Be Relevant with your Outbound Emails

Outbound emails are a powerful tool for reaching out to potential customers, but they need to be crafted carefully to be effective. There has been a lot of talk about personalization in recent years, but personalization for the sake of personalization does not work. In this blog post, I will discuss the difference between personalization and relevance in outbound emails and how this can be applied to the life sciences space.

Personalization vs Relevance

Personalization means including personal information in an email such as the recipient’s name, company, industry, and even the recipient’s previous work experience. While personalization can be effective, it is not a guarantee for success, it is only the first step. If you do the personalization without some grain of salt it can be wrong and even crush your results.

Personalization needs to be focused on being relevant for the recipient to be truly effective.

Relevance in outbound emails means that the message is tailored to the recipient’s specific needs and interests. It starts with better prospecting and research to identify the right prospects and the right messaging. Relevance is one of the prerequisites to success with outbound emails because it shows the potential customer that you understand their needs and have a solution that can help them.

The Importance of Relevance

Being relevant helps your outbound emails stand out from the hundreds of other emails that prospects receive every day. A relevant message shows that you have taken the time to understand the prospect’s work and their pain points. It also shows that you have a solution that can help them solve their problems. A relevant message is more likely to get a response from a potential customer than a generic message that is not tailored to their needs.

Moreover, relevance is crucial for building relationships with potential customers. Relevance shows that you care about the prospect’s business and want to help them succeed. It also builds trust and credibility, which are essential for closing deals and building long-term relationships.

Relevance in Life Sciences

A few examples of relevance for Life Sciences vendors.

CDMOs

Imagine you are a CDMO company supporting biotech and pharma companies with recombinant protein production. You could put together a list of biopharma companies and start reaching out to them. But companies that are not developing recombinant proteins would have no need or interest in your services, even if you have a super personalized email sent to them. You should first invest time in building a list of potential clients, biopharma companies developing recombinant proteins. I would even suggest filtering for companies with active programs at relevant drug development stages (preclinical, early clinical development).

With such a good prospect list, your email could sound much better.

An example where you have a broad list of potential clients:

Hey John,

We at CDMO X help biopharma companies with recombinant protein production. I’m curious to see how we could help you as well. Do you develop recombinant proteins? If yes, then let’s talk.

An example, if you have a good list of prospects that you know are working on recombinant proteins:

Hey John,

I noticed you are developing recombinant protein, do you face any challenges with process development or manufacturing? We at CDMO X already help several similar companies and I’d be glad to see how we can help you as well.

Which one looks better? Where do you expect to get better results?

Clinical Research Organization

Imagine you are a CRO company supporting pharma’s clinical trials in Ophthalmology. Again, you could put together a list of biopharma companies with active clinical trials and start reaching out to them. But you can’t really help companies outside Ophthalmology space, so why reach out to them in the first place? I suggest filtering for companies with active clinical trials in Ophthalmology.

With such a prospect list, your email could sound much better.

An example where you have a broad list of potential clients:

Hey John,

I saw you are the CEO at X Therapeutics and wanted to connect. We at CRO X help support biopharma companies with clinical trials. Do you have any drugs for Ophthalmology diseases? If yes, then let’s talk.

An example, if you have a list of companies with active trials in Ophthalmology:

Hey John,

I noticed you have an active clinical trial in Ophthalmology. Do you already have a partner to manage the trials? Could you benefit from working with an Ophthalmology-focused CRO?

What do you think? One would say the first one is more personalized, but the second one is more relevant.

Conclusion

You should focus your energy on good prospecting to first identify the right companies and employees and craft messages that are tailored to their specific needs and interests.

Relevance is important with outbound emails because it shows that you try to relate to prospect’s business and have a solution that can potentially help them. That’s how you can pick their interest and start building long-term relationships with potential customers.

Investing your resources into good prospecting pays out also with your conversions, better response rate, not being marked as spam, and focus your limited time on prospects that you can actually help.

If you don’t know how to use all that for your own outreach, let me know and I’d be glad to discuss how we can work together.