Outbound Marketing: Definition, Examples and What Works
What outbound marketing is, ten examples, how it differs from inbound and which kind a small agency can afford.
Robbert Veer, Founder
7 min read
Outbound marketing is marketing in which the business starts the contact. It sends a message to people who did not ask for it, through an ad, a letter, an email or a call. Inbound marketing is the reverse, and buyers find you through search or content. This guide defines both, lists ten examples and shows which ones fit an agency.
What is outbound marketing?
Outbound marketing is any marketing where the seller picks the audience and sends the message first. Some writers call it push marketing or interruption marketing. A TV commercial is outbound. So is a cold email to one dentist.
Those two have little in common, which is why the term confuses people. It helps to split outbound into two kinds.
- Broadcast outbound sends one message to a crowd. TV, radio, billboards and display ads all work this way. You pay for reach and accept that most of the crowd is the wrong audience.
- Addressed outbound sends one message to one chosen business. A posted letter, a cold email, a phone call and a LinkedIn message all work this way. You pay per contact, in money or in time.
Most definitions stop before that split. For a small agency it settles the budget question, because the second kind is the one it can afford to run every week.
What are some outbound marketing examples?
Ten common outbound marketing examples are below, sorted by kind.
| Example | Kind | Who receives it | Fit for a small agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| TV or radio ad | Broadcast | Everyone tuned in | Poor |
| Billboard or transit ad | Broadcast | Everyone who passes | Poor |
| Print ad | Broadcast | Every reader | Fair, in a trade title your niche reads |
| Display or paid social ad | Broadcast, with targeting | People who match a profile | Fair |
| Trade show booth | Broadcast | Everyone at the event | Fair, at a local trade event |
| Flyer or postcard drop | Broadcast | Every address in an area | Poor |
| Posted letter | Addressed | One named owner | Good |
| Cold email | Addressed | One named contact | Good |
| Cold call | Addressed | One business | Good |
| LinkedIn message | Addressed | One person | Good |
The fit column is our judgment for an agency of one to ten people that sells websites, SEO or marketing to local businesses. A national brand would fill it in the other way round.
Here is addressed outbound in practice. The agency and the roofers are made up.
Ridgeline Web, a two-person studio in Tulsa, picks 40 roofing companies whose websites fail on a phone. Each owner gets a one-page letter that names one problem on their own site. An email follows three days later and refers to the letter.
No airtime and no ad budget. The whole campaign is 40 letters and the hours it took to read 40 websites.
Inbound vs outbound marketing, what is the difference?
The difference is who makes the first move. In inbound marketing the buyer finds the business. In outbound marketing the business finds the buyer.
| Inbound | Outbound | |
|---|---|---|
| Who starts | The buyer | The seller |
| How contact happens | A search, an article, a review or a referral | An ad, a letter, an email or a call |
| When results show | After rankings and content have built up | Once the message lands |
| What you control | What you publish | Who receives it, and when |
| What it costs | Time up front, then upkeep | Money or time for every contact |
| Main risk | Nobody finds it | It reaches the wrong people |
Neither wins in general. Inbound suits a business that can wait and has something to publish. Outbound suits a business that knows who it wants as clients and wants to reach them this month.
Many agencies sell inbound work, such as SEO and content, and still win their own clients through outbound. That is consistent. A new agency has no rankings yet, and many owners with a weak website are not searching for a new one.
Does outbound marketing still work?
Outbound addressed to one business works when the list is chosen well. Most cold messages are ignored, and the list decides which side of that line a message lands on.
Start with the ignoring. In a 2019 study of 12 million outreach emails by Backlinko and Pitchbox, 8.5% got a reply (Backlinko). That study covered outreach of all kinds, link requests included.
Our own test shows what moves the number. We scored 20,000 Dutch company websites and sent 3,570 cold emails to three groups.
| Group | Who got the email | Positive replies |
|---|---|---|
| A | A random sample from the stronger 80% of websites | 0.50% |
| B | The weakest 20% of websites, generic email | 1.60% |
| C | The weakest 20% of websites, email names the problem | 2.35% |
Choosing the right businesses made a positive reply about 3.2 times more likely. The gap between B and C was not statistically significant (p = 0.238). Who we wrote to decided more than what we wrote. The full numbers are in our write-up of the test. The test covered Dutch companies and email only.
Mail has evidence of its own. The ANA's Response Rate Report 2021 drew 581 qualified responses. In it, 38% of respondents used direct mail and 82% used email. Letter-sized envelopes gave the best return on prospect lists, at 112% (ANA). The report gives return on investment and no response rates.
Which outbound marketing fits a small agency?
Addressed outbound in a short sequence, sent to a list you have qualified. It fits for three reasons.
- The cost per contact is known. With Leadodo, a posted letter in the US costs about 86 cents, for one page in black and white, sent First Class. That covers printing, postage and the envelope. Forty letters come to about $34.40, which is 40 times 0.86.
- You can start small. Forty businesses is a campaign. A TV spot has no small version.
- You can see the need first. An agency sells something visible. Open a prospect's website and you know within minutes whether it needs work.
The order of channels matters. A posted letter goes first, emails follow and LinkedIn comes last. Our guide to direct mail for agencies explains why the letter goes first, and our cold email guide covers the emails. If you are starting from zero, our cold outreach plan covers the first 100 prospects.
Leadodo is software for this kind of outbound. It finds businesses, scores their websites and runs outreach to the ones with the weakest sites. Your Outbound Machine runs six steps over 19 working days. A posted letter arrives on day 1, emails follow on days 4, 7 and 11, and LinkedIn comes on days 15 and 19. The sequence stops for a business the moment it replies. Leadodo never contacts anyone itself. Your agency sends, under its own name.
For the full process from list to booked call, read our guide to outbound sales.
How do inbound and outbound work together?
Each one makes the other work better. An owner who gets your letter may look you up before replying. What they find is your inbound marketing, meaning your website, your case studies and your reviews.
It runs the other way too. Replies to outbound tell you which problems owners care about, and those problems are your next articles. Our guide to agency lead generation puts both halves in one system.
Questions
What is the difference between outbound marketing and outbound sales?
Outbound marketing is the wider term. It covers every message a seller sends first, including ads aimed at a crowd. Outbound sales is the person-to-person part, where a named business gets a message, replies and books a call.
Is cold email outbound marketing?
Yes. A cold email is addressed outbound, because you choose the recipient and send first. It sits in the same family as a posted letter, a cold call and a LinkedIn message.
Is direct mail inbound or outbound?
Outbound. The sender chooses who receives it. A flyer dropped at every address in a zip code is broadcast outbound. A letter to one named owner is addressed outbound.
Is outbound marketing more expensive than inbound?
It depends on the kind. Broadcast outbound needs an ad budget before it reaches anyone. Addressed outbound costs little money per contact and a fair amount of time. Inbound costs time up front and keeps working after the work is done.
Is outbound marketing legal in the United States?
Yes, with rules for each channel. For email, the CAN-SPAM Act has no exception for messages sent to businesses, and each email that breaks it can cost up to $53,088 (FTC). Identify the message as an ad, give a valid postal address and honor opt-outs within 10 business days. This is not legal advice.
Next step. See how your Outbound Machine runs the letter, the emails and the LinkedIn steps over 19 days. See the Outbound Machine.
