for first name or video for first name, your open rates already are going up. We haven't done any internal studying on them, but I've read some independent studies saying it's anywhere from 60 to 80%. So having a compelling subject line is huge. Number two, the written text in the email, if you are doing email marketing should be really short and sweet. Just cut to the noise. If you're sending videos, it's 10 times easier because you can basically just put in a really quick value add and say, hey, I need you to watch this video. As soon as you watch it, you know, you'll see if we're a good fit or not. But that copy is really important. We actually have our own in house copywriter that takes care of all of that. We have different copy for different campaigns. So you really just have to make sure that's going to the right audience. In terms of our framework, follow up, like I said, is huge. This is where I think most people fall off the map. They don't have follow up systems. I have three follow up emails that go out for every demo call. They get one two days before, they get one the night before and they get one an hour before. And they're all very, very, they're written to sound very genuine. They don't seem scripted. Like I actually, I have one that goes out five minutes before saying I'm hopping in this, in this call right now. Looking forward to seeing you soon. And I'm providing the link for the call in every single email. And really and truthfully, if you want to have people come and get on your calls and take you seriously, you have to operate like a business. You have to be a little bit relentless, mind you. At the same time we are providing a huge amount of value. So I actually feel like it's my obligation to ensure that person gets on the call because if they don't and they go to somewhere else, they're going to get a worse service. And this is how you know, my perception of sales is I know that we are so good at what we do that I want that person to come on absolutely no matter what. Because at the end of the day, the worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to have their mind blown. They might not buy our product immediately, they may not see a perfect fit out the gate, but they're going to be impressed and they're going to see that this is something that they probably need to at least consider in their life. And that's the worst takeaway for coaching, I would imagine. It's the same thing in the fitness industry. You have to be relentless, you have to provide that value and you have to follow up. Following up is really just the simplest tool that gets very much overlooked. Another thing I'm going to touch on very quickly, this is a little bit from the tech side of things. You need to make sure that your emailing has high deliverability. If you are sending bulk emails from your web domain, you are screwed. The reason I'm saying that is because there's, there's what's called blacklisted domains. I can provide some links to this podcast afterwards for checking those. You should check and see if you're domain has been blacklisted. It's very easy to get blacklisted if you sell or if you send emails to accounts that no longer exist or no longer operating. Our bounce back accounts, our automatic email forwarding accounts, Google, Microsoft, all these companies will mark. It's like a credit score. Your email domain is a credit score. And if you are sending to garbage email addresses, they will mark you as trash. So your stuff will go straight to the spam folder. People won't even see it. This is one of the biggest problems right now, plaguing email marketing that nobody is really talking about. There are ways to get around that. But number one, you should not be sending from your web domain or your personal email domain if you are doing big outreach campaigns. And yeah, and that's a whole part of it too. If your clients aren't even seeing your message, it doesn't matter if you wrote the best message in the world for them, it went straight to the junk and they might see it in six months when they go clean out their spam. So deliverability is a big factor.

What are the ways that you recommend increasing deliverability? So now when you're talking about sending. Well, and I always tell people this too, especially if you're doing cold outreach. So cold outreach is when they have not opted into anything and you're sending out mass, mass emails. Right. You have to work up that muscle, otherwise you get marked as spam. And if you're marked as SP spam too many times, you get in trouble and they can shut down that inbox. So how do you increase deliverability for both cold outreach and as well as maybe you have some inbound people that have given you junk emails?

Great question. There's a lot of really good tools on the market that you can use. Everything we have internally, we built ourselves, we have our own emailing system. So that's kind of the secret sauce with Orbit. If you hire us, you want to use us, you're going to get super high deliverability. There are a bunch of tools though. Number one, one of the easiest ones I could recommend is called zero bounce. You can literally take a spreadsheet of emails, blast it in there, you pay for a certain amount of credits, it will tell you which ones are catch alls. Bounce backs blacklisted everything so you can vet all the emails. So those are all your good emails. In terms of sending, there's a bunch of services that do what's called a warm up process. So what I would recommend is you buy domains that are different than your actual domain. They're similar, but they might have your first name with your domain, whatever. And what you do is you put those into warm up email sequences. So what this is is essentially a tool that will take your email domains and it'll take a bunch of other email domains and send random emails, 60, 30, 50 a day. Do that for, you know, a few, a few days, maybe a week. And what that does is builds up that reputation of that inbox because it makes sure that there's nothing going to spam. Everything's high deliverability. And you build that credit score kind of in a cheating manner. You can build it faster. So that is a fantastic way. It's very, very cheap. There's a lot of tools out there that can do it. I can't think of any off the top of my head. But I can provide the links after this for some of those. And I recommend if you are doing big cold email campaigns, you need to have a fleet of domains and a fleet of email warmers.

What's a fleet?

Well, for us, anywhere from 8 to 10.

Okay. And then how many? How many? So if you've got 8 to 10 domains and 8 to 10, I'm assuming that you're. You. When you say 8 to 10 domains, you're actually also saying 8 to 10 inboxes. How many campaigns are you sending out per inbox? So, so say someone's like, oh man, I don't want to send out 100 emails today. So maybe you start with, you know, three to five. So how, what would you recommend for someone who's like just tipping, just, you know, tapping their toe into cold outreach?

Yeah. So if you're, if you're a solopreneur or you run a, you know, your own business, you have a book of business, I would take a look and see how many people you want to reach out to that are on that list. If it's over a thousand, you're probably going to want a couple domains. If you're just starting out, you really only need one or two, typically one to run if, because it basically, if that other domain gets hit two or three times in the same day with spam, you gotta cycle it out. So it's nice to have two and then just set up on emailing services so either mailchimp or whatever so you can automate it. And another big strategy I would say is sending periodically throughout the day. So not doing a blast at once. Have them time to send at different, at different hours of the day throughout the day to make it seem like it's a very consistent process. Maybe your VA is doing it anywhere from 20 to 30 a day cold outreaches and then typically anywhere from another 20 to 30 follow ups in the same day. So you really shouldn't be sending more than 50 or 60 emails a day per domain.

Now I love what you brought up because I want to talk about this because people, you know, it's easy to get caught up in the sops, you know, of, of cold outreach. I'm like, all right, here's my first email that I'm sending out. You know, my first ten, the follow up. We have to also remember that people are going to respond to you and you're going to need time to be going through your inboxes of responses. They are. And so you're going to Want to put an SOP in place in terms of following up on the inbounds, following up on people who didn't respond, and then also doing the direct outreach. It can be a lot of work.

It can be absolutely. And I think the number one thing you should do if you're a coach and you have your own business and you're doing a small emailing campaign is turn the notifications on for that thing through the roof so that you're getting notified even if you're in the middle of a session. Because if somebody emails you back, you take a look at it and it's a neutral or positive email, call them within the first five minutes. Just phone them if you have their number. Obviously, if you don't, then respond back quickly. But time is such a huge factor of sales that people absolutely slip on. They'll let emails pile up. They don't follow up, they don't. And that's the thing. They're not being business owners. They're being. They're playing business. I hate to say it, but I heard Andy Frisella say that once and I. It really resonated with me. You, if you're going to be a real business owner, you got to treat it like a business. You got to follow up with those people ASAP and basically put in the next. The next step. So if they email you back, they're interested, get on the call, phone them for five minutes, say, hey, I'm in the middle of something right now, but I saw you responded. It looks like there's a position, like there's a way for us to move forward here. Let's schedule a zoom call, let's schedule an in person appointment. Just get on it, get it done. And then put them into another email sequence where you're following up with them prior to that call. I promise you, if you do all that and you don't get a higher response rate, I don't know, something's going on with or something. Yeah, let's take a look at your offer.

Okay. You're so funny because you were talking, my, my notepad was dying. And if you heard that, like, clank, I know that's dying right as he's talking about playing business. And I'm like literally pulling up these like cord balls of chords. Thank you so much. I'm like, oh, no. Yeah, this is me playing business with my chords right now. Anyway, anyway. Okay, so the one thing, something else that, that I want to ask you in terms of, you know, orbit specifically is you were talking about how you know would you were talking about CRM? Does your agency or your software essentially do a lot of this follow up and, and reporting that we're talking about that actually bogs a lot of entrepreneurs down so that they can get some more of their time back?

Yeah. So I mean Orbit is if you are already doing video outreach, you've seen it work but you're like man, I just can't. It's, it's so much time for, for me to invest in and to run these email campaigns. It's a pain. It does work, but it's a huge time sink. Well, Orbit is, is literally the textbook tool for you. Our tool will. Basically what I'm touching on here is your CRM comment is it will take any data that is relevant to your industry. So if it's your client's first name, last name, any sort of preferences, if you've given them unique tags, we'll take all that data and automatically put it into that video to make it hyper personalized. When you receive a video from us, everything is branded for you. As soon as you open the page, it has your, it says video for Beverly on it. Every single slide has Beverly Simpson on it, curated for Beverly Simpson. It's very, very personalized. And our tool does that by drawing information from that CRM or wherever you keep your data and can produce these obviously at scale. So for, for people that are more time value orientated versus money, using a tool like Orbit can definitely expedite that process. And we can take care of the email sending and doing all that as well. So we can literally fill that entire gap that we talked about today. Mind you, we are a premium service so it's not for everybody. But if I can provide any value on this call, I would say do video outreach, get your domains, get your email campaigns working and you're going to see crazy results. I promise that.

It's so amazing. But what about all the people that tell you email instead? What would you say to them?

I think text based email is dead. I think really crappy text based email that has low deliverability is dead. I'll tell you why I don't think emailing is dead though. Just last week, perfect example, I was grabbing lunch and I had the president of a massive chain in, in western Canada with 14 locations just call me. He just phoned me because he saw my video, he was very impressed. And our email cut straight through the noise, went right to the top of the inbox. Obviously provided a lot of value. So we didn't reach out to him any other way. I didn't call him in advance, didn't send him anything on LinkedIn, nothing. And for that reason, I will tell you that email is not dead. Sending crappy emails is dead. So you really have to differentiate yourself in that space because yeah, a lot of it does go to junk. People don't see that perceived value. It's going to junk. You gotta be clever with your subjects, you gotta have good body in terms of whatever text you have in there. And you have to put something in there that's gonna get their attention because everybody gets emails every single day from random junk and they don't even read it. So just think of it. If you were on the receiving end, would you be more inclined to work with somebody that sent you a video? Would you be more inclined to work with somebody that sent an automated message using a little chat GPT?

So true. So good. Okay, so the last thing I want to ask you when it comes to, you know, when it comes to deliverability. Right. Is that people will, you know, say things like I can't put images in my email because then it gets marked as spam because it has to load. So people are, you know, oh, I need to create it text based. So what are just some of your best practices when it comes to increasing your deliverability options that you would recommend?

Yeah, so I would say, number one, at the end of the day, you got to warm up those domains. That, that's by far the biggest factor in terms of embedding in your emails. Loom. Like I said, if you're doing loom videos you can embed. If you have the, the browser extension on Loom, it will actually just embed the link and then it populates with a GIF which does not affect deliverability at all. And they can either click the GIF or they can click the link and it will go straight to that, that third party page. That's why we use, we built our tool the way it is. Effectively we have links in the email. There's nothing in the email other than a GIF and a link. So when they click it, it goes to a separate page. Branded for ourselves or branded for our clients, depending if, if you're a client of us. So that is a huge factor, I would say in terms of the images side of things, I haven't really heard anything about images like unless they're massive files causing a huge issue with deliverability. If you're emailing big corporations, they have firewalls in place that block out a lot of stuff. So sometimes you're just not going to get through to those guys. It's just the way it is. But in terms of personal emails, if you're sending the B2C, that's usually not a big, a big threat. Especially if your, your inbox has high deliverability. And once again, I keep saying that because it is the most important part. If you don't have an email domain reputation, you're screwed.

Like the other thing I want to say, I want to ask, and I wish I had asked it earlier, but it's all right. And I know I said last question. I swear this will be the last question.

No, no, no.

How do you know? How do you know if you have high deliverability? How can someone check.

Great question. So I'm not sure if zero balance does it, but there are tools where you can check if your domain is blacklisted or not. That is kind of the limit as to what you can really pull in terms of data. The only other way to know is just that you're not getting the attention when you're sending emails. Google has its own reputation management. Microsoft has its own reputation management. Amazon has its own reputation management. And they set up kind of hidden firewalls that you're not necessarily aware if you're getting through or not. So there really is no way to super, super verify on that credit score like where your email is at. But I can tell you one thing. If you are warming up domains and you have, you know, you are delivering, people are seeing your emails that are being tracked and they're not being marked as spam, you have high deliverability. I know it sounds kind of cliche. It is. It is really just that simple. If people aren't opening your emails, there are a couple spam marks on it. You probably don't have high deliverability, but there are tools to check if you are blacklisted. And that is definitely the first place to start.

Yeah. Okay. Super powerful. The other thing too, that. And I just want to say this one caveat as you're listening to this, you know, make sure you just check your content first. Sometimes that's not deliverability, just sometimes we need to upgrade our content. So, you know, there are going to be times in your life though, where you're like, wow, this was really good. I spoke to the problem, I spoke to the desire, I used the name and then it's still not resonating. Then we can start looking at that. Okay, but just make sure. One caveat. Check your content first.

Check your, check your Content, but then, you know, don't be afraid to call them. If people are getting your emails, they're opening them, just phone them. You know, find out what's going on. Why, why. Why aren't you responding? Is something come up? Is it personal matter? Is there something wrong with my offer? The biggest thing is your clients will. Will tell you what they need and what they want. And if you listen to them, you will craft your. Your offer will get better. If you don't, then you're just gonna be spinning your tires.

Mm. Okay. So, Connor, this was amazing. Thank you so much for pouring into me Po listening. If you would not mind sharing with us, what are some of the best places we can. If you're listening and you want to learn more about Orbit, you want to connect and work with you, where are some of the best places I can send them?

Perfect. If you want to go check out Orbit, our domain is reachmorewithorbit.com you can go check out our website there, see a little bit about the features. If you want, feel free to book a demo with me. There's a big button for it. Or you can chat with our online support there. If you want to connect with me, I am on LinkedIn under Connor Hawkinson should see me there. I keep Instagram a little bit more on the private side, same as Facebook, but I'd happy to connect with anybody listening. And if you want to learn more about how video outreach can really ramp up your business, I'd be happy to help.

I love it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And we'll be sure to link all of that up inside of the show notes.

Awesome. Thanks, Beverly. Have a good one.

Thank you for listening to the PT Profit podcast. If you like this episode, chances are your friends will too. So it would be a huge service to us if you would please leave us a review and share with your friends on your social media channels. When you leave us a review, be sure to take a screenshot of it and email that screenshot to my team at Infoes and be and we'll send you a very special Instagram podcast that will show you how to create compelling content so that your ideal clients come to you and you go from wanting clients to a wait list of clients ready for your services. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.