How Reply helped Sound Advice Careers smash their revenue goals

We don’t just make job seekers look great on the page—we help them throughout the job search process, in a completely different way to how they were taught earlier in their careers. As a result, all the marketing we put out needs to draw professionals willing to think differently about how they’re approaching their career and their job search.

We knew that our customers didn’t want to see the same kinds of generic communication they saw coming from bigger companies. The career coaching space is dominated by solo practitioners and, as a result, people expect to see personalized, one-to-one messaging when they’re exploring resources like ours. We knew we needed a communication tool that would allow us to create that kind of experience but on a large scale.

Reply creates that experience.

Personalizing messages at scale

We use Reply in tandem with Salesforce to manage all of our inbound sales needs. We find the typical job tenure is somewhere around three to five years, but that doesn’t include promotions and internal opportunities that professionals uncover at their companies, so it’s likely our clients will need some type of coaching or support from us every year. Because we’re top of mind, they always know that we’re there to support them when those situations arise.

Reply helps us create messages that feel highly personal while distributing them to a large, diverse audience. We’re reminded of that every day; even though we’re creating messages that go out to hundreds of people, they reply to them as though we’re talking with them one on one.

Because of Reply, I’m able to be two or three people at once. If I was sitting on top of my inbox all day every day, sending the messages that Reply sends and having that one on one contact, I wouldn’t be able to support our team of coaches and writers the way that they need me to in order to deliver the best possible results for our clients. I wouldn’t be able to develop and implement new marketing initiatives that allow us to meet our revenue goals. Reply truly does allow me to duplicate myself as a leader and marketer.

Sparking engagement with Reply

I like that emails appear as though they were sent directly from my personal email address and that I wrote the email personally. It’s continually reassuring to see that our audience respond as though they’re speaking with me directly. This personal touch is important to us! That’s the biggest benefit of Reply, especially when we’re in a market where people demand that one on one service, more so than many other industries or service spaces.

That engagement—those small responses and interactions—help us push the needle in terms of our revenue goals. People (who would likely fall off the map otherwise) respond and let us know that while life and work are crazy right now, they still actually want to partner with us in the near future. It’s easy for us to then follow up with them later on because we understand where they’re at in real-time. Without that, we wouldn’t be able to stay connected to them and engage with them as part of the Sound Advice community.

The metrics Reply provides us with are also invaluable. We’re data-driven at Sound Advice, and Reply allows us to test different approaches and push our assumptions about what’s working, as well as what’s not. It’s worth saying that while I’m not naturally numbers person, the dashboard is easy for me to digest.

We would miss out big time without Reply.

Cold emails that drive sales

I’ve seen cold emails written as though they’re trying to squeeze everything into that first message, on the off chance that maybe they’ll grab your attention, leaving very little room for curiosity or intrigue.

At Sound Advice, we try to treat every cold email the way we would have a personal conversation at a networking event. We say enough to start a conversation and learn more about the person we’re chatting with, but we definitely don’t say everything in that first message. We treat it like a volleyball match, a back and forth process, and that’s where we’ve seen the most success.

I believe in being persistently polite when it comes to following up, checking in, and maintaining a connection with someone I’ve spoken with. I’m able to do that with Reply in a way that doesn’t feel like I’m being a nag or too pushy.

Each month, we do an end of month campaign with a different theme, in order to re-engage prospects that we spoke with earlier in the month. Last month we had a 40% open rate, which was really exciting, and about half of the people who opened the email ended up purchasing with us. That was huge and, as a result, we were able to surpass our revenue goal for the month.

If you’re looking for your next job or find that dream position, contact Sound Advice Careers today!

If you’re interested to see how Reply can help you send personalized emails at scale, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.