High volume outreach vs. low volume personalized outreach

April 07, 2022

by a searcher from Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business in Kraków, Poland

I would love to hear your thoughts on the approach to manually personalized emails vs. mass outreach campaigns. For simplicity's sake, programmed mass outreach focus is very tempting for anyone with performance marketing experience. Yet, searching is more like B2B Sales which depends on the quality of relationships and relationship building. In my opinion, it's only going to get harder to get responses which will require going with a more targeted approach. Especially, since tons of people are sending horrible spammy outreach emails, so by sending a good email we have a chance to stand out from the crowd. Pls, share your success stories on mass outreach vs. individually personalized email.

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Reply by a searcher
from Harvard University in Fort Wayne, IN, USA

I think both can work, but the middle ground is dangerous. Either commit to going ultra high volume and by brute force you’re likely to find the needle in the haystack OR go all in on a much more personal, focused path. Meet as many “connectors” (lawyers, bankers, CPAs, etc) and business owners as possible, share your story, and ask for referrals. Yes, that’s personalized emails, but it’s also a lot of phone calls and coffees.

The right path for you is highly personal, but probably a question of size of personal network, skills in front of a computer vs in front of people, and type of industry you’re targeting.

I went path #2 because I was a mid-career searcher with a bigger personal network, less mass email / technical savvy, and a strong personal preference towards meals with connectors over mass emails. I was very fortunate to close roughly a year after starting my search after being connected to a business by another owner I was courting. That owner came from my personal network and was willing to chat with some of his buddies and ask if anyone was interested in selling to a guy like me. One said yes, and the warm lead led to us closing a fully proprietary, below market deal a few months later.

Reply by a searcher
from University of Pennsylvania in Charlotte, NC, USA

I agree with those favoring a low-volume tailored message approach, and this works particularly well, in my experience, when you have a reasonably good idea of what you're looking for and can communicate in your personalized messaging what you bring to the table that aligns with the target business. As you said, business owners are inundated with generic spammy mass emails. In our experience (very brief) with mass emailing the response rate was extremely low and the quality of those few responses even lower. As mentioned above, we also use a ranking/matrix approach for potential targets, using (x) fundamental attractiveness, and (y) fit with our skillset/strengths as the axes.

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