Good day PROs!

Sales Development (SDRs) were a big thing. Until they weren't. But we discovered we need Outbound. So now what?

The Glory Days

Way back in the previous epoch (2020-2021), every company everywhere fell in love with "Outbound."

We knew the companies to whom we wanted to sell and could get the contact info of the people we needed to reach.

So we loaded up the spam cannon and sent messages, A LOT of them, promising gift cards for coffee to schedule a 15-minute call.

It worked, at least we told ourselves it did. Capital was 'free' and 'efficiency' was something old people from the 1990s talked about.

Total money supply (i.e. capital) grew by nearly 40% in 12 months

But then capital suddenly got expensive and growth slowed. So we picked up our pencils and started doing the math on "Outbound," which is when we discovered that the return on that investment was … abysmal.

So we cut it. All of it.

The Fed Funds Rate went from effectively 0% to 5%+ in 15 months

Our Options Stink

So with Outbound down to a trickle, we had to lean into other options.

Social Media (Organic)

LinkedIn, X (fka Twitter), YouTube and all the others are where our Buyers hang out and get information. So we read "Founder Brand" and started posting every day (ish).

We've since discovered that the algorithms don't actually care about us. They only care about the platform. In fact, when we post only 20% (or less) of the people that follow us will actually see our content.

Think about that. These are people that voluntarily hit "Follow" (or subscribe) and yet the algorithm won't show them our content if it doesn't deem it worthy.

For more depth on this topic, check out The Death of the Follower, by Patreon CEO Jack Conte.

SEO

For over a decade we rode the promise of Inbound. Write "great" content and when people search for info on a relevant topic, they will find us.

Except, everyone did this. And produced the same "10 ways to …." content. And it's getting worse with AI.

As a result, Google has begun omitting content from its index that it deems does not add incremental value to the searcher. The bar just went up.

Paid Digital

Paid was expensive even when capital was free and it's only gotten worse. The ad platforms, most notably Google, have made tracking and metrics more and more opaque (in the name of privacy) and because we feed them info, have been able to increase prices up to the efficient frontier.

This is not a healthy way to build our business.

Outbound is Back(*)

With these (and other) channels becoming increasingly difficult, we find ourselves once again wanting to reach out directly to prospective customers.

But here too, the game has changed.

After years of abuse, email platforms, both senders and receivers, have implemented controls and tools to protect their end customer, the email recipient.

This is especially true for those that sell to large, "enterprise" customers that have email tools that will quarantine or outright block messages it sniffs as "Outbound."

Worse, it's very, very hard to know it's happening.

The Cool Kids Talk Deliverability

Email deliverability used to be one of those things that only Email gurus discussed. But now even the "cool kids" on LinkedIn are bringing it up. It's a topic with which even CEOs now need familiarity.

Why? Because if we commit resources to pull data and enrich it, then build content and develop sequences, but the email never hits the target's inbox, was really ever sent?

Think of deliverability as the equivalent of the algorithms on social platforms. We can't hack it, but we can work with it.

On our most recent gtmPRO podcast, we hosted Matt McFee, a 23-year veteran of the email space and Co-Founder of Inbox Monster. He summarized for us key considerations for getting our messages to our desired recipients:

• Authentication: Proper configuration of DKIM, SPF, and DMARC records for proper authentication and avoiding spoofing, across all email platforms.

• Quality Content: Deliver relevant, valuable, and engaging messages to prevent complaints and maintain a positive sender reputation.

• Volume and Engagement Monitoring: Consistently monitor open rates, engagement, and volume trends to identify potential issues early.

• Compliance and Consistency: Be mindful of email frequency, segmentation, and respecting opt-outs to ensure long-term sender credibility.

There is no easy button.

One (of the many) things that Matt said that struck a chord was that building an outbound strategy is really part of business model design.

If we try to cut corners and "hack" our way to our number, then we are building our business on something that is not durable and will come back to bite us.