How "Pain Sniffing" Can 5x Your Cold Outbound Response Rate

In the past, most cold outreach relied on targeting by persona - finding people by their job title and industry. For example: 

"Marketing directors at SaaS companies need our services!"

Sure, this type of broad targeting still works to an extent. But today, buyers are overwhelmed with cold sales emails. Their inboxes are flooded with irrelevant junk. So persona-based targeting just doesn't cut through the noise anymore.

The problem with targeting by persona

Let's take a step back and talk about why traditional persona targeting is no longer effective.

Back in the early 2000s, most businesses didn't do much cold outreach. The few that did had a huge advantage. Why? Even generic emails had decent open and response rates in those days.

But then tools like Yesware and Outreach made it easy for sales teams to spray out huge volumes of email. Cold emailing exploded across every industry.

Now, buyers are completely overwhelmed. Personas don't matter anymore. Every company is blasting messages to "VP Sales" and "Head of Marketing" roles and expecting results. It makes me chuckle to think about how many of them think this method still works.

Standing out in 2024 requires more sophisticated targeting based on the subtle signals and business pains each company actually experiences.

The new way to target: by pain

There's a better way to do cold outreach today- one that I’ve personally seen produce 5x higher response rates. 

At Aurora, we call it pain sniffing.

The idea is simple:

Target prospects based on the specific business pains you can solve, rather than just their job title and company.

To illustrate the concept, let's compare the old vs new way:

👎 Old way: "Let's target all marketing directors at 500+ employee tech companies."

👍 New way: "Let's target companies showing signs they need better website copy."

For example, say you are a creative growth agency that offers web copywriting services:

With pain sniffing, you ignore job titles… at first. Instead, you specifically seek out the companies actually experiencing poor website conversions because of bad copy. You won’t have the data to confirm this, of course. But you can make an educated guess just from reading the quality and cohesion of their web copy.

This produces outreach that is highly relevant to recipients. And that grabs their attention and drives responses.

Creative pain sniffing tactics you can use

Here are some of the creative pain sniffing tactics we've used successfully at Aurora to dramatically improve campaign response rates:

Tactic #1: Tech Stack Expiration Dates

We look at when companies first implemented software tools like Intercom, Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce - anything with a subscription model. 

Then we target them right before their contract renewal dates, knowing they may be open to switching to better alternatives.

For example, if coolcompany.ai installed Intercom 15 months ago, they probably have a renewal coming up in the next 3 months. That makes them in-market to potentially switch providers or negotiate pricing.

So we reach out suggesting our superior alternative with better features and pricing. This sparks interest and conversations.

Tactic #2: Job Changes 

When a past buyer who championed our services leaves their current role and company, that's a huge pain signal. Odds are, they took the new job to solve similar problems.

So we look for when past buyers change jobs, especially to similar roles. Then we reach out offering to help solve those problems at their new company.

This works incredibly well to land meetings because that old champion already knows and trusts us. When we explain that we can help them in their new role, they're very receptive.

Tactic #3: Job Post Analysis

We scan companies' job postings and descriptions for certain keywords about needs we can solve. 

For example, if coolcompany.ai posts a job for a "Website Copywriter," that's a blaring signal they need help with copy.  

An open job post means they have budget to solve that problem area. So reaching out to offer help with copywriting, content creation etc is both relevant and timely.

We take this further by looking for more subtle clues about business pains as well. Like a customer support job mentioning the need to improve response times indicates an opportunity to sell customer service software.

Real results from an Aurora client

Switching from generic personas to targeted pain sniffing can dramatically increase campaign response rates.

Here is one example from an Aurora client:

A digital services company was doing basic outbound to generic personas. They had an email reply rate of 0.9% before working with us. When they adopted pain sniffing tactics, the same outbound campaign achieved a 4.92% reply rate - over 5x better!

Their outreach was no longer seen as a generic sales pitch. It became highly relevant to each prospect segment.

This is why pain sniffing converts so much better. You only reach out when you can truly solve relevant pains rather than blasting every VP Marketing.

Putting it all together

So in summary, here are the key steps to implement pain sniffing:

1. Identify the specific business pains you can solve really well. Get crystal clear on ideal customer problems.

2. Analyze target companies for signals that indicate they are experiencing those pains. This is the "pain sniffing" process.

3. Once you have signals a company does have your ideal pains, research to determine the decision-maker(s) related to that area.

4. Reach out to share how you can help solve those specific pains.

I’ve seen this process increase response rate by over 400% compared to generic persona blasting.

Now you might be wondering: 

How do I research the right decision-maker contacts after identifying a promising pain signal? Don't I still need personas?

Fair question! Personas are still helpful here.

The best practice is to start with a list of role titles that match the persona likely to manage those pains. So if it's a copywriting need, you'd start with VP Marketing, Head of Content Marketing, CMO etc.

But don't stop there. Closely review the list of contacts matched to remove any irrelevant roles. For example, filter out press and PR contacts that got matched but realistically will not care about the copywriting pain.

This tighter list ensures you only contact people who will truly find your outreach valuable. And that means better responses.

So in summary, pain sniffing radically improves campaign performance by identifying real prospect pains and then reaching out to offer specific solutions. Give it a try!
Wondering how pain sniffing can transform the performance of your outbound campaigns? Contact us today for a free 30-minute strategy call and let’s chat!