Blacksales is basically a play on words with the name of the Black Sails series, in reference to the flags of pirates and privateers... Today, Blacksales is above all a tribute to commercial conquest, it is the tool that reminds you that if you don't sell, you will be caught by the competition!
Generally speaking, B2B prospecting complies with the R.G.P.D. if 4 points are respected:
The first point is that of targeting, if your solution can concern the prospect's activity, then they can legitimately be contacted. This is one of the reasons why targeting is essential when using our tool.
The second point is to always give prospects an exit door. We advise our clients to include a link in their email signature to a "Why I am contacting you" landing page in which we explain to the prospect why they are being contacted, what data we have on them, and how they can object to the processing.
The third point is to always be able to give the prospect all the information we have on them.
Finally, we must be able to identify and trace all opt-out and spam requests with contact dates. This is necessary to prove to the prospect that they have left the contact sequences.
At Blacksales we distinguish two types of data: Company data and individual data.
As far as company data is concerned, we rent or buy it from different sources, such as Kompass or société.com for example. These directories allow us to find general information about the company, such as the total number of employees, turnover, sector of activity or the location of the head office. In some cases, to refine our targeting, we use APIs such as Clearbit or Similartech; these tools allow us to take into account more technical criteria such as the technology used by the company we are prospecting or the volume of traffic on its website.
For individual data, our own robot will scan Linkedin to find the right profiles in the companies we have identified, according to the positions and job descriptions. To complete this system, we reconstruct professional emails and carry out deliverability tests to ensure the validity of the addresses.
You will be asked to create prospecting addresses on your domain name. We use the Gmail API or the office365 API, which gives us permission to send and receive emails.
Blacksales is integrated with Zapier, so you can retrieve the data generated by our tool and update your CRM automatically. For example, you can create a new contact in your CRM each time a prospect is contacted via Blacksales. You get information such as the date when the prospect was contacted or the source.
It is also possible to show in your CRM an opportunity when a prospect responds to the sequence of emails and is tagged "interested" by Blacksales.
The Blacksales tool also allows you to integrate a task in your CRM by indicating "call back" when a prospect responds and is tagged "maybe later" by Blacksales. For each of the possible answers, the Blacksales tool is able to prescribe, if necessary, actions to help your sales people to close the deals obtained via our email sequences.
You can prospect all BtoB prospects who can be identified on the internet and who consult their professional emails. Here are some examples of targets:
Marketing, data, CRM management of large accounts
Media / advertising / acquisition management of advertisers
Technical management of e-commerce sites based on Prestashop and Magento
Export, financial or administrative management of SMEs with less than 200 employees
HR / QWL managers of companies with more than 50 employees
E-commerce management of sites with more than 100K visitors per month
Communication / social media / content project manager of BtoC companies
Blacksales is constantly learning from its work and in particular from the behaviour of the prospects contacted (bounce rate, open rate, response rate...); this constant learning allows us to take out the bad emails or to update them. On average, bounce rates with Blacksales are less than 8%, which is excellent.
The results in terms of leads generated depend on the volumes of leads contacted each month for our clients. The KPIs we look at to judge the effectiveness of a campaign are the open rate, the response rate and the interest rate. The average open rate for a first phase of prospecting (5 to 6 emails) is 45% (from 35% to 60% depending on the campaign). On average, 25% of those who opened respond (from 15% to 40% depending on the campaign). Finally, the interest rate (request for an appointment) on the responses is 14% on average (from 10% to 40%) depending on the campaign.
It takes about 3 to 6 weeks between the signature and the launch of the prospecting campaign, depending on the subscription chosen. During this period, we will ask you to work on 3 essential points for the success of the campaign: targeting, content, and a technical part with the connection of email addresses and deliverability. This will take the form of questionnaires to be filled in and, above all, video-conference exchanges with your dedicated customer success manager.
Like any tool, these programs are only as good as the use you make of them. That is, to get (non-guaranteed) results, you will have to become an expert in these programs, spend hours setting them up, using them and checking that your teams do the same. On top of that, you will have to find and sort the data yourself to feed them. Blacksales does not depend on you or your sales people!
As for traditional lead generation agencies, they offer to do the work for you but often the methods, processes and results are not transparent. You don't control or see which prospects are selected and contacted, what is said to the prospects, how they are followed up... All the more so as you usually pay by the man-day or by the fixed price.
Yes, you can use Blacksales internationally. We already support customers in France, the UK, Spain, Mexico, the USA, Benelux and Switzerland.