15 Ways to Enhance Your Sales Strategy with Personalization

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You wake up on a Monday morning, open your computer, and log in to your email. And what do you see…another chaotic jumble of templated emails trying to sell you something or asking you for “A few minutes of your time”.

The worst part about this is then having to sort through them only to find a handful of legitimate emails that requires a response.

To some degree, this might happen every day of your week. Doesn’t feel too great, does it?

On the flip side, your sales organization may be prospecting in a way where they might not think it’s spammy, but the recipients have a similar experience.

What are you doing to make your prospects, leads, and customers feel like they aren’t the victim of another automated sales sequence?

Here are 15 ways to enhance your sales strategy with personalization

1. Respond with personalized videos from sales reps

With modern video recording technology, filming a personalized response video is now just as easy as drafting up a response email. The biggest barrier to overcome is stage-fright. However, if reps are accustomed to cold calling hundreds of contacts per week, it should be in their nature to record a video response. Videos are the most engaging form of content and they certainly will catch eyes in the inbox. And the best part is you can use a catchy subject line or preview text to hint that you embedded a personalized video in the email for your prospect or lead.

2. Use the recipient’s name in the preview text of an email

If you are working out of a sales automation platform, you will have the option (in most cases) to use personalization tokens. These are simply a way to fill in fields from the contact’s profile, to make the messaging seem more personable. If you aren’t seeing the open rates you’d like, try including the name of the contact in the preview text. For a cold email, something like, “We would hate for you to miss out on this, Daniel.” And in a follow-up, you could say something like, “Really enjoyed our conversation, Daniel, I wanted to know if you’ve had time to think about it?”

3. Respond with GIFs in your email bodies

You know the saying “a picture is worth 1,000 words”. Well technically speaking, a GIF averages 60 frames, meaning they could contain around 60,000 words of information. Visual content is more easily consumed, especially in digital channels. Plus, GIFs are the language of the internet, used by 22.8% of ALL websites, and often involve humorous gestures. Humor bridges gaps in sales conversations and establishes a trustworthy relationship with prospects. The great thing about GIFs is that they can be used to communicate points in just about every sales situation. Tools such as GIFLine, Glitch Wizard, and Giphy make it easier to leverage them within emails as well.

4. Introduce yourself on a cold call with a joke

Ditch your typical introduction and think of a relevant, lighthearted line to get into the conversation. 63% of sales reps say that cold calling is the worst part of their job. Make it fun! For example, be brutally honest: “Hi, I’m with <Company Name> and we’ve never spoken before.” Or introduce yourself with strong enthusiasm: “Hey, Bill, how the heck are you doing today?” The more humor you incorporate, the easier cold calling will get. Buyers hate getting the same intro and voicemail from sales reps…in fact, 84% of buyers complain that sales reps are annoying in their efforts trying to reach them. Making a witty introduction can in many cases be the touch of personalization it takes to move a prospect to a lead.

5. Leverage personalization tokens EVERYWHERE possible

Personalization tokens should be used as much as possible. We discussed including them in the email subject line, but you should always leverage them as well in preview text and email bodies. 80% of customers are more likely to do business with a company that offers personalized experiences. Why not get the most out of your sales automation platform? Modern technology has enabled all sorts of personalization options to include in emails. Not leveraging them will set you back against the competition. Here’s an example of a use case that even includes some manual personalization inputs:

6. Send a handwritten note at the onset of negotiations introducing yourself

Nothing is more personal than a handwritten note. That’s why your parents probably made you write them as a kid after your birthday or a holiday. Furthermore, one neuroscience study found that physical advertisements are actually more emotionally stimulating than digital advertisements. A notecard is tangible and subconsciously is perceived as more real by our brains. Not to mention, offline engagement platforms can now AI technology to replicate the handwriting of reps. This can be a huge time-saver and makes it much more feasible to use within existing sales cycles.

7. After closing a deal, send an onboarding gift

Once a new customer goes through the onboarding process, what better way to welcome them to your company than a personalized gift? 80% of C-suite executives believe that business gifts generate measurable positive ROI in addition to intangible benefits. When it comes to creating an amazing customer experience, it’s hard to beat a personalized gift right off the bat. This is a great tactic to use in tandem with a retention strategy that’s centered around gifting.

8. Record personalized videos of yourself to film product demos or walk-throughs

Similar to responding with a personalized video, filming a screen recording of an account set-up or onboarding tour with your voiceover shows the customer you’re willing to go the extra mile for them. This is a great option if you didn’t get around to cover something over the zoom screen share during the onboarding meeting.

9. Use a one-word subject that solely includes the contact’s name: “<name>?”

This is a more specific trick that can help get people to open your email. It catches eyes and is a super easy personalization tactic that will work in many situations. Look in your sequence or cadence to see which emails are getting the least activity and try implementing there.

10. Compliment someone’s social media profile when engaging with them

There’s something to be said for social media channels when there’s statistics like 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing. If part of your activity in your sales process involves engagement on social media, try complimenting a unique part of the person’s profile. This can create an amazing first impression and often generates an equally kind response. Sales is all about relationships, and this is a super simple way to get your foot in the door.

11. Record a personalized “Thank You” video of yourself after meeting with a lead

This one might sound a little weird, but think about it: what would you do if a company you just bought from sent a personalized video thanking you? It would feel GREAT. Sales teams generally aren’t leveraging video as much as they can. This humble gesture could open up new doors in the customers lifetime and also create word of mouth references to others in their network.

12. Create triggers within workflows when an email CTA is clicked

Automated workflows or sequences enable all sorts of opportunities for personalization. One that isn’t used as much is creating a triggered action specifically when an email CTA is clicked. For instance, if it’s a CTA to request a demo, you could send them another email to follow-up from one of the sales reps saying they’d love to get to know them.

13. Record a personalized video thanking a customer for their commitment to your brand

A HubSpot survey revealed that 54% of consumers want to see more videos. For instance, once a customer reaches their 6-month mark in a year subscription, have a video saved for automation that will thank them for using your product. This is just another great way to keep your solution top of mind, especially right in the middle of their subscription or lifetime.

14. Send a personalized gift thanking a customer for a landmark with your company

Similarly, save personalized gifts for automation to thank customers when they reach a certain landmark with your business. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% leads can lead to a 25-95% increase in profits.

15. Keep personalization consistent throughout channels of communication

Lastly, ensure your omnichannel approach is FULL of personalization. While automation and personalization act like two polar magnets pushing against each other, modern sales technology is only pushing them closer together. Ensure your tech stack enables your team to create genuine connections across all mediums, from phone calls to emails. Doing so will create a more authentic voice of your brand and establish a repertoire.

Takeaways

Hopefully, you see one or more of these strategies that will fit in your sales cycle. Personalization is proven to generate more replies and book you more meetings. It can be a great retention tactic as well.

Sales is about creating and cultivating relationships. How are you supposed to do that when you send the same email to hundreds of people?

Fortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what sales automation technology is capable of. The next few years could revolutionize the next century of selling by standardizing how personalization can be leveraged with automation.

We hope you enjoyed this! Happy selling.