RevBoss’ing: How to Boost Your PR Firm Lead Generation

Note from the editor — we used to do a lot of cold email reviews and we got a lot of positive feedback on the content. We decided to revisit the idea, but instead review our stuff.

It’s time to jumpstart your PR firm’s lead generation. Here’s how we did it for one of our PR firm clients. 

Overview

We’ve helped Hogwarts Media — a leading PR agency that isn’t actually called Hogwarts Media — generate 377 leads and 9 new clients (representing 7 figures of revenue) over the past 4+ years. Pretty good, right?

Here’s a summary of our strategy:

  • Target Company: Start-ups, SaaS, B2B tech companies
  • Target Prospect:  Marketing, Comms, PR titles
  • Messaging Strategy: Highlighting experience (14 years working with B2B SaaS brands) and emphasizing that the firm is specifically designed to help early-stage SaaS companies earn press attention to generate revenue and/or raise money.  

Flow #1 — Decades of Experience

Subject: Lead the conversation…

At Hogwarts Media, we have more than a decade of experience helping B2B brands transition from conversation participants to conversation leaders in their industry. Our relentless hustle helps B2B technology, SaaS and marketing/sales enablement companies yield a consistent, focused share of voice — and I think we could be of help to [prospect’s company].

Do you have 15 minutes in the next few days to get acquainted?

What We Learned:

The numbers tell a sad story: Opens: 597 (12% open rate), Replies: 72 (5% reply rate), Leads: 9 (0.6% lead rate). And though we built this flow a few years back, the lessons remain painful…and obvious:

  • SaaS founders get a ton of prospecting email every day — you gotta do better than “more than a decade of experience”. I mean, my washing machine has a decade of experience.
  • I can’t believe we OK’d the phrase “relentless hustle”. Never again.
  • Geez — how many industries were we targeting here? B2B tech, SaaS, marketing/sales enablement, all in a single email.
  • What is share of voice? I’m not sure — guessing it is a PR vanity metric that might matter to PR people, but it certainly didn’t resonate with SaaS founders.
  • Transition from participants to leaders was nice…

…otherwise this was like reading a love letter to your middle school crush — embarrassing, cringey, and not at all a reflection of your ability as an email prospecting service provider.

What We Did:

We tried again, obviously.

Our goal was to highlight more specific differentiators and tone down the “relentless hustle”-iness of the messaging. Conversational, friendly, and authoritative wins every time. As does focusing on the things that matter most to the recipient — in this case using PR as a strategy to help with raising money, generating revenue, and/or recruiting great employees.

We also got smarter about targeting — tighter industry segments, small job title bites. 

Most importantly, we learned more as we sent more. Our client routed feedback to us so that we can change our targeting and change our copy.  

Flow #2 — Dedicated to B2B SaaS

Subject: PR at [prospect’s company]

As the only PR agency in the country dedicated to B2B SaaS, Hogwarts Media understands the unique challenges associated with scaling a SaaS business and uses PR to impact four primary pillars: investors, employees, partners and customers.

With an understanding of the SaaS customer journey, we secure media coverage that will impact our clients when they need it most — and I think we could be of help to [prospect’s company].

Do you have 15 minutes in the next few days to get acquainted?

The numbers:

Flow #1: Decades of Experience
Prospects: 1367
Emails Delivered: 4,754
Opens: 597 (12% open rate)
Replies: 72 (5% reply rate)
Leads: 9 (0.6% lead rate)
Flow #2:  Dedicated to B2B SaaS
Prospects: 1324
Emails Delivered: 4,555
Opens: 1949 (42.79% open rate)
Replies: 83 (6.27% reply rate)
Leads: 20 (1.51% lead rate)

So there you go — aim small, stay friendly, and focus on the recipient’s “what’s in it for me?”. And recognize that you’ll learn as you go, so just keep going.