quantifying outreach - michael king

7/28/2019 Quantifying Outreach - Michael King

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QUANTIFYING OUTREACHWhat we learned from nearly 300,00 outreach emails

MICHAEL KING

@ipullrank


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Download this deck:

http://slidesha.re/quantifying-outreach


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I did SEO here 2010-2011

Working for huge brands is cool, but it was time for

SEO Lead unti


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Director of Inbound Mar

Lead Inbound Marketing Efforts for the Bran

Launch and Lead On-Page Optimization and Digital Brand

Training Link Building Teams in Social Link Bui

Working With Tech Team to Improve Products & Pr


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QUANTIFYING OUTREACWhat we learned from nearly 300,00

5

MICHAEL KINGDIRECTOR OF INBOUND MARKETING

@ipullrank


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BUILDING LINKS IS

TOO HARD.


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WHY CA

ANY RES

TO M

REQU


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SOMETIMES IT WOULD

REALLY BE NICE TO

KNOW IF IM DOING

THIS SH*T RIGHT!


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@JamesAgate from Skyrocket SEO did a cool study on the performaoutreach emails by different features and I was inspired

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-data (@jamesag
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-datahttp://www.seomoz.org/blog/putting-guest-post-outreach-theories-to-the-test-with-some-real-world-data


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GendOpenDay o

HourNumMessFirst Emai

Combining the iAcquire iRank and Buzzstream datasets we analyzedof297,791 emails to develop definitive insights on outreach link build

Download the study: http://www.iacquire.com/resources/quantifying-outreach/
http://www.iacquire.com/resources/quantifying-outreach/http://www.iacquire.com/resources/quantifying-outreach/http://www.iacquire.com/resources/quantifying-outreach/http://www.iacquire.com/resources/quantifying-outreach/


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Super props to MikBernardez for all hi

work wrangling thisfor me.

Give him a shout on Twitter @mikebw


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The Link

Building Process

@ipullrank


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RANKING

RESULTS

DIRECTORIES

& LINK DBS

VETTING PROCESSTechnology Driven

VIEWING PROCESS OUTREACH PROCESS

QUALIFIED PAGESPOTENTIAL FUTURE

OPPORTUNITIES

12,558,303PAGES

REVIEWED

BLUELIST FILTERING

TOP 5,000amazon.com, apple.com, wikipedia.org, etc

BLACKLIST FILTERING

DO NOT CONTACT LIST(internally established)

BAD NEIGHBORHOODS(link network & spam)

647,631OPPORTUNITIES

11,487,318PAGES

REMOVED

SEO METRICS FILTERING

Client Specific Filtering out data based on IBL,Moz-Rank, OBL, PR, etc.

MANUAL VIEWING

CLIENT

REQUIREMENTS

Relevancy Guidelines

Content Guidelines

Legal Requirements

QUALITY CONTROL

Full-time Highly-trained

Team

Multi-layered Review

Evolving Quality Guidelines

112,569OPPORTUNITIES

535,062UNQUALIFIED

PAGES

3-4

POTE

NO

RESPONSE


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SO WHA

CANT D


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Crawl prospects

in list mode

Pull any other metrics you

care about

Sure you can. Right in Excel, no less.

Pull Expl

Download Screaming Frog: http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/Download Niels Bosmas SEO Tools: http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/Read: https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/ @seogadget
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/https://seogadget.co.uk/links-data-excel-seomoz-api/http://nielsbosma.se/projects/seotools/http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/


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Scrape Rate and Share Rate

Read Scrape Rate and Shareability Rate: http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/(Original props for scrape rate belong to @pointblankseo)

Compute the Scrape and Share Rates of the sites you guest post ondetermine the propensity for the article to get scraped and generate

Scrape Rate is whyipullrank.com rankpage for Googleboseveral months
http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/http://ipullrank.com/scrape-rate-and-shareability-rate/


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The Study (finally)

@ipullrank


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I ASKED A LOT OF QUESTIONS

For every link building feature we will discuss I wanted to know

The number of emails that fit the criteria

The rate of response

The rate of link placement or close


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MY ASSUMPTIONS

The dataset is large enough to be statistically s

Conclusions are made in a vacuum

Buzzstreams data represents varying link buildin

philosophies and time zones

Correlation is not Causation


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MY ASSERTION

iRanks data represents a controlled and highly st

data-driven link building methodology implemented

working out of one office from 8AM-6PM PST Mond


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LIMITATIONS

iRank Reporting Limitations

BuzzStreams Privacy Policy

BuzzStream User Types


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W


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WHAT GENDER PERFORMS BEST?


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WHAT GENDER PERFORMS BEST?

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

MALE FEMALE

# Emails Sent

# Responses Rece

# Closed

14.91%

4.8% 16.82%4.5%


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GENDER ANALYSIS

iRank data shows that while women do get a higher resporate than men (2.1% more responses for women) in outreacclose rate is slightly in favor of men (men close 0.31% more

GENDER INSIGHT


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GENDER INSIGHT

Hire outreach professionals based on their ability and the quof their work rather than their gender as neither has an inheradvantage that affects the ROI of campaign significantly.

GENDER ACTION


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GENDER ACTION

Invest resources in equal hiring and/or training for link buildeof either sex.

WHAT OPENING SALUTATION PERFORMS BE


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WHAT OPENING SALUTATION PERFORMS BE

OPENING SALUTATION DATA


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OPENING SALUTATION DATA

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

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45000

PERSONAL CUSTOM GENERAL

# Emails Sent

# Responses Receiv

# Closed

20.6% 6.52% 10.54%3.12%

13.8%

4.1%

PERSONALCLOSE RATE

6.52%2.41% Higher

SALUTATION ANALYSIS


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SALUTATION ANALYSIS

The response and close rate was substantially higher for emthat were addressed directly to a person. If thats not availab

general salutation such as a Hello performs best. The next

section will discuss the performance of the different types ofgeneral salutations.

SALUTATION INSIGHT


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SALUTATION INSIGHT

Expend the extra effort to find out the name attached to the p

SALUTATION ACTION


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SALUTATION ACTION

Use a tool such as Rapportive or RapLeaf to find out more inon the prospect. With Rapportive you get all of a given userssocial information in the right pane within Gmail.

WHAT GENERIC SALUTATION PERFORMS BE


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WHAT GENERIC SALUTATION PERFORMS BE

GENERIC SALUTATION DATA


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GENERIC SALUTATION DATA

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

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30000

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40000

HELLO HI HEY GOOD AM/PM OTHE

# Emails Sent

# Responses Re

# Closed

14.37%

4.14%

17.47%

5.62%13.63%

3.82%16.21%

HI CLOSE

RATE

5.63%Higher than all

specific types

GENERIC SALUTATION ANALYSIS


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GENERIC SALUTATION ANALYSIS

Of those general salutations Hey yielded the best resultshowever due to the lack of volume Hi is the winning genera

salutation.

GENERIC SALUTATION INSIGHT


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GENERIC SALUTATION INSIGHT

Expend the extra effort to find out the name attached to theprospect.

GENERIC SALUTATION ACTION


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GENERIC SALUTATION ACTION

Use a tool such as Rapportive or RapLeaf to find out more inon the prospect. With Rapportive you get all of a given userssocial information in the right pane within Gmail.

WHICH DAY OF THE WEEK DOES BEST?


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WHICH DAY OF THE WEEK DOES BEST?

iRANK DAY OF THE WEEK DATA


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iRANK DAY OF THE WEEK DATA

0

2000

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16000

18000

MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAYTHURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUN

# Emails Sent

# Responses Rec

# Closed

D

TH

BUZZSTREAM DAY OF THE WEEK DATA


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BUZZSTREAM DAY OF THE WEEK DATA

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

20000

MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAYTHURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUND

# Emails Sent

# Responses Recei

DAYR

SHigher

DAY OF THE WEEK ANALYSIS


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O S S

For BuzzStream data close rates we were able to determine Saturday resulted in the highest response rate followed by

Sunday and Friday for the Buzzstream data.

Weve found that the iRank data shows emails sent on Mondhave the highest rate of response, followed by Thursday withTuesday and Wednesday tied for third. Initial emails sent onTuesdays yielded the highest rate of activated links, followed

a tie for Monday and Wednesday.

DAY OF THE WEEK INSIGHT


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The volume of overall email lower on the weekend and thereit is simply easier for an email sent on the weekend to be seTherefore in this case we believe that Buzzstreams data is mdefinitive.

DAY OF THE WEEK ACTION


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Outreach specialists should schedule initial link building emaduring the weekend with a tool such as Boomerang for Gmaensure the best chance at a response. Integrating Buzzstreawith Gmail allows you to use Boomerang for this as well.

WHICH TIME OF DAY DOES BEST?


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iRANK TIME OF DAY DATA


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0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000 # Emails Sent

# Responses Rec

# Closed

RESPONSE RATE

9AMHigher than other

times

BUZZSTREAM TIME OF DAY DATA


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0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000 # Emails Sent

# Responses Rece

RESPONSERATE

2AMHigher than other

times

TIME OF DAY ANALYSIS


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Buzzstreams data shows that sending emails at 1AM, 10PM

2AM EST result in the highest responses.

Conversely, iRank data shows that 4AM, 9AM and 6AM ESTreturn the highest rate of response and emails sent at 9AM, and 5AM EST return the highest rate of link activations.

TIME OF DAY INSIGHT


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Its hard to draw a definitive conclusion here but however sinall these times fall within the 10PM and 9AM range the insigthat the volume of email is lower throughout the night than dthe day and therefore prospects come across these emails fthing in the morning before email fatigue sets in.

TIME OF DAY ACTION


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Schedule emails to send within between 10PM and 9AM ESusing a tool such as a Boomerang or hire a link building teamthat operates at those times within the targets time zone.

WHAT NUMBER OF EMAILS WORKS BEST


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NUMBER OF EMAILS DATA


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0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

1 2 3 4 5 6+

# Emails Sent

# Responses Rec

# Closed

MALE RA

0.3Higher th

NUMBER OF EMAILS ANALYSIS


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Outreaches that continued to 6 emails and beyond proved tosubstantially better than those that stopped at the standard 4email. Most importantly, we found that we achieved 60% moresponses by sending a second and third email.

NUMBER OF EMAILS INSIGHT


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Be persistent until the prospect explicitly says no without abusomeones inbox.

NUMBER OF EMAILS ACTION


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Schedule follow-up emails with a tool such as Boomerang.

WHAT EMAIL LENGTH WORKS BEST?


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EMAIL LENGTH DATA


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0

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10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

40000

45000

50000

LONG EMAILS SHORT EMAILS

# Emails Sent

# Responses Recei

# Closed

16.47%

5.41%

14.93%

4.32%

LONG EMAILCLOSE RATE

1.09%Higher than short

EMAIL LENGTH ANALYSIS


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Short initial emails resulted in 1.54% more responses than loemails however long emails converted at 1.09% higher rate.

EMAIL LENGTH INSIGHT


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Longer emails typically resulted in more personalization andmore detail specific to the content partnership opportunity.

EMAIL LENGTH ACTION


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Throw away your form letters and write more personalizedemails.

HOW DOES FIRST TOUCH VIA TWITTER PERFO


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FIRST TOUCH VIA TWITTER DATA


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TWEETED FIRST

Tweeted before emailing

Did not tweet first

TWEETED FIRST

Got a Response to Email AfterTweeting First

Did not get a response

FIRST TOUCH VIA TWITTER ANALYSIS


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In 2011, 347 emails were sent from users on Buzzstream thahave a Twitter account attached. Of those users there wereemails sent after initial contact was made via Twitter. Of thoselicited responses.

FIRST TOUCH VIA TWITTER INSIGHT


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While the figures are not statistically significant within the scoof this study, the 37.5% response rate is worthy of furtherinvestigation.

FIRST TOUCH VIA TWITTER ACTION


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Build relationships using Twitter to engage prospects withcontextually relevant information that benefits them.

HOW DO TRUST SIGNALS PERFORM?


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PHONE # VS. NO PHONE # DATA


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0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

WITH PHONE # NO PHONE

# Emails Sent

# Responses Rec

# Closed

15.32%

4.62%20.1% 7.1%

NO PHCLOS

2.4Higher than

PHONE # VS. NO PHONE

ANALYSIS


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ANALYSIS

Emails without phone numbers got 4.78% more responses amore link closes.

INSIGHT

Prospects may correlate the appearance of a phone numberunsolicited email with those of famous email scams.

ACTION

Remove phone numbers from initial outreach emails and onphone number should a prospect explicitly ask for it.

PHONE # VS. NO PHONE # DATA


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0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

WITH PHONE # NO PHONE

# Emails Sent

# Responses Rec

# Closed

15.32%

4.62%20.1% 7.1%

NO PHCLOS

2.4Higher than

PHONE # VS. NO PHONE

ANALYSIS


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Link builders performing outreach without a linked profile in their foo4.98% of the prospects they reached out to while those with linked p4.33% of their prospects. The difference in response is similarly neg

0.77%.

INSIGHTThe difference in effectiveness is negligible enough that it does not wheavily on performance whether a linked profile is present or absen

ACTION

Link builders should not scramble to add or delete any linked profilesending outreach emails. However if a 0.65% increase in closes willbreak a given campaign it is wise to remove them.

LOGO VS. NO LOGO DATA


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0

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LINKED EMBEDDED NO LOGO

# Emails Se

# Response

# Closed

18.29% 10.58%

18.08%

6.03%

14.11%

LINKED LOGOSCLOSE RATE

6.86%Higher than no logo

LOGO VS. NO LOGO DATA

ANALYSIS


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ANALYSIS

Linked logos have the highest rate of close at 10.58% with elogos coming in strong at number two with a close rate of 6.0with no logos close at 3.72%.

INSIGHT

Including logos in outreach emails is a trust signal that leadsincrease in link closes.

ACTION

Link builders should put a brand behind their link building effinclude the logo for that brand in every outreach email.

TADA! IM AN

OUTREACH


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@ipullrank

MASTER!


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The Worth of A Link(shout out to Mike Essex)

@ipullrank

LINK EQUITY NOT LINK JUICE


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Formalizing the nomenclature allows clients to the idea of building linseriously when they think of it as building value into their online home

What link juice makes me think of What link equity makes me

LINK EQUITY AS THE FUNCTION OF A LINK BUY


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Use what it would cost to buy the number of links to explain the value of a bavalue of your labor is offset by the risk of being penalized.

Link Brokers charge $100/month for a PR5 link

Number of Links You Build Monthly

Price of Labor for those links monthly

THE VALUE OF LINK EQUITY YOU ARE BUILDING

LINK EQUITY AS THE FUNCTION OF CPC


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At iAcquire we use what it would cost to buy the incremental projecteSearch. This is a rough approximation of how that could be applied to

Incremental Traffic Increase As Computed by Projected VIncrease of Link Building Efforts

Cost Per Click in Paid Search

Price of Labor for those links monthly

THE VALUE OF LINK EQUITY YOU ARE BUILDING

Michael KingDirector of Inbound Marketing


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g

@iPullRank

[email protected]

www.iacquire.com

THANK YOU / Q&A

quantifying outreach - michael king

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