With the emergence of new solutions to data sharing, many B2B businesses should timely review their strategies and find the time to implement and utilize new opportunities for safe data exchange.
Since blockchain technology is capable of moving B2B internal and external operations to the next level of efficiency and functionality, not to mention safety, it became the first industry we went into.
In this article, I would like to outline our experience in establishing outbound channels for blockchain-based companies.
The first major project
In terms of the industry size, market hype, urgency of fundraising and sales cycle, blockchain was the first big project we got to work with as an independent B2B company. It was certainly not the lightest of starters. In spite of all its convenience and improved privacy features, blockchain is still viewed cautiously by many companies.
Even though the attitude towards blockchain gets more positive with every year, businesses in FinTech and Banking are only exploring their current opportunities instead of actively implementing blockchain technology.
Blockchain has not yet been used for large-scale production but steadily gathers interest across Fortune 500 companies looking for new ways to secure safe transactions and improved data privacy.
Since blockchain is an innovative industry, you have to fight for every investor and business interested in adopting blockchain. That implies lots of very thorough granular database research, the use of multiple tools and compelling B2B communication.
Achieving results for our blockchain customers was an exercise in teamwork, analytics, and patience. However, succeeding meant uncovering countless opportunities for our clients and their customers — as well as a rewarding experience for our teams.
Over a period of 6 months, we worked with 11 blockchain-based companies.
Why do blockchain-based companies benefit from remote teams?
We focused on ICO companies who went through the private presale fundraising stage. This is the point, where many companies are just raising money, so they don’t have an in-house team for executing all marketing-related strategies — so most of these companies decide to look for the vendors providing outsource marketing, development, content writing and etc.
When we presented our services, we put a huge emphasis on our ability to develop outbound campaigns and our research teams.
Why is research important?
If you want to raise money using cold outbound marketing, the key for raising money successfully from investors is to target specific investors who are more likely to take interest in the blockchain instead of emailing everyone in the field.
It takes hours (sometimes, even months!) to collect enough information on the investor and create a truly personalized and compelling team. A team of 1 to 10 people on the private presale stage cannot afford that much time.
So outsourcing research was an obvious plan of action for all 11 blockchain projects that we worked with.
We built an individual Ideal Customer Profile for each client. Every Ideal Customer Profile included a different set of data points:
Standard: Name of the investor/institution, the investor’s website and location, areas of investment, investor’s contact data, etc.
Customized: Round of investment, the average size of the investment, types of projects they prefer to invest to, PR publications about their recent investment and other individual qualifiers that benefited our customers.
There is really no limit to the data points you can collect. The more detailed your data profile is, the more value you will be able to inject into your pitch. This is particularly relevant for the highly competitive blockchain area because the most unique and most personalized message wins investors over.
Blockchain marketing: how do you do it right?
When it comes to spreading your sales message, choosing the most productive way of promotion can be quite a challenge. When it comes to creating and spreading the message across the audiences that are relevant to blockchain projects, the task becomes particularly complicated.
The best way to promote the unique value proposition of a blockchain company is to use outbound marketing. However, I don’t mean just one channel here. And not even two channels. To truly prevail, you must use all channels at your disposal.
Some blockchain projects try to use PR and influencer marketing as a primary way of promotion and spreading the message. However, in our opinion, it’s not a very reliable method.
PR is time-consuming and hard to predict. You can invest a chunk of your budget into building a PR image and nurturing opinions but nothing would guarantee tangible results or a return on your investment.
Influence marketing is incredibly costly: few influencers would agree to work with you for free and them promoting your product doesn’t allow you to secure long-term consumers and investors.
So, what should a productive marketing strategy include?
Hands down, email campaigns are the driving force that supplies you with new leads and connections. In the blockchain area, it pays to introduce yourself to your investors instead of waiting for them to find you. The success of your campaigns depends on the quality of your research and your ability to implement the research data into email templates and your conversations after jumping on a call with your potential investors.
However, to make your success complete, you must pay attention to other segments such as:
Website. Your website is where your potential investors can see your roadmap, learn more about your benefits and plans. The way your website looks, the level of its convenience and usability gives your potential investors a glimpse into your competence and ability to organize things. In other words, your website lets them decide if it’s worth to do business with you.
Content. Content is how you get your prospects hooked. If you can present them the gist of your product and outline the advantages they will receive, they would be more likely to choose you over your competitors. Also, since businesses are still on the fence about blockchain, you should explain how everything works without holding back details.
Social media. People associate presence with credibility. When they encounter one and the same brand on every online platform they visit, they have no reason to doubt that the project is the real deal that can drive real results. Additionally, your activity on social media allows your potential audience to evaluate the activity of your project and whether it makes sense to connect — this is how we find active prospects for our customers. With all that said, having an active account on social media is a must.
SEO. Search engine optimization is a necessary component of your promotion. It’s your way to subtly put yourself in front of the leads that have a high conversion potential and a need for benefits your project offers. So, you should know what kind of inquiries your future investors use — and how to use these inquiries in your favor.
I saw multiple companies going under the water just because one or two channels from the above were not attended to, so don’t cut back on your marketing budget once you start noticing progress. Everything is just getting started.
How should you get things started?
As we worked on each blockchain project, our steps were the following:
1. A client fills out the Ideal Investors profile questionnaire https://forms.gle/7zQkQ4Yqc6gBBsob7.
2. Based on the information from the questionnaire Research Team initiates the leads research phase. The goal is to glean as much exclusive data about every investor as possible. One of the advantages of having a company doing this type of research is that thay have access to premium paid sources for data that other companies don’t have the budget to pay for. In total, we were able to gather information on 10 000 VC and Angel investors worldwide who invest in blockchain and crypto.
3. We examine the client’s Value Proposition and after an interview with Template Writer, we move to the second onboarding phase, where the Belkins team prepares personalized email templates, marketing material, and LinkedIn messages. We use account-based email marketing and targeted database research to keep our emails personalized.
We started our customized templates by showing our understanding of investors’ goals and activities and showing how the blockchain project aligned with those goals. It’s not enough to ask your future investors if they might be interested. You must show why they should be interested.
Hi, <FirstName>
Just checking if you’re still allocating funds to new projects during the 2020/2021 period — and if we could be in the {Company}’s investment scope.
{ProjectName} is an award-winning {LocationName}-based enterprise that:
- Benefit 1
- Benefit 2
- Benefit 3
In 4 years of our work, we received $1M in funding, saw 200% increase in revenue in the last financial year and 50% acquisition by {ProviderName}. Since we’re planning to launch an ICO for {ProjectName} that will run till October this year, I’d like to know your feedback about an investment opportunity. In case you’d like to take a call and discuss all the details, let me know how your schedule looks like so I could book a time slot for you.
Thank you,
{SenderName}
4. Deliverability Specialists integrate the client’s inboxes and LinkedIn page with our personal solution for spam monitoring and alerting. Additionally, we use an outreach tool developed by company Reply.io, that we have exclusive partnership arrangements with. We created our own solution for spam monitoring to keep an eye on the client’s Senders — if it drops down, the campaign’s performance will decline, and we don’t want that.
Email outreach for blockchain: what we learned
Our manual research allowed us to reach productive results. On average, we delivered 2,000 potential investors and 500 blockchain-focused journalists to each client in less than a week.
- Research matters. A lot. Given that many blockchain-based projects such as Black Insurance needed people for their pre-ICO and ICO stages, they required both investors and journalists to keep their project moving forward. To find journalists who write about blockchain, are active, available and interested, you in-depth, granular database research that can take months.
- Buying databases won’t save your time. Some of the projects we worked with tried to set things in motion by purchasing ready-made databases. They thought that since blockchain is a rather young direction, the database would be smaller and thus it would have more valid contacts. However, it doesn’t matter if you operate in a niche industry. Whenever you buy a database that had been used by someone else, you’ll end up wasting your time on the investors who have already chosen a project and the email addresses that are simply no longer valid.
- Presence is everything. It’s not only about being visible online, but it’s also about knowing what your potential investors might be interested in. When you show your awareness of their investment preferences, your prospects are more likely to write you back and take a call.
In general, research, personalization, and optimization are the supporting pillars of your campaigns. As long as you keep your data exclusive and pay attention to adjusting your unique value proposition for each potential investor, you’re guaranteed to get results. To learn more about email customization and Sender Score monitoring, you can check Belkins' Blog. Additionally, you can read a case study about how we helped a blockchain project through its pre-ICO and ICO stage.
Thanks for reading!