Marc McDougall is a SaaS conversation specialist and the founder of Clarity First Consulting.

In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Marc shares how he leveraged a story about a rogue squirrel and turned it into a winning sales email campaign.

Resources:

ClarityFirst.co

Marc on LinkedIn

Relpy.io – a sales automation and sales engagement platform

Loom.com – Video messaging for work

Transcript

Will Barron:

Coming up on today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast.

 

Marc McDougall:

At the end of the day, I’ve been the recipient of a lot of emails, so I know that the people I’m trying to email are receiving potentially hundreds, maybe thousands of emails a day from people trying to get business with them. So I’ve kind of figured that there’s really no chance. I should really be focusing more on standing out and doing something that’s so novel, that’s going to get them to turn their head and say, “Wait a minute. I’ve never seen anything like this. What is this?”

 

Will Barron:

Hello Sales Nation. My name is Will Barron and I’m the host of this Salesman Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sale show. On today’s episode, we have the legend is Marc McDougall, you can find out more about him over at clarityfirst.co. On today’s episode, we’re looking at how you can use pattern interrupt to get more email opens and to get more conversions via longer-form email campaigns. We get into storytelling, squirrels, and a whole lot more. So all that said, let’s jump right into it.

 

Understanding Pattern Interrupt in Sales and Its Impact on Email Open Rate · [01:20] 

 

Will Barron:

In this episode, I’m going to tee this up in a weird way, seemingly, until we get a little bit further into it, but we’re going to talk about how we can use squirrels to get our emails opened, right? So now the audience are going, and hopefully, this has done the job of what we’re going to discuss, but they’re going to go, “What the heck are those two frigging idiots talking about?” So what are we doing here when we use squirrels? When we use, I mean, in psychology, you call that a pattern interrupt. How does it work and why should we be doing this kind of thing to get our emails opened?

 

“I know that the people I’m trying to email are receiving potentially hundreds, maybe thousands of emails a day from people trying to get business with them. I’ve kind of figured that there’s really no chance. I should really be focusing more on standing out and doing something that’s so novel, that’s going to get them to turn their head and say, “Wait a minute, I’ve never seen anything like this. What is this?” – Marc McDougall · [01:50] 

 

Marc McDougall:

Yeah, so pattern interrupt is, you took the words right out of my mouth. That’s exactly what this kind of email tactic is, right? It’s a pattern interrupt on steroids. So I’ve received a lot of cold emails running my own private consulting practise and I’ve been the recipient of really bad emails, really good emails. But at the end of the day, I’ve been the recipient of a lot of emails. So I know that the people I’m trying to email are receiving potentially hundreds, maybe thousands of emails a day from people trying to get business with them.

 

Marc McDougall: