Everyone’s talking about growth hacking, but few are as expert at it as Denis Cohen. So, I invited him on the IntoTheMinds podcast to share his secrets with us. It’s also an opportunity to talk about DropContact, the company he founded, which makes a major contribution to the growth hacking ecosystem. On a personal note, it’s a podcast that has helped me a lot because I’ve never done growth hacking or outbound marketing before. It made me want to start, so I hope it will do the same for you. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.
Growth hacking: everything you need to know in 30 seconds
- 15 years ago, sending mass emails to 100,000 people was the norm. Today, it’s increasingly necessary to invest in personalized messages.
- If you’ve sent an email once and achieved a 10% open rate, it’s possible to double that rate to 20% by resending the same email. If 30% of people opened the first email by resending it, the open rate could reach 60%.
- 25 to 33% of the data contained in customer relationship management systems become obsolete within a year as people change professions more frequently today. 25 years ago, turnover rates were lower, and only 10% of data became obsolete within a year.
- An open rate of 60-70% says nothing about the success of your growth-hacking campaign.
- Growth hacking done right: resending unopened emails after 3 or 4 months is best.
- More than 50,000 people type “growth hacking” into their search engines every month.
Introduction
Doing business and finding customers has never been so complicated. Being a salesperson in 2023 is a real challenge because you must constantly renew your sales approach and keep abreast of what’s working. If you’re wondering how to generate leads, growth hacking is an outbound marketing technique that could be useful. I interviewed Denis Cohen, head of DropContact, to avoid repeating what has been said and written on the subject. Who better than Denis to talk about growth hacking? I’d even say his name is synonymous with growth hacking in France, where he lives.
About Dropcontact
For Denis Cohen, growth hacking is a “state of mind.” The aim is to achieve lead generation on a limited budget. So, we need to find “tricks” to automate this search. Dropcontact is a product that helps lead generation in two ways:
- via data enrichment: you upload a file containing basic information about your leads. This data is then enriched by Dropcontact, with an emphasis on emails, as they are the key to growth hacking.
- via lead scoring: Dropcontact simplifies the identification of leads on which to invest your time. Denis Cohen reminds us in the podcast that it’s imperative to personalize messages today. Dropcontact is less about mass email campaigns and more about helping users invest time in personalizing messages for the right people.
Do social networks surpass email marketing?
Influencer marketing via social networks is increasingly in the spotlight (see, for example, the podcast devoted to the Skwad platform). But in B2B, this influencer strategy works less well, and your prospects’ email inboxes should be targeted first and foremost.
Denis Cohen reminds us that email remains a powerful, professional, and effective tool for prospecting strategies. However, we need to evolve our practices. It’s now possible to automate AND personalize everything. With tools like Dropcontact, it’s possible to create personalized email sequences and measure the performance of your campaigns with analytical data.
This analytical approach is the basis of success. I’ve used it successfully for our inbound marketing strategy and fully agree with Denis. Analyzing the figures objectively and opting for the most effective formulas is the best way to get off the ground.
The 3 essential aspects of lead generation
Targeting
Good targeting is essential. First and foremost, you need to understand your prospects’ intentions, what triggers their purchase (the famous customer experience), segment them, and identify them. Without careful thought upstream, you’ll target the wrong people downstream.
Your email title
A catchy title isn’t as important as people think, and open rates don’t reflect campaign success. Denis Cohen refers to open rates as “vanity metrics.” Ultimately, all that matters is what’s written in the message. Will the content make your targets curious enough to initiate contact? A catchy headline will keep your sales on track. Good content will.
Timing, timing, timing
Someone who receives your email, even if interested, is too busy to follow it up. The right timing can mean the difference between receiving a response and sitting in the inbox for eternity.
Outbound marketing can work. It’s all about putting yourself in the shoes of the person receiving the message and titillating their curiosity and interest while creating a sense of urgency so they get in touch quickly.
Mass marketing is no longer effective. 15 years ago, we used to bombard 100,000 customers to see if any would eventually fall into the net, but this method is no longer effective.
The American approach is not effective in Europe
Denis Cohen rightly reminds us that your sales approach must also be adapted to the cultural context. Messages such as “Would you be interested in increasing your sales by €50,000 every month?” are commonplace but are useless in Europe. This type of hook is very similar to the American approach of making a lot of money quickly and might only work on young people or Americans – but not on the majority, and certainly not with the French.
So, you’ll need to be much more subtle than that to generate leads and make growth hacking a real component of your lead generation strategy.
Advice on getting started with outbound marketing
Denis Cohen est un fan d’Account-Based Marketing (ABM) et de son potentiel pour cibler des personnes qui ressemblent aux prospects qui se sont avérés rentables dans le passé. De cette façon, vous pouvez éviter de faire du marketing de masse, mais allez vous concentrer seulement sur les clients potentiels qui vous intéressent. C’est efficace en termes de coûts et de temps et les suivis sont plus faciles également. L’étape suivante est de créer des séquences que vous pouvez exécuter sur les “look-alikes”, puis de l’automatiser pour que 3 ou 4 mois plus tard, la même séquence soit exécutée sur les mêmes personnes.
Outbound marketing success is all about relationships
Denis Cohen has tested everything and knows what’s important. He reminds us in the podcast: you can’t go straight from contact to sales.
Step 1: make yourself known
First, you need to make yourself known through emails, for example. That’s how your name will be remembered, and you’ll no longer be an unknown.
Step 2: propose value-added content
In the second stage, you can, for example, communicate value-added information. You have to know how to give before you can receive. Outbound marketing is, therefore, also based on content creation.
Step 3: Maintain the relationship until the sale is made
Since the prospect has already been exposed to your name, a sale is much more likely to occur than if you were to send an “out of the blue” email. One of Denis’ wise pieces of advice is not to get discouraged if your contact doesn’t respond immediately. Persevere, send messages until you get a reaction (positive or negative).
Conclusion
In conclusion, to succeed in the world of growth hacking, you need not only to adopt a growth hacker mindset but also to have the right tools at your disposal. Dropcontact does not sponsor this post, but I’m keen to try the techniques Denis Cohen discusses in the podcast.
Posted in Entrepreneurship.
