Outreach is a sales engagement platform helps efficiently and effectively engage prospects to drive more pipeline and close more deals.
User set-up instructions can be found here.
Outreach provides educational courses via their Outreach University Pathways programs that are updated frequently with new content. While GitLab does not require the SDR team to pursue completion of Outreach University Pathways, it's recommended for longterm users to pursue mastery of any marketing tools we use.
Sequences are one of the main features of Outreach. Users can create a series of touchpoints in order to communicate and automate their workflows. We currently have two types of sequences. Primary and personal. Primary sequences are created to be shared and used across teams. Personal are for your own use.
Naming convention for primary sequences include the following:
Example: | EMEA PRIMARY English Just Commit HIGH |
When creating a new primary sequence or shared event sequence, please tag marketing ops on the issue for QA review prior to enabling it. The sequence is reviewed to ensure it has the correct rulesets, tags, collections, throttles, variables and other settings. Personal sequences do not need to be reviewed unless you wish to have an additional pair of eyes on it.
You may choose the best delivery schedule and ruleset applicable to your goals. You may choose whether or not others can see and use your sequence or if you would like to keep it private. All sequence must have Throttle's enabled. This helps to stagger the volume of prospects moving through a sequence at one time. It is necessary to help prevent users from hitting the email provider's mailing limits. If you have too much volume this may result in you being kicked out of your email inbox by our provider. Max adds per user every 24 hours are to be set up to 75. If you need to request special sequence settings please reach out to Marketing Operations with your use case.
Collections are an easy way to group sequences, snippets, and templates that get assigned to user groups for easier access.
Examples associated to our SDR groups include our SDR Inbound 2020
and 2020 Events
collections.
You may request new collections by opening an issue in the Marketing Operations Project.
Snippets
are an easy way to save time when constructing emails. If there are frequent statements or phrases being sent to prospects, check if any team members have created a snippet
related to that topic. If creating new, universally helpful snippets
, remember to set permissions to Others can see and use
and apply a Collection
, where applicable.Master
sequences have been set to work in specific timezones. Those in AMER
should not be using sequences set to APAC
timezones.Variables
allow Outreach to auto-populate prospect data and sender data, increasing productivity via automation. Pay close attention to what variables
are available when composing emails and what information the variables
will populate. If a prospect in Salesforce says "No Company" in the Company
field, the Outreach variable
for company
will populate "No Company" in the sent email.company
field of Salesforce and Outreach does not flow naturally in conversation, check to see if a Company Natural Name
can be added. For example, "Mr Bob's Company Incorporated" sounds less natural in conversation than "Mr Bob's". When using a natural name, use the variable
{{company_natural}} in the email template instead of {{company}}.Variables
can also be used for setting manual tasks
within an email template. However, these manual tasks
function differently than a normal variable
. After the brackets at the beginning of the variable
, a "!" needs to be added or Outreach will attempt to populate the phrase inside the brackets. For example, a manual task
should read {{! Edit this email before sending}}. If the "!" is not added, the sequence will fail with a "Template Syntax Error" message.The current meeting templates will sync to an SFDC event. Please be aware that Outreach will only create SFDC events for meetings Booked from Outreach
. Per Outreach's support documentation, Booked from Outreach
is defined as "The meeting was booked using the Outreach Public Calendar Link, insert availability, or by sending an invite through Outreach." This is important for SDRs to keep in mind to ensure any Initial Qualified Meetings (IQMs) are tracked appropriately.
Meeting Type | Use Case | Notes |
---|---|---|
IQM (30) | For qualified prospects being sent from the SDR team to Sales to determine next steps with GitLab. | If no template is selected in the drop down this is the default meeting type used. |
Discovery Call (30) | To be used as an intro call for potential clients and qualify their needs. | |
Evaluation Orchestration Call (25) | A deeper dive into a potential clients needs. | 25 minute evaluation. |
Evaluation Orchestration Call (45) | A deeper dive into a potential clients needs. | This is a longer duration at 45 minutes rather than 25. |
Pricing Call (25) | This is for potential clients who want to know about GitLab pricing. May also be used for renewal discussion with current clients. |
Outreach is able to sync some custom information about these meetings into events including:
Event Field | Notes |
---|---|
Subject |
If using a template the subject line is provided as the Title of the meeting. |
Description |
If using a template the Description is already filled in for you. If not it will be whatever you are writing to who you are inviting to the meeting. |
Location |
The zoom link associated to the meeting. |
Start Date |
Date and time the meeting is booked for. |
End Date |
Date and time the meeting ends. |
Name of Prospect |
This is the person who is attending the meeting. |
Owner of the Meeting |
Who the meeting is assigned to. |
Related Opportunities |
When booking meetings you can associate the event to an open opportunity. |
Outreach Meeting Type |
This displays the name of the meeting template used for the meeting. |
Booked By |
If you book a meeting on someone else's behalf this displays the name of the person who booked it. |
Attributed Sequence Name |
The last known sequence name will be brought over into this field. |
Meeting Source |
The Source field will display one of two values (App or Sync) so that you can distinguish whether a meeting was booked through Outreach or if it was booked prior to connecting with Outreach and retroactively synced back to SFDC. |
Meeting Cancelled |
Outreach can not delete events in SFDC. If a meeting is deleted within Outreach it will check the Meeting Cancelled checkbox. |
Outreach.io Call Disposition | Notes |
---|---|
Correct Contact: Answered |
The correct contact actully picked up the phone and you had a conversation with the contact |
Correct Contact: Left Message |
You were able to reach the voicemail for the correct contact and you left a message on their machine or with their Personal Assistant |
Correct Contact: Not Answered/Other |
You were able to reach the correct contact through a company directory but it kept ringing. You reached the contacts voicemail but their voicemail was not set up so you could not leave a message |
Busy |
Get a busy tone when calling |
Bad Number |
The phone number is not valid |
Incorrect Contact: Answered |
The wrong person answered the phone number that you had for this contact and it is the wrong persons phone number (They were not a personal assistant). They didn’t take a message for the correct person or give helpful information |
Incorrect Contact: Left Message |
The wrong person answered the phone and it is the wrong persons phone number (They were not a personal assistant). They took a message for the correct person/gave you the correct number for the contact |
Incorrect Contact: Not Answered/Other |
You got through to the voicemail but the voicemail was for someone other than the person who you were trying to contact. Or the person was not listed in the company directory and you were calling the companies main number |
SDR teams will use the functionality for scheduling to save time and effort, providing the best customer experience.
If a meeting to be scheduled, the SDR will respond with times-lots by following the instructions here.
Custom fields from Outreach that sync into SFDC for understanding engagement status in Outreach.
Field Name | Description |
---|---|
Actively Being Sequenced | Checkbox for if a prospect is active in a sequence |
Name of Active Sequence | Name of the most recent active sequence. If they are in multiple sequences it will note the sequence they have been in the longest. |
Sequence Status | The state of the sequence: Active, Pending, Failed. |
Number of Active Sequences | How many sequences a lead is active in. |
Sequence User | Is the User ID of who sequenced the lead. |
Sequence Task Due Date | identifies the date the upcoming task is due. |
Sequence Step Number | Identifies the step of the sequence a lead is in. |
Sequence Step Type | Identifies if the step is Phone Call or Automated E-mail, ect. |
Outreach is not meant for mass communications nor bulk email sends it is intended for very targeted account and prospect communications. The Outreach platform is directly integrated to the GitLab Gmail account and each users email is linked through OAuth therefore all activity in Outreach has the potential to impact the IP reputation of the GitLab domain with all major email services providers.
As such there are sending limits built into the Outreach platform as well as limits put in place by Gmail itself.
Step 1:
Create your SFDC report and save it into the Unfiled Public Reports
folder.
Step 2:
Navigate to the ⚡Quick Actions button and choose Bulk Create
.
Import Type
as Prospects Salesforce Report
Once
Step 3: Next you will review the mapping of the above 4 fields in the Outreach plugin. These usually auto-populate if Outreach can determine the correct field.
Not mapped
Step 4: On the next screen you will be prompted with more fields. To prevent from overriding important data please select the following:
Use owner from data
Use stage from data
Skip
Step 5:
Select the Start Import
button on the next screen.
Outreach stages are a 1:1 match with SFDC Status. The rulesets help push prospects along into the correct stage/status based on their actions. This eliminates the need for triggers to match status to stage.
Outreach will make updates based on these scenarios. Triggers fire in order of operation.
Trigger Name | Prospect Conditions | Account Conditions | Trigger Actions |
---|---|---|---|
00 - Inactive Contact and Lead | Inactive Contact or Lead Checkbox is True | Stop All Sequences | |
01 - Community Queue | Owner is Community Queue | Stop All Sequences | |
02 - Set Nurture Status Reason | Stage is Nurture |
Set Nurture Status Reason to No response |
|
03 - Set Unqualified Status Reason | Stage is Unqualified |
Set Unqualified Status Reason to Unsubscribe |
|
04 - Set Bad Data Status Reason | Stage is Bad Data |
Set Bad Data Reason to Bounced email |
Outreach will automatically merge and delete lead, contact, and account information based on those actions taking place in SFDC. Outreach checks for these data changes in SFDC once a day.
If a lead or contact is currently in an active sequence Outreach will let that lead or contact finish the sequence. This allows the SDR to complete their outreach if working on a duplicate prospect. Once a prospect has been marked as finished. The next time Outreach looks for changes in SFDC it will merge or delete the prospect accordingly.
Prospects that get deleted in Outreach live in the recycle bin until permanently deleted. Both Sales Enablement and Marketing Operations have the ability to remove leads from this recycle bin and bring them back into Outreach if there is ever a scenario that requires this action.
Marketing Ops will be responsible for pausing and locking sequences owned by former team members and for deleting tasks owned by former team members. The MktgOps team will also be responsible for monitoring and cleaning the SAL's and AE's unused sequences and overdue tasks, as necessary. Procedure for the former team members clean up process is as follows:
Former Team Member
Outreach team. This instruction has been added to the deprovisioning template.Sort & Filter
function of Outreach to track tasks and sequences owned by members of the Former Team Members
team. Tasks can be outright deleted, sequences deactivated and locked. Instructions for locking sequences below.Former Team Members
team that are being used by current GitLab team members, change ownership of the sequence to a current team member. MktgOps users are preferred, but change to a team member using the sequence where appropriate.SDRs are asked by SDR Leadership to periodically remove their older, unsued and inactive sequences from view and use. To qualify for clean up, a sequence needs to meet these criteria:
Outreach sequences are a useful source of a/b testing data for customer responses, so the best course of action is not to outright delete sequences. Instead, follow these steps:
Sort & Filter
view, select the checkbox on all applicable sequencesCongrats! You've just helped keep Outreach as a tidy tool for yourself and your teammates. Reward yourself with a tasty treat, if desired.