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.
When provisioning new users or altering current users' credentials for role changes, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Plugins under Outreach settingsSalesforce plugin, then select User, followed by MappingsRemove to completely remove the mapping between Outreach and SalesforceAdd, type in the Salesforce and Outreach names to complete the new mapping. Be sure to double check you selected the correct SFDC ID before hitting saveOutreach 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.
Naming convention for primary sequences include the following:
| Example: | OB EMEA SDRCOMM Trial FollowUp HT DE OR OB EMEA FMM EVT ContributeFY22 Registered |
Please see here a spreadsheet that will help with your naming conventions.
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. Please use the above naming sequence for both primarty and personal. Note: please use the tags to denote if the sequence is Primary or Personal.
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.Accounts tab is a useful way of browsing Outreach prospects + accounts where the SDR's name appears in the SFDC Account field SDR Assigned. This won't filter for every prospect under your ownership (limitations with leads or unassigned accounts may apply), but it will show many relevant prospects. This view won't be available at your first login to Outreach, so you'll need to create it. To create the view,
Accounts section of OutreachOwner is you. Remove this filter for nowAdd filter and type SDR Assigned. Type in your name and hit enter. Change the Sorted by option, if you wishSave view. From this window, you can edit the view name and privacy settingsdefault view. Without this filter in place, the Accounts section's usefulness is primarily steered away from SDRs and moreso to Sales team members.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. |
SDRs need to choose a call disposition after calling a prospect to note the outcome of the call. This outcome will be synced over to SFDC. "CC" is an abreviation for Correct Contact.
| Outreach.io Call Disposition | Notes |
|---|---|
CC:Answered: Info Gathered: Potential Opp |
Some qualification questions were answered but more follow up is needed before an IQM is set |
CC: Answered: Info Gathered: Not Opp yet |
Some qualification questions were answered but no current use case or not the right time |
CC: Answered: Not Interested |
Have stated on the call they are not interested |
CC: Answered: Personal Use |
They are using Gitlab for personal reasons |
CC: Answered: Asked for Call Back |
Caught them at a bad moment and they asked for a call back OR they are still evaluating tool, call back in a few weeks |
CC: Answered: Using Competition |
They are using competition |
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 |
Correct Contact: IQM Set |
You were able to schedule an IQM while on the phone call. Note that a trigger exists in Outreach to automatically change lead status to Qualifying when this option is selected |
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 |
Incorrect Contact: Answered: Gave Referral |
It was the wrong person but they gave a referral to speak to. Please record in notes who the referral is. |
If you are having issues with your Outreach calls, please use the following guides to troubleshoot the issue with your calls :
If the issue persists after , please contact Outreach Support.
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 ReportOnceStep 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 mappedStep 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 dataUse stage from dataSkipStep 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.
Bi-quarterly, we will be deleting prospects out of Outreach with an aim of keeping Outreach clean. Below are the filters we will be using to delete out old prospects:
| Filters |
|---|
| Opted Outed Prospects |
| Bounced- Invalid Email |
| No email and no mobile number |
| No email and created by ZoomInfo |
| Bad Data- Invalid Email |
| Bad Data- Spam |
| Unqualified- Competitor |
| Unqualified- No longer at company |
| No SFDC ID |
| Opted Out - No SFDC ID* |
We are using triggers in Outreach to tag those that we included in the next round of deletion. If you see your prospect with a delete tag on it and feel it should not be, just remove the tag and it won't be included. For more details please see here.
Firstly, we recommend all managers complete this Outreach University training for reports.. Please set up a regular schedule for viewing reports, use this reporting to structure your 1:1s, keep your reps using the recommended naming structure and governance of activities to have accurate report data.
On these reports please look for the following information to ensure your teams are performing well. You cann filter by your team to deep dive. If you would like a full breakdown on what all the metrics mean- please see here.
Booked meetings vs end of month forecast - this forcecast is based on your team members activity. Make note of the conversion rates, please find the average for you team and note those who are above average. Also make note of the breakdown of job titles your rep is meeting with- to do this , click on their number of "Prospects Contacted". Response time - While we have a culture of work when best suits you at Gitlab, there is an expectation to keep response times fast as this can directly influence conversion rates- therefore anything over 8 hours will need to coached. Please note that you can break down response time by job titles but clicking into the hours listed by individual rep. Email Sentiment - This is a good tool for coaching reps, you can drill down into the objections to coach through responses. You can also highlight postive replies to the wider team.
This is a great report to monitor your team's KPIs- currently SDRs need 45 touchpoints a day (this report will only show emails, calls, tasks, it will not give a full picture of the different touchpoints that count towards this KPI. ) You want to see a steady trickle of prospects added weekly. Overdue tasks are a sign that they are not completely their tasks and are possibly overwhelmed if there are over 100. You can filter all the following tabs by individual users or team. Below are the questions that you can answer using these reports:
Email Tab Questions:
Calls tab questions:
Tasks tab questions:
This will show how sequences are being adopted by your teams and overall performance. If you evaluating a new sequence and are unsure if you have enough responses to evaluate, you can check the statisical significance of your sequence against a similar sequence. There are calculaters online to use - example.
How do I know if a sequence is performing well?
Firstly take note of the averages for your team and understand the objective of the sequence you are measuring. Different objectives will result need different measurement. Then order Prospects sequenced by descending and compare the amount added to the meetings booked & reply rate. It may be easier to export a CSV as you will be able to see sentiment percentages in the same sheet.
How many steps is too many steps in a sequence?
In your sequence report, open the step view by clicking on the sequence name. Check the email sentiments of the reply rates for each step and note when the steps start to result in mostly objections/unsubscribes in their replies. To drill down into the objections, go to the email sentiment page and understand if they are objections due to persona/content/timing of the emails. With this knowledge, you can coach your reps on the right persona to add or adjust the content of the sequence. Make sure to look into the uncategorised sentiment to read the objections to get a full picture. You can A/B test in sequences , please see here for more infomation on how to.
You can filter by reps to prepare for 1:1s - prospect overview shows how their prospecting is going. Leaderboad will show most used sequences. Make sure to monitor unsubscribes- keep it under 2%. You can drill down into the threads that are leading to unsubscribes and coach your rep if it is too high.
