I’ve been trialling a new tool to reach out to old clients this month and I wanted to share my Woodpecker Review.
What Is WoodPecker?
It’s an email outreach system where you can contact people on your list.
It has a drip facility where you can send a series of emails, if someone replies they are taken out of the drip.
It sends like a human would, a few requests per day not a bulk outreach.
It sends from your gmail account.
It monitors replies, auto replies, bounces and cleans your list up.
I’m using woodpecker to reach out to old clients I have not contacted in some time, so it’s a “warmish” email to generate leads. My main goal is to send out new quotes for WordPress technical support.
Setup
I exported all the entries from my gravity form database. This contains a list of people who have contacted me in the past to get a quote for WordPress technical support.
I took their name, email, WordPress site URL and the body of their last request (more about this a little later).
The import process was really simple and I was able to quickly build a database of prospects to contact.
It sanitised my contacts and removed duplicates.
Campaigns
At the core of Woodpecker is a campaign. A campaign is one ore more emails that are sent out to your list.
You can control when the email is sent and upon which day. I’m sending Monday to Friday 9am – 7pm my time. I’ve set a block of time so I’m available to reply to any responses I get in a timely manner. I’ve excluded weekends for the same reason.
The campaign has a sending limit of 25 people per day. The reasons for this are:
- It looks more like a human is sending the messages.
- It does not get me banned from gmail for sending too many emails, they limit to 250 per day.
- I am able to cope with the number of replies, generating quotes and the work this creates.
A campaign can contain a series of emails, they are sent out in a drip fashion. A really useful feature is that if someones replies they are not sent the nexy email in the series.
I’m trying to generate leads, if I get the lead I don’t want to bug the client with another email.
A gentle drip with a nudge is a great way to get on the radar of busy people who may need help but
Personalisation
The key to this type of outreach is personalisation. I’ve got the persons name, website and their last interaction with me. Using this information I can make the outreach much more personal.
I’m personalising the email like this:
Subject
Do you need any help with {WEBSITE URL}
Body
Hi {FIRST NAME}
The last bit is important for cold outreach, some people on my list have not been in contact for a few years and they might not even remember working wiht me
Where It Beats Other CRMs I’ve Used
There are a number of really good features which makes Woodpecker stand out from the crowd of other CRMs
It manages bouces – people change emails all teh time, and old emails bounce, Woodpecker detects this and marks the contact. This makes the quality of yoru prospect list that much better.
It has an easy to use drip campaign system, that stops on reply.
It has a unsubscribe feature. CRMs don’t allow your list members to opt out for some reason, I’ve spent a lot of time managing contacts that don’t want or need my services.
Stats, Woodpecker has really good stats on the performance of your campaign.
Why This Beats Mailchimp Or Other Email Provider
Setting up automation in mailchimp will give me the same results but they are really difficult to create in my experience.
Mailchimp sends in one big batch, whereas Woodpecker is more graceful and sends in small batches which allows for control over creating quotes and replying properly to client requests.
Integrations
Although I’m not using the integrations, Woodpecker works with Zapier so potentially I could automate reachout to clients by adding people who reequest a quote to a campaign to reach out every 6 months or so.
Pricing
It’s about the same as other CRMs I’ve used in the past I’m on the $40 per month plan. There is a $50 plan for the integration option.
One thing I did not like was their charge per email I want to send from. Two emails = 2 x $40.
Does It Work?
I’m running two campaigns in tandem to test if Woodpecker works for my offerings, One campaign is for a one off project quote, the other is for my maintenance service.
I’ve generated 16 leads for quotes and several have been confirmed into live projects.
I’ve had 21 requests for details of my maintenance plan and 9 signups.
Does it work, YES!
Downside
I did not validate my list very well and I’ve reach out to people who have unsubscribed or do not wish to work with me.
I’ve had a couple of angry replies, sorry about that if you are reading this, I hold my hands up I’m at fault there.
14 Day Free Trial
Woodpecker has a 14 days free trial, I would recommend you run a test campaign to see if this service will work for you.
Wrap Up – WoodPecker Review
I’m enjoying this, it is automated unlike my old CRM, it looks at replies and bounces and auto updates my list which was a huge time suck and it works, I’ve generated leads and new business. It’s still early days but I’m liking what I have seen so far.
I think the data I’m collecting on who opens and replies will make my future campaigns even more effective.
Long term I think this will be a very useful tool to automate reach out to past clients to keep my name in their mind if they need WordPress help.
If you are a service business with a list of past clients, reaching out to them regularlly with a check in to see if they need help is a no brainer. This software automates that.
Disclosure, all links to woodpecker are affiliate links and I’ll get a referral fee if you become a paying customer.
Photo Credit: mjeedelbr Flickr via Compfight cc
SEO nonsense to increase Woodpecker review density, woodpecker review 🙂
