Rolling Outreach vs. Intermittent Outreach: A Strategy

When you add a prospect to your outreach list, there are two main ways you can reach out to them: in a time bound manner, depending on the prospect’s behaviors; or in an intermittent manner, depending on what you have to offer.

Email Outreach Strategy

While this seems obvious and straightforward, creating a cohesive content plan that utilizes both types of outreach can be a challenge. Despite that challenge, it is best to use a combination of these types of outreach.

So what exactly do I mean by “time bound” or “rolling” outreach, compared to “intermittent” outreach?

Time Bound or Rolling Outreach

This is the type of outreach that is triggered by the behavior of a prospect. When your prospect takes a certain action, they are delivered certain content. Often, these actions are set off by engaging with “gated content,” but once you have your prospect’s contact info, the possibilities become much more varied. By tracking your prospects, you can reach out to them based on any combination of engagement or page view behavior. What you send to them could be in the form of a single piece of outreach, or an outreach sequence.

When you opt-in for a downloadable ebook or any other piece of content, and trade your email address for it, you expect that piece of content to be delivered ASAP, in a time bound manner. If you opt into a multi-part course, you might expect the first piece of the course immediately, and the next pieces at regular intervals, in a rolling manner. (What you wouldn’t expect, is for the course or resource to be sent to you based off of the timeline of the business you are interacting with.)

Intermittent Outreach

Once a prospect has engaged with your brand and is part of your outreach list, you can use intermittent outreach to build a relationship, keep the prospect updated, and possibly make a sale! This is the type of outreach that depends on the timeline of your business and could include things like sale notifications, new product drops, or new pieces of relevant content your prospect might find useful.

These pieces of outreach aren’t directly related to a specific behavior of your prospect, but they should still be contextualized based off of their past behaviors and actions.

Using the Combination Strategy

For the best engagement with your email list (or your chat bot list, etc.), you’ll want to use a combination of intermittent and rolling outreach.

Every encounter your prospect has with your brand is a valuable data point for creating a contextualized, personalized experience for that prospect. Using a combination of well-crafted rolling outreach, in tandem with contextualized intermittent outreach is the crux of creating momentum in your marketing flywheel.

All of this is to say: Use what you know about your prospects’ behavior to continually engage with them in meaningful ways!

Be Timely

When a prospect engages with your content in a new way, reach out with time bound outreach to see how you can provide more value to them. Reach out again to see if there’s anything you can do to improve the resource that you sent them. Thank them for engaging. This is the outreach that is going to start a relationship with the client; it’s very important to be open, honest, and helpful in this stage. But even the most well-planned, complex email sequences will eventually end; and there’s a chance that your contact will fall through the cracks at that point, if you aren’t also using intermittent outreach.

Be Contextual

If your prospect hasn’t tripped any time bound outreach triggers recently, you shouldn’t just let them stagnate! Your email sequence may have played out, but you can bring them back in with engaging, intermittent content that relates to their interests, and serves your brand.

Leverage Data

Use your data to create segmented lists—break your contact list up into usable groups with similar interests and characteristics—and reach out with the content they’d be interested in.

Leverage the data you have about your users to go beyond basic buyer personas: segment users by where they are in the buyers’ journey; what products they have engaged with; specific demographics or interests… there are countless ways to contextualize your outreach, and make the most of the content you already have. Use this combination strategy to build relationships and trust, and to make conversions in the long term!

Conclusion

Direct, time bound outreach in response to your prospects’ behaviors is one of the best ways to grow your contact list, build trust and authority, and start a relationship with your prospect. Intermittent outreach is a great way to keep people in your marketing funnel and add momentum to your flywheel. Use both types of outreach to keep your contacts engaged and impressed.

Interested in getting your outreach system up to par? Contact us to discuss the options!