Show notes
Most emails from salespeople are terrible.
They're impersonal, irrelevant, and ineffective.
They often don't reflect a prospect's interests or needs.
Lavender wants to change that with AI-powered technology that lets salespeopole write better emails.
On this episode of Marketing Spark, Lavender co-founder Will Allred talks about why salespeople struggle with email and how they can be more successful.
We also explore the new sales landscape and the adjustments that salespeople needed to make during COVID when they couldn't meet with prospects of attend conferences.
And we talk about Lavender's use of LinkedIn and TikTok to connect with customers.
From the conversation
How Lavender started
Lavender is a Chrome extension that helps sellers write a better email faster at every stage of the writing process. Will Allred, its co-founder, traces the company to 2018, when he worked at a consulting firm in Atlanta and met his future cofounder, William Balance, at a hackathon. The first idea was to use people's digital footprints to segment marketing lists by more than demographics or behaviors, so campaigns could reflect why people do what they do.
Will spent about two years building that with brands such as Yamaha and Gravity Blankets. In March 2020, customers began cutting marketing budgets, and the team had a couple of months of runway and no customers. While scrolling TechCrunch, they saw that LinkedIn was shutting down support for Sales Navigator within Gmail. They had the data connections to fill that gap, and they added content analytics so a seller could see how an email would come across.
Over the summer the team tested several markets, including recruiters, job seekers and customer success. In late July 2020, Nick Bennett posted about Lavender on LinkedIn and installs took off. Will says salespeople loved the product and loved talking about it, so the company committed to sales.
Why salespeople struggle with email
Will names four trends. Remote work removed easy in-person feedback, and he recalls turning to a colleague at the consulting firm to look over an email. The number of emails going out more than doubled, while responses almost got cut in half, according to HubSpot data. Sellers used to rely on the volume knob, and Will says that security blanket disappeared almost overnight.
The third trend is how people are taught to write in school. Nobody teaches a business email tone, and the formal, comprehensive style from school is the wrong fit. Will says the goal is the opposite. The fourth trend was sellers flocking to LinkedIn to share what they were doing, which helped Lavender get noticed.
"Your goal should be to build curiosity and leave questions unanswered and speak as though they're a friend you haven't met yet."
Writing from the buyer's point of view
Will says the biggest mistake is staying inside the seller's own head. Sellers add information about themselves and what they can do, while the person receiving the email is putting out fires and not thinking about the seller. His advice is to stop talking about yourself. Shorter emails, simpler wording, mobile optimization and tentative tones all help, but Will says they will not produce the best result unless the email is about the buyer.
He pushes back on the image of the lazy sales rep. The sellers he talks to want better results. Automation looks common because a small share of people can create most of the email, and a negative email experience sticks with a reader far longer than an indifferent positive one. Will thinks the realistic goal is an email that does not upset the reader.
Sellers know that personalized emails get two times the responses of automated ones and want to learn how to write them. Will adds that people move from SDR to AE or manager and stop honing the skill. He calls it a tough time to be an SDR, but also a good time to lean into community and technology tools.
"It's that shift of mindset of let me try to convert them to let me try to converse with them about their problems. That is the biggest piece of feedback that I could give sellers."
Adapting as selling returns to in-person
Will says Lavender is trusting its data science to track changes in how sellers work. The product also accounts for them. Lavender provides a mobile preview so sellers can edit an email as it will look on a phone.
The team did not expect another effect. A purple icon sits in the compose window and acts as a hub for the product. Growth took off in January because people in the office saw colleagues using it.
On sales more broadly, Will says remote sales teams are now normal. Conferences bring their own needs, so post-conference follow-up emails are a category the company should create content around or build into the product.
"Your email is eight times more likely to be read initially on a phone. So that's your first impression, and we're actively tracking and monitoring for that."
Testing channels and building on LinkedIn
Will recommends the book Traction and its idea of power laws. He explains that the team runs test experiments, picks a few channels in a week and goes all in. They have tried news publications, email marketing and retargeting ads. When Nick Bennett's post showed engagement in real time, they chose LinkedIn as the next experiment. Most results are still tied to LinkedIn, and the team is now diversifying.
The starting point was the end user, someone scrolling LinkedIn from home. Will says the word that describes the approach is helpful. Lavender, a team of four at the time, had seen Gong succeed with reports on what to say and what not to say on calls, and it added a personal flair about helping people write emails.
For a long time Lavender ignored its company page because LinkedIn favors personal brands. The page now has over 6,500 followers, and the content is cheeky, such as a tip to take the commas out of your writing. Will says building a following takes time and is easier for early arrivals, so he advises using the comment section. When his engagement falls, he comments more and sees it rise again.
"You've got a power law distribution. That means, basically, 80% of your results will come from 20% of your actions."
TikTok and how to try Lavender
Will had not used TikTok before using it for work. He started after seeing Will Aiken and Nick Posey make creative videos on LinkedIn, and he asked both for advice. He applied the LinkedIn approach of posting helpful content and has seen good engagement. The only thing he says he has figured out is that subject line content does well, and he prefers to repost the videos on other platforms.
He says TikTok also made the brand more personable. At an event in Atlanta, someone told him they had seen his TikToks. Will adds that TikTok is easier to gain traction on with less work, while LinkedIn now resembles an SEO strategy that demands consistency.
On pricing, anyone can install Lavender free, and the free tier comes with a trial of the premium features. A team plan includes all integrations and beta tools such as Lavender Anywhere. The Pro plan offers unlimited access to tools and features without all the integrations. The free tier lacks mobile preview and allows fewer profile lookups each month. Will can be reached through LinkedIn or at will.allred@trylavender.com.