Ampledata: The ultimate B2B sales report for 2024

Executive Summary

Welcome to the first edition of our Ampledata B2B sales report!

From first touch, to reaching out and booking that meeting - we put this report together to examine what Amplemarket's top-performing users are doing to power their outbound and to share some of their secrets to success!

Research

When we examined the overall outbound cycles of Amplemarket users, five insights particularly stood out in our data:

1. Amplemarket users leveraged detailed search criteria to pinpoint their potential buyers. Combining individual and company criteria enabled sellers to find their target audience and identify high-growth prospects.
2. Users enjoyed improved deliverability and engagement with Amplemarket's built-in email warm up. Open and reply rates saw increased of 5.57% and 2.74% respectively when warm-up was enabled, underlining the importance of thorough mailbox preparation.
3. Personalized email outreach brought better prospect engagement. Our data confirmed the power of personalized outbound, with subject lines referring to the prospect's company most effective for getting replies.
4. Sellers using multichannel sequences enjoyed better prospect engagement than those using email only. This equated to a 8.44% increase in opens and a 5.27% increase in replies.
   
5. Most prospect replies and meeting bookings came after 4-7 touches. Although top-performing users didn't necessarily book meetings faster, they used multiple follow-ups to maximize their chances of getting a reply.

About this report

This report dives deep into a robust manual dataset of 205,000 leads engaged via Amplemarket throughout 2023, shining a spotlight on the practices of the crème de la crème; the top-performing accounts distinguished by their exceptional reply rates.

‍Whether you're a seasoned sales professional or still honing your craft, this report is packed with actionable insights that will guide you towards more meaningful connections and, ultimately, a higher return on your outreach efforts.

1. Prospecting patterns

All sellers start their outbound journey by specifying their Ideal Customer Profile to pinpoint their target market.

With 30+ sophisticated search filters at their fingertips, we were interested to see: how users chose their search criteria; who our users were targeting; and how users identified high-growth prospects.

The most used search filters

Amplemarket users seemed to find the "Titles" filter in the searcher the most direct when it came to casting a net around their ICP. The next most frequently-used criteria were "Current Company", "Person Location", "Company Size" and "Industry".

This confirms that users relied on the searcher filters to identify key decision-makers within their target companies, and we take a closer look at exactly how they did this below.

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The most targeted industries

Of the 170+ industries targeted by Amplemarket users, the top 10 most prospected ranged from Computer Software to Financial Services, Marketing, and Human Resources.

This demonstrates Amplemarket's strong use case within the tech B2B sphere, as well as its growing application for surrounding B2B industries.

The most targeted personas

Interestingly, C-Suite execs were the most commonly targeted seniority for Amplemarket users, making up 42.99% of leads, followed by Managers and Heads of department.

‍It follows that entry-level and Owner, Director, and entry-level roles were less likely to be targeted as sellers sought to engage with immediate decision-makers.

The most targeted company size

The most common company size targeted by Amplemarket users was the medium business range of 51-200 employees, with the ranges either side (11-50 and 201-500 employees) following behind.

What's evident is that Amplemarket is being used to target a huge range of companies, from startups right through to enterprise businesses.

The most targeted region

In terms of location, the United States featured most prominently in our users' target audiences, accounting for 43.39% of leads.

Beyond North America and Europe, Australia, India, and Israel also featured in the top 10 as users took advantage of Amplemarket's global data and outreach capabilities.

Targeting growing companies

When we assessed how Amplemarket users applied the "Job Openings" filter to find leads, we saw that in 42.30% of searches it was used to find companies hiring for any role (as a proxy signal of growth).‍

Just 23.07% of searches targeted companies hiring for specific titles, and just 7.70% for specific seniorities, suggesting the filter was used more commonly at account level than at individual level.

2. Outbound preparation

Sourcing data is just one element of outbound preparation; we also wanted to see how sellers were: preparing their mailboxes for outbound; personalizing their outreach; and crafting their email copy.

The effect of email warm up

Mailbox warm up is crucial for B2B teams looking to scale up their outbound email volumes safely and sustainably. By optimizing their mailbox and domain reputation, salespeople maximize their chances of landing in prospect inboxes and reduce the risk of hitting SPAM.‍

This was borne out in our user data: the 60.39% of mailboxes that had Amplemarket warm up activated saw a 5.57% increase in open rates on average, and a 2.74% increase in reply rates.

The effect of personalized subject lines

Adding dynamic fields to email templates is an easy way for sales teams to automate their message personalization and include details such as the recipient’s name, company, industry, etc.

‍Our data revealed that Name and Company were the most commonly-used dynamic fields, and that adding these to email subject lines brought a slight increase in open and reply rates.

The effect of numbers in subject lines

Emails that included numerical characters in their subject lines tended to yield lower open (-5.85%) and reply rates (-1.42%) compared to those without.

Some sellers include success metrics in subject lines to entice prospects, but it's possible that these were more likely to be perceived as "spammy". In actual fact, specific promotional number patterns (such as 100%, 0%, 100x etc.) are automatically flagged by SPAM filters.

Length of subject lines

Subject lines that contained 0-3 words brought the highest open rates on average (66.91%) and averaged strong reply rates too (10.91%).

‍Otherwise, emails containing 9 or more words steadily increased in replies, reaching 13.27% for 15 words or more. This could be because these emails were more specific or targeted to prospects already engaged in the buying process.

The effect of emojis in subject lines

On average, emails that included emojis in the subject line yielded slightly higher open rates (67.81%) than those that didn't (62.96%).The same pattern occurred in reply rates, with emojis hitting an average reply rate of 12.44% compared to the 9.97% of plain-text subject lines.

Of course, emojis aren't the only factor at play here - but the data suggests there might be reason for sales teams to split test their outreach to see whether emojis make a significant difference to otherwise identical outreach.

3. Outreach tactics

With mailboxes and templates primed to send, sellers are ready to build their sequences and schedule their outreach!

There’s far more to this than “hitting send”; we looked into our data to glean some insights into: the best times of week for email engagement; the best and worst times of year for email engagement; and how email performed compared to multichannel engagement.

Best time of week for opens

The hot spots for prospects opening emails were Wednesdays and Thursdays between 5.30-6.30PM (in their respective time zones). In fact, there was a slight increase in opens everyday from 4.30PM onwards - maybe because prospects started to clear their inboxes as their day quietened down.

Sellers could capitalize on these patterns by scheduling their emails to coincide with these periods so they don’t get buried in their prospect inboxes!

Best time of week for replies

Conversely, prospects were more likely to reply to emails early in the morning (7.30-8.30AM), especially on Mondays and Wednesdays. Bearing in mind our findings above, it's possible that even if prospects open emails towards the end of the day, they're likely to wait until the following morning to respond.

‍There was also a notable pick up in replies on Fridays between 3.30-4.30PM before people signed off for the weekend.

Best and worst months for OOOs

Here, we compared monthly replies with automated OOO replies to see if we could see which months were best and worst for active engagement with leads.

OOO replies peaked in July and August, hitting 7.44% and 7.42% respectively. The best month for non-automated replies was actually November, followed by January.

Multichannel vs. email-only outreach

This is an important one for modern B2B selling: multichannel sequences brought consistently stronger engagement than email-only sequences.‍

On average, multichannel sequences offered an 8.44% increase in open rates and a 5.27% increase in replies. For our top quartile sellers, this averaged out at 70.37% for opens and 17.02% in replies.

Engaging prospects across a variety of channels and formats (e.g. LinkedIn messages, LinkedIn connections, email, phone call etc.) helps sellers stand out from their competitors and stay top-of-mind for potential buyers.

4. Getting a reply

Successful email engagement isn't just about high open rates. The primary objective of sellers should always be to get a response and start a conversation.

In terms of our data, we were keen to see what - if any - patterns emerged for: engagement rates for different industries, seniorities, and regions; the average number of touches required to get a reply; and the proportion of positive replies.

Best industry for replies

Looking at the top 10 industries targeted by Amplemarket users, there was a clear winner when it came to reply rates: the HR industry, with an average reply rate of 15.92%!‍

The other industries in the top 10 ran a pretty close race, with Software Development slipping slightly lower at 6.10%.

Best region for replies

Out of the top 10 countries targeted by Amplemarket users, the Netherlands topped the charts in terms of average open rate (70.92%) and reply rate (20.52%). The next top performers were Great Britain and Spain, with reply rates averaging 14.40% and 14.98% respectively.

The US, which was the most targeted country by far, averaged out much lower for replies at 5.66%.

Best personas for replies

Interestingly, reply rates were pretty consistent when contacting Heads, Managers, business Owners, Founders, and Directors, hovering between 10-13%.‍

Partners topped the comparison at 14.08% replies, whilst VPs were at the bottom at 6.17%; this could be down to VPs being more common in larger enterprises, where decision-making processes are more complex.

Number of touches to get a reply

With reply rates to first touches averaging out at just 1.41% for Amplemarket users, this data underlines the importance of following up to engage prospects!‍

Reply rates grew with each touch to peak at 19.36% on the 4th touch. Interestingly, the peak came slightly later for our top quartile accounts, hitting 19.71% on the 6th touch.

5. Getting a meeting

This was the final stage of our data analysis: seeing how Amplemarket users translated replies into actual meetings.

We wanted to learn more about the typical flow of users’ sales cycles and best practices, so we looked into: the best time of year for "interested" replies; the average time between first touch and meeting booking; and the average number of touches required in a sequence to book a meeting.

Best month for "interested" replies

According to our data, the best time of year for “interested” replies was Q2, peaking at 1.12% in the last week of April in 2023.

‍Unsurprisingly, “interested” replies dropped off considerably in Q4, bottoming out at 0.46% in the Christmas week of December.

Number of touches to book a meeting

The sweet spot for Amplemarket users booking meetings with prospects appeared to be around 5-6 sequence touches - which correlated with the average time to reply (above).

Overall, 18.85% of meetings were booked at the 5th touch, although 22.42% of top performers’ meetings were booked on the 6th touch. There was a universal drop in meeting bookings from the 7th touch onwards.

Average time to book a meeting

30.02% of meeting bookings were made within 9 days of the first touch, with particular high points between days 0-2 and days 8-9. This reinforces the importance of timely follow ups to keep prospects’ attention!

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