The power of social proof in cold outreach

Target the followers of your podcast guests to boost reply-rate

The author: Guillaume Moubeche CEO at Iempire.
The company: B2B sales and marketing software business: lempire.
The goal: Boost outreach reply-rate and convert more customers.
The tactic: Interview a podcast guest within your industry, then reach out to their followers using your connection with the guest to add social proof.
The result: More people will reply as the authority of your guest will pass on to you.

What's the fast marketing tactic?

Guillaume interviews big-name guests on his podcast.

They have big audiences, so obviously, he cuts up bitesize clips from each show – a section that made them look great, where they’re discussing something they’re particularly knowledgeable and passionate about, then shares these with the guests and asks them to share.

Here are some examples:

Nothing special there…

Now here’s the tactic.

Once they share the clip, he monitors the post and reaches out to everyone who has liked, shared or commented… to get them onto a sales call.

Here’s the email Guillaume sent to the people who engaged with Justin Welsh’s share:

Note the social proof… more on that later.

If they don’t share?

He does the same thing, but with a scraped list of their followers and slightly different email copy to also link to the podcast episode (as they may not be aware of it).

But again, with the goal of using the social proof from that guest, to set up sales call.

What was the result?

These are a sample of the responses Guillaume received after this targeted outreach:

Why does it work?

First off, the email is short, snappy and doesn’t come across as a hard sell. But perhaps more importantly, there’s already a kind of trust built into the email due to the social proof that the mutual connection provides. With cold emails, a lack of trust the number one reason they usually fail. People implicitly feel confident in the relevance and intent of the correspondence, so they’re far more likely to respond.

As these people have been judiciously targeted there’s less of a need to cram information and try the hard-sell. This person already knows you’ve spoken to Justin – so no need to link to the podcast, just an intriguing invitation to chat. That’s how you build the trust that so often undermines cold emails.

Finally, the CTA is effortless – just 15 minutes of their time, no need for an hour.

A masterful combination of content marketing and cold outreach, all infused with authority and social proof from the podcast guest.

Learn how to grow your business across all channels, check out the Growth Marketing Minidegree.

The specialist behind this tactic

Guillaume Moubeche is the CEO at lempire, a company that helps other businesses grow. So it comes as no surprise that he is a master of targeted networking.

Do you like tactics like these?