How to Find and Convert Quality Leads with Outbound x Brendan Bester

welcome to this new episode of outbound genus today we have Brandon uh in this new episode so basically this episode will highlight how Brandon leverage outbound for his company and I will let him introduce himself after so outbound genus is a podcast where we interview expert in the field of outbound we trust that the entry barrier at outbound have increased in the last few years and that while people like brand then need a real expertise and real strong focus on these specific skills to uh make the outbound great again so Brandon welcome to this podcast I will let you introduce yourself and we can go through the interview right after sweet thank you Julian for the introduction um to everyone else good morning afternoon or evening wherever you're joining us from um so yeah my name is Bren investor um I've kind of been working in the marketing field for five almost more than 5 years now um I've kind of been everywhere in the company from corporate to Startup uh I originally started in uh corporate moved away from that because um it just wasn't for me it wasn't the politics and everything wasn't there but uh since then I've kind of delved into marketing completely it's what I do for a living now uh I started with um small scale stuff and then I worked it up to um a bigger management position I moved away from that to start my own company and since kind of pivoted into email marketing I've done paid ads I've done SEO um I've done really everything I even put my hand into social media which I'm not too keen on I I tend to avoid that let the other experts handle that but nowadays um I do fullscale marketing that in primarily implies uh email marketing that's my pivate um email marketing in the sense of uh private email marketing where it is for our owned um customers are owned uh list and everything we also do um outbound strategies we also do cold emailing uh we used to do cold calling and SMS in uh but it hasn't been that applicable in the recent years but um kind of been everywhere so I I think I'm I have some experience in this industry that's amazing last question for the the quick introduction about yourself where are you located uh I currently live in Abu Dhabi which for people AR it's an hour away from du buy so that's really great so we we really can see that marketing need to be applied everywhere and AD bound have the own benefit in all the all the country world really great so what may you decide to start using outbound as a strategy realistically for any company and even my own um it kind of started with the thing is you only have so many owned lists you only have so many owned customers and then you have to consider either doing ad ads or doing some sort of outbound or doing uh some sort of other marketing technique realistically if you're scaling you're going to be doing a little bit of everything but outbound strategies realistically especially in email marketing side of things uh cold emailing like I said previously cold uh calling and all these approaches they work it just has to be very targeted it has to be very focused um it kind of has to be aligned as well with what you're doing and what you're offering for the customer um or potential customer in this case right so I I think that's kind of the situation on why outbound has become way more critical uh because as well ads ads get expensive depending on the time of year so it's kind of playing the field true true exactly and you mention it like the art getting expensive and I think uh we experience the same in the outbound expertise to have deliverability that is higher to achieve and to get reply rate that is to Achi so what is the biggest challenge for you when you when it come to outbounds um a few things I I think the key takeaways would be finding good quality leads um because you could find massive list you could find um you could reach out to a million people but if only 10 of them respond you could as well have just called up five of your neighbors right it's kind of logic there so I I think the key thing is there finding good quality um potential leads and then also just offer matching you know someone that's buying cookies doesn't want to be sold in jet engine it's you kind of want to see what you're offering to the people and making sure it reaches their inbox so they could see that offer that's kind of the hardest struggle I'd say right now exactly uh so and and have you ever found any solution that help you to achieve such a precise targeting with the right value proposition in front of the right people to an extent it's still difficult um it's getting harder but there there's certain outbound strategies that we can incorporate and do incorporate um targeted uh list growth right like finding the people that are actually applicable to what you're trying to sell um there's cycling um there's also sending at certain times certain days certain peaks of the year so there's a mix there's a very big mixture in that pot right of trying to figure out what works and what doesn't and sometimes you fall face flat and you're like what happened even though it just worked recently indeed so what should the ideal solution be able to do to make your life easier and make the outbound really effective I think like you mentioned Julian uh a key part is making sure it lands in front of the right people um it's it's it's part of sales it's part of outbound it's part of everything if your message doesn't even reach the person then then you're going to have problems right because you're you're you're like throwing clay against the wall hoping it's stick so making sure that your uh deliverability and compliance is there but then also making sure your offer matches and then making sure to who you're sending the list um they're clean list they're uh you know we don't have junky emails we don't spend money for no reason I think that's key part of what you look for in a good um service from a software's perspective you know there's like UI complaints and stuff like that but the key point is does your email reach the intended user yes or no right it doesn't matter how it looks like if it looks like Microsoft 2010 um so exactly but eventually what is important is how do you Source the because this is the very biggest pinpoint that exist at that moment is how do you find the people that have the right intent with the right problem that the solution we we are solving exactly and then reaching them because you have them and you need to reach them right correct how how would you approach that as a as a software to actually Source the right people um well we live in an internet economy right so uh there's a lot of touch points it's generally from a sourcing perspective you really need to go to first develop your customer profile what is the customer you're trying to sell to right like I said earlier with the baker example if you want to sell to Bakers you should go to Baker communities you should go to uh Reddit social media wherever they are um in regards to sourcing that's probably where you're going to find your best quality you know they're not going to be as cold they're going to be a lot more um H qualified exactly exactly and if they qualified they're aware of the problem that you're are solving and will be way more likely to understand what you have to offer as well and if they understand and they have the problem this is where you actually achieve very high conversion rate correct exactly right great so how do you how do you define the importance of the ad Bound in your overall strategy is like like 50% with the inbound content marketing and stuff or how do you apply that currently um I would say it depends kind of on your company size it depends on your where you're working because some companies some Industries depend a lot more on it and I think it's super crucial for certain industries that need it like 100% uh for me it's a little bit of a a pot that's doing because I do work right in all avenues of marketing right now so for me um I I do do the email marketing I do the uh outbound I manage um a set a number of people in regards to what they do as well so I'm kind of all over the place but I think the key takeaway is if you're a company looking to scale and you're a company that hasn't quite right found their message their Market fit then it's very essential because you're not going to grow without figuring out what you need to sell and how to sell it exactly that the key essential component of of the strategy and uh and you seems to have multiple Venture under your your cover currently how many lead do you usually handle each month um depends on the peak of the year uh there's certain times of the year where we upscale it and there's certain times of the year where we're too busy with other things so um I would say on an average during a peak um qualified leads probably around in a month's time uh I'd say 18 to 25 maybe qualified leads um uh that's like they're in the pipeline and everything around list size we we work with huge list um I'm not going to delve into that but uh we we we're everywhere so we try to work with big list small list any list all right so what is the number of email you send per per per outbound email specifically if you have that number in mind um let's take our recent Peak I think we sent around um probably 400,000 or so um in our last Peak we had a qualif IFI leads it was a good conversion I think um surprisingly good actually for us but yeah like I said it fluctuates sometimes we do list size of 20K sometimes we do um 300 sometimes we do 500 uh like 500 independently and 500,000 depends on the time of year okay very interesting so you work with really big big account big number of list or that's plenty of of emails that you're sending really real expertise here and uh and and I think this is a really trendy question how do you use uh and do you use AI in your in your strategy I mean ai's now been everywhere every stage of the business in uh marketing now has some sort of AI um kind of incorporated into it we've experimented with AI for um pattern tracking so essentially out of all the emails that we've sent where um kind of have the hotpots been which countries uh we've used AI to try to utilize that data because we try to collect that data and try to sample it through AI we've used AI to personalized subject lines uh we've kind of used AI to mass um first lines so um yeah AI everywhere I I think it's in all it's in all marketing subcategories right it's in ads it's in normal email marketing it's in uh F social media marketing so AI is very prominent I'd say yeah we cannot get rid of it anymore and it will remain for the next decade I believe and and happy for us right it only make our life easier yeah I mean rather embrace it and try to fight it I don't know about you guys but I'm not going to go against a you know artificially million dollar TR computer no chance we win over the machine right machine right all right so I think the last question is is coming I think we all know the the answer for that one but uh it might be surprising what is your go to outbound channel channel yeah um I mean very ironically with the the sites that we work with it's email of course um um email is primarily we've used LinkedIn um for more of our B2B connects uh I would say that's probably a little bit better for sourcing and uh reaching out to uh working professionals and B2B if you're working from a b2c standpoint you're probably doing email um and if you're really really desperate you're calling people so exactly b2c calling people wow for b2c you calling people yeah I mean back like yeah especially in the US um it depends on the ticket if the tickets are higher then yeah yeah okay very great to to have those inside I never cool thought about about that I'm currently living in Bangkok so whenever call I get every day I don't understand what they're saying perhaps I do have some some people that are selling me stuff that that's exactly where they're not doing it right right if they if they're selling in Bangkok they need a guy that's speaks your language exactly exactly eventually AI going to help that because they're going to be able to do the script and the AI speaks all the languages right So eventually I will get targeted with the right value proposition and that will help me to make the right decision or help me to go faster in my in my buying process as well yeah 100% if it's an AI or not you're like hello perhaps someday you could be at the beach and and still be on podcast or Discovery call with people while uh while being at 10 10 times on on call right all right very good do you want to add anything any promotion about your services your audiences if you have anything to share where people can follow you anything you would like to share before we end this episode all right uh thanks for that Julian I I think the key things that I'd like to promote is um is where I work now is Ema marketing that's what I do I do it professionally uh I do it for clients of all scale um not so much super small scale anymore we've kind of moved away from that so if you're a company that's generating anywhere from 100 to a million plus a month um and you're looking to do your email marketing right you know 20 to 30% of your total store Revenue coming from email marketing which is exactly where you want to be because email marketing as most know is the best uh Roi uh for your money so unlike ads where you spend a lot and make less you know um contact me and I I think the best way to reach me is probably LinkedIn I think my LinkedIn is at Bren investor similar to my name and if you want to send me an email then you could always just uh do that as well and I I think that's primarily the uh key socials I use I I do have a website as well I think it's uh BB marketing uhme so yeah reach out if you are serious about making some money in your emails very good thank you very much and indeed I think uh according to what we observe and and stuff um outbound allow you to make predictable uh Pipeline and and that the power of of that thank you very much and uh let's get in touch uh all the link will be around for get in touch with brandan and see you in the next episode bye bye