Hey, it's Sam Oh and welcome to the second lesson in the outreach module.
In this lesson, we're going to talk about scaling so-called "value" using the hybrid
outreach approach.
Now, in the previous lesson, I mentioned that outreach emails usually have a similar anatomy.
They include a good reason for contact and a value proposition.
And the great thing about using the hybrid approach is that your linkable point will be
your "good reason for contact."
For example, if they have an outdated stat, your reason for contact is to tell them about
it and share new data.
Or if they've mentioned a specific tactic like the 50/30/20 budget rule, then you can use
that to set the context of the conversation.
Now, finding a value proposition that appeals to the majority is the tough part because "value"
is subjective to the person receiving the email.
But because the hybrid approach forces you to segment prospects, your value
propositions can be more impactful because of the similar attributes that prospects have
in a given segment.
Now, there is no set list of value propositions because it depends highly on the context of
your linkable point.
But a good way to start brainstorming value props is to think about how your reason for
contact impacts prospects and their audiences.
For example, a while back, I was working on a natural health site and noticed that an article
from a large publication was recommending to consume cinnamon to lose weight because of
a chemical compound called cinnamaldehyde.
Now, a top leading essential oils expert specifically states in his book that you
should not consume too much cinnamaldehyde because it can kill you.
So how many people are saying this?
Well, with a search like this in Content Explorer, you'll see that there are hundreds of pages.
So we have our reason for contact that's going to set the context of our email.
Now, how does this impact prospects and their audience?
And does it impact them enough to make an edit to their post and potentially link to us?
Well, if someone follows their tips, there could potentially be lost lives
and lawsuits.
So in my eyes, there was potential for a pretty strong pitch.
So I actually updated my page on cinnamon essential oil stating these facts and contacted
prospects letting them know of potential dangers in their content.
I also shared a link to the $100+ book and a page number as a reference to strengthen my pitch.
And of course, I offered the tl;dr which was written in my post which they could
access for free.
As for the results, I was able to secure some top notch links from big publications
with an almost 20% conversion rate.
Now, it's important to note that my email was not about inducing fear into prospects.
It was written to highlight the importance of updating their content.
So my link outreach was actually fun to do and it was well received.
Now, pitch angles don't always have to be about life or death.
And they won't always be this strong.
But sometimes, that isn't even necessary to get good results.
I'll give you an example from our SEO stats campaign.
As a quick refresher, we noticed that a competing page had a ton of backlinks because of the stat,
"93% of online experiences begin with a search engine."
And that stat was super outdated and not even on the target page,
making all links based on that stat irrelevant.
Now, the reason for contact is that the 93% stat they've mentioned isn't on the page.
But to be frank, this reason is no better than saying "you have a broken link."
So how does this impact prospects and their audience?
Well, the truth is that most people won't care because everyone has outdated content
on their site, and it's impossible to keep everything up to date at all times.
So the angle we went with was to tell them that the page they're linking to
doesn't even mention the stat and we accentuated how outdated it is.
We said something along the lines of "That stat is actually fourteen years old.
More recent research suggests that this number has gone down to 68% because of X, Y and Z."
In other words, our value prop was fresh data to keep your content up to date.
As a result, we had a conversion rate of 6.8% on this campaign with no follow-up emails.
Not bad but not great.
So how could we have made this appeal to more people?
Well, seeing as there was a huge change in the data point, 93% to 68%, one thing
we could have done was to offer to rewrite a paragraph or part of their article to make
it reflect current data better – whether they linked to us or not.
This isn't the strongest pitch, but in my opinion, it's better than what we had before.
So bottomline, when you're coming up with value propositions, try and brainstorm ideas by segment.
Use your reason for contact as a starting point to understand how linking to you will
impact prospects and benefit their audience.
It's not an easy exercise, but you'll find that strong value propositions that are
tied to your linkable point will a) create a very easy to write outreach email; and
b) can lead to incredible conversion rates for link acquisition.
Now, when people use templates, the result is usually a robotic sounding email.
And that's likely the reason why the majority of outreach emails in your inbox seem like spam.
So in the next lesson, I'm going to give you some tips and exercises to write templated
outreach emails that don't sound generic.
I'll see you there.