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Drama Mayhem - Product Launch Campaign Case Study

Interview with Ninja Outreach user, Don Wilder, Founder of Drama Mayhem

Drama Mayhem is a new improv comedy card game that is being unveiled early this year. Founder Don Wilder discusses how he was able to save over 30 hours in his campaign and reach top influencers to help promote his product with the help of NinjaOutreach.

“I'd also really want to express one area that you guys outshine the competition, and that's the speed and quality of the customer service on troubleshooting any and every question I shoot at them. The guys are great, friendly, and helpful. That's one of the strong reasons I will plan to continue using your software as well.” - Don Wilder of Drama Mayhem

Results:

• Established contact with a comedian and actor influencer with over 165k Instagram followers that will help promote his business
• Over 200+ positive leads and counting

1. What specific goal have you achieved with NinjaOutreach?

I wanted to find influencers for the new card game I created and will soon launch to market.

I've reached a few notable influencers that will help me promote the game.. recently I reached one celebrity that is a comedian and actor with over 165K Instagram followers that is excited to help me spread the word about my game.

2. How many campaigns did you launch to achieve this goal? What was your reply rate? How many emails did you send and how many positive responses did you get?

Well, I've launched about 15 and I'm still going. There's no set number of responses I'm after. The more the better. The reply rate ranges from around 1-1.5% to 17%.

3. What other tools (if any) did you use for this campaign and why?

Dropbox > For the PDF download of the sample game to show leads to generate interest.

4. How did you use NinjaOutreach?

I looked for target keywords that would be a good fit for my campaign and did the general search, and I used the google chrome extension.

5. What outreach strategies did you find worked best? (best template, best approach, best schedule to send outreach, etc)

So far, it's been a revised template with a custom pitch for leads to check out our new game, along with the offer to try out a free sample deck.

I normally put in the contact person’s first name or company name, and if no name then I'll put "there" as in "hey there" to keep it more friendly in tone.

So far, our templates have pretty good open rates, some even get higher than 40% open rates and over 5% replies.

6. What problem did NinjaOutreach solve for you, or how was NinjaOutreach specifically able to help with your campaign?

The simple organization of lead generation, and automation on the email outreach.

NinjaOutreach also saved me a huge amount of time.

Granted the amount of time I need to search, hire, train and manage virtual assistants, I'd say for every 100-200 emails that go out would be around 1-2 hours of work to do above and review VA's results.

The challenge is also for work quality (minimizing error) and speed. So, I think I've sent out 3-4K+ emails so far.

So NinjaOutreach saved me LOTS of hours, in short, at least 20-30 hours of work to this point or more.

7. Before NinjaOutreach, what was your process for prospecting and launching your outreach campaigns?

Excel and manual email outreach. I hired a couple of VAs online but it was more work to train them than what it was worth, as it was a labor-intensive process and very little results in return.

8. What process would you say was more cost-effective? Why?

Time is money, right? I don't need to manage VAs anymore so closely. Being able to do all of this on my own using automation has been really helpful.

The post Drama Mayhem - Product Launch Campaign Case Study appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

source https://ninjaoutreach.com/drama-mayhem-product-launch-campaign-case-study/

Convertica - Business Leads Email Outreach Case Study

How to build a better business with B2B social listening

The complete guide to online social listening

Utama Spice - Link Building & Guest Post Outreach Case Study

Interview with NinjaOutreach clients, Ria Templer and Jon Jones of Utama Spice

Utama Spice is an all-natural beauty, skincare, and aromatherapy products company based in Bali, Indonesia.

“I personally love NO and don't know what I’d do without it!” - Ria Templer of Utama Spice

Results:

Implemented a faster, automated system for getting a constant trickle of guest posting and link building leads.

1. What specific goal have you achieved with NinjaOutreach?

We were able to set up and maintain a highly effective, results-oriented and long-term guest posting, sponsored post and link building campaign using the Ninja Outreach platform.

2. How many campaigns did you launch to achieve this goal? What was your reply rate? How many emails did you send and how many positive responses did you get?

We currently have seven automatic outreach campaigns running.

We have completed many dozens of these automatic outreach campaigns over the past year.

We achieved our goal of finding quality link building opportunities very rapidly. Within a day of the campaigns beginning, we were getting feedback from bloggers and site owners about collaborations for product reviews, giveaways and sponsored posts.

Our reply rate was as low as 2% but as high as 30% and had a rough average of 11% reply rate.

But with the enormous capabilities of the Ninja Outreach service, you can get huge results in a short time.

Virtually, every reply we received was ready and willing to move forward with a link arrangement, whether for free, in return for quality content, or for payment in cash or kind (products).

You only need to use a tool like Ahrefs to evaluate whether a specific website’s SEO and traffic metrics are qualified or worth your while.

3. What other tools (if any) did you use for this campaign and why?

I use no other tools. Just my Gmail Suite for business and Ninja Outreach. I suppose Ahrefs is a nice tool to have in this process as it can help you weed out the chaff (underqualified websites).

4. How did you use NinjaOutreach?

I used both the Chrome Extension and the native search function within the Ninja Outreach SaaS to find leads quickly using manual methods.

It was not until later I negotiated a small, special additional monthly rate for the nice people at Ninja Outreach to help me compile leads lists rapidly and without my spending a lot of time and effort.

I now get these leads lists imported into my account monthly. All I do is set up automatic email campaigns, set the system to send a trickle of emails daily and that leads to daily responses for link building!

5. What outreach strategies did you find worked best? (best template, best approach, best schedule to send outreach, etc)

I wrote specific templates for my ecomm companies, such as “Looking to do sponsored post, guest post or giveaway” in the subject of the email.

Then, basically praising the site owner for having a wonderful site and saying how I felt their readership may likely enjoy my company’s’ products.

Inevitably, this leads to the site owner coming back with their interests and terms.

I would only send a maximum of 7 emails a day for any one campaign. I had also simplified my emails to write “Dear Sir/Madame,” to overcome not knowing who, or what sex, would be answering/replying to my outreach. This simplifies and streamlines.

At first, I wasn’t sure it would work well, but it did work pretty good in the end. And it’s an ongoing process now.

6. What problem did NinjaOutreach solve for you, or how was NinjaOutreach specifically able to help with your campaign?

In the past, I could only do outreach at a snail’s pace.

Think about it, how much time you need to compile a list of prospects manually. It might take 2 to 4 hours to get 20 or 30 leads! Who has this time?

With the ability to rapidly compile lead lists based on specific parameters, such as shares, audience, keywords and so on, you can scale up rapidly. If I did not have Ninja Outreach, I’d still be in the dark ages with respect to my outreach and link building.

7. Before NinjaOutreach, what was your process for prospecting and launching your campaigns?

Before Ninja Outreach, I would just blindly google my keywords and sift through various sites (news, ecomm, and blogs) to find a possible lead I could email.

It was painstakingly slow and inefficient. I can honestly say it was almost a joke.

It worked, but at a pace that is not realistic.

8. What process would you say was more cost-effective? Why?

In my opinion, you cannot get a higher rank for more keywords quickly without building backlinks. And Ninja Outreach allows it to happen quickly and efficiently.

I could not recommend Ninja Outreach more highly.

The post Utama Spice - Link Building & Guest Post Outreach Case Study appeared first on NinjaOutreach.

source https://ninjaoutreach.com/utama-spice-link-building-outreach-case-study/

Software engineering personalities: the Teslas and the Edisons

In the history of inventions, the rivalry between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison is one of the most famous. Their competition in the field of electricity is sometimes referred to as the “war of currents.” Live Science describes Tesla as having the ability to “accurately visualize intricate 3D objects” and “really work out his inventions in his imagination.” In contrast, Edison was a “tinkerer,” who arrived at many of his inventions via trial and error. Most accounts, however, conclude that “you can’t really say one is greater, because American society needs some Edisons and it needs some Teslas.”

While reading up on these two individuals, it struck us at Sprout Social that these two working styles can teach us how to build a healthy engineering culture consisting of Edisons and Teslas.

We’ve found many software engineers, regardless of background, fall into one of the two personality profiles. While both have their merits, they also carry differences that, when Edisons and Teslas work together, can lead to conflict in the workplace.

Let’s compare their individual beliefs here:

“Tesla” programmer beliefs	“Edison” programmer beliefs
Up front design is valuable.	Speed to market is valuable.
Meetings to achieve consensus and brainstorm problems are valuable.	Meetings to knowledge-share after arriving at a solution are valuable.
You should “measure twice, cut once.”	You should get something out and iterate.
It’s inefficient to write code without full clarity on the problem you’re solving.	We won’t identify many issues up front, so it’s important to get started to find them

The differences in personality type come to light especially during times of crisis, such as a difficult project, a buggy release or when technical debt starts to add up. Edisons and Teslas can experience the following frustrations during those situations:

“Tesla” programmer frustrations	“Edison” programmer frustrations
We don’t have adequate up-front design. A lot of issues can be identified early. We should be required to do up front design.	We move too slow and have too much corporate minutiae because we spend our time talking and writing documents instead of actually delivering code.
My code should be easy to review because the design for it was already reviewed.	I don’t like when people are resistant to rewrite code, or even discard it entirely.
I don’t like reviewing code for which I have not reviewed a design. If the code is already done, it’s too late to adjust and I feel awkward reviewing it.	My code should receive a lot of feedback, and I welcome it. Code for review is simply a suggested change, and it can and should be rewritten multiple times if necessary.

When nurturing team culture, engineering leaders will need to identify ways to balance and accommodate these two perspectives. Teslas become frustrated when forced into an Edison way of operating, and Edisons become frustrated when forced into a Tesla way of thinking. Even engineering leaders can succumb to their own personal biases, preferring one over the other. This makes it even more challenging to create an environment where Teslas and Edisons can thrive.

At Sprout Social, we’ve identified several ways we try to accommodate both Edisons and Teslas:

1. Make design documents optional: Teslas may prefer to create design documents more frequently than Edisons, so consider making design documents optional except in the case of major features that could affect other teams.
2. Don’t mandate deliverables: Agile Spikes (investigation stories) do not have mandated deliverables. A Tesla may prefer to deliver a diagram or design document, while an Edison may deliver a prototype or code samples.
3. Allow for focus time: Have prescribed time blocks for team syncs and otherwise allow for heads down working time. This creates an opportunity for Teslas to share designs while Edisons can knowledge-share. It also protects Edisons from too many ad-hoc collaboration meetings.
4. Encourage radical candor: This applies to both design documents (at Sprout, they live on collaborative Wikis) and code reviews. Teslas may prefer thorough feedback on design docs, while Edisons may prefer thorough feedback in PRs. Regardless, both Edisons and Teslas should be encouraged to practice giving and receiving radically candid feedback.

If you are a software engineer or an engineering manager, we encourage you to develop an awareness of how your team members operate and ensure your processes and culture cater to both for a highest-possible level of productivity. If you over cater to one camp or the other, you’re disadvantaging half of the team.

Are you a Tesla or an Edison?

This post Software engineering personalities: the Teslas and the Edisons originally appeared on Sprout Social.

source https://sproutsocial.com/insights/software-engineering-personalities/

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