Autobound Product Guide
This product guide was written for all users, from those who signed up today, to organization admins in Autobound.
Navigating this guide: Use these links to navigate to specific sections of the guide, or you can scroll away.
- Intro to Autobound
- Signing Up and How Pricing Works
- Navigating the Chrome Extension
- What are Content Drivers?
a. Personal vs. Team
b. Teaching Autobound your Company Description
c. Teaching Autobound the Buyer Personas you target
d. Teaching Autobound your Competitors - What else feeds into the content Autobound suggests?
- Insights Panel
- Integrations
a. Gmail
b. LinkedIn
c. Outreach
d. Salesloft
e. Best practices for using Autobound in Outreach, Salesloft, or other sequencing tools - Organizations
Intro to Autobound
Autobound increases email reply rate by generating individually personalized sales emails using AI, based on news events, shared experiences, persona-specific pain points, and more. Our AI scans through millions of prospect insights, then incorporates the most relevant into a compelling, persona-specific message. Using Autobound's Google Chrome extension, anyone can get started in less than 30 seconds (works in Gmail, LinkedIn, Outreach, Salesloft & more).
By instantly researching the recipient in the “To:” field in your drafted email (or the prospect's LinkedIn page), Autobound scours millions of data sources from across the web, then aggregates insights unique to both your email recipient and their employer.
We’ve trained our AI on millions of high performing sales emails to identify what works best.
With a single click, Autobound generates a list of emails and email openers, that are proven to spark conversations.
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Signing up and how pricing works
- Go to www.autobound.ai/sign-up-free and enter in your work email.
- Confirm your LinkedIn profile URL. This allows us to surface shared experiences between you and your prospects. Don't worry, we'll never post anything to your LinkedIn.
- Add the Autobound chrome extension, and you’re ready to go!
How Autobound Pricing Works
Daily Credit System
Every user is provided with five credits per day, which reset at midnight of your local time. Credits are consumed when you interact with platform content, such as viewing or downloading detailed reports, exporting data, etc.
Before using a credit, you will see a warning notifying you that the action will consume one of your daily credits. However, if you wish, you can turn off these notifications by clicking on the "don’t remind me again" option in the warning message. Please note, once you've opted out of these warnings, they cannot be re-enabled.
Credit and Subscription Management
In the billing portal, you'll find essential details regarding your plan including the plan name, number of users, credits included (or if you're on the unlimited plan), and the total cost per month or year. The portal will also display your credit usage details including the usage period, amount used, and the reset date.
Upgrading Your Plan
If you find that you require more than five credits per day, you have the option to upgrade to the unlimited credits plan at any time. Simply navigate to the plan selection page within the billing portal and choose the unlimited option. You can then proceed to the payment page to finalize your upgrade.
User Management and Shared Billing
Pricing is based on the number of active users or "seats" on your account. You can add or remove seats as necessary. New users added to your organization will automatically be assigned the same plan as existing users.
As an admin, you have the power to assign a seat to a user, thus taking over the billing for that user. The cost for that user will be added to your account, and their previous billing will be erased. If you remove a user from your billing account, the adjustment will be reflected in the next billing period, decreasing your total cost.
When you purchase a new seat, you'll be immediately charged a pro-rated amount for the rest of the current month. From the start of the next month, you'll be billed the full price for the increased number of seats.
Admins can also enable shared billing to cover the cost of the entire team based on the number of users in the organization. Note that only admins have the ability to turn shared billing on or off. When it's enabled, it's clearly marked on the billing page.
With shared billing enabled, individual users who were previously paying for an account will have their personal plan deactivated, but they will still retain pro access.
Billing Overview and Control
On the billing portal, you can see a clear overview of the plan you're about to purchase, with detailed information about the total cost, billing frequency, and the amount due at the time of purchase.
You can also edit your payment information, view the list of users you're paying for, and see how much you're spending in the current period from within the billing portal.
Should you ever need to cancel your subscription, there's a straightforward method to do so within the billing portal.
Lastly, it's important to know that users can join an organization without shared billing setup and still pay individually, providing flexibility for diverse team setups.
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Navigating the Chrome Extension
To follow along, open Autobound for Chrome while on a prospect's LinkedIn profile, and click the Autobound icon on the righthand side of your screen (ensure you have the extension downloaded).
Here are the different menu options you'll find at the bottom of the extension.
- Full Emails: You'll see between 3-5 options suggested (on average), and you can regenerate another batch by clicking the refresh icon (bottom right).The AI generated content is based on information Autobound has identified on a given prospect (as found in the "Insights" menu), as well as information on your company. You can update the info on your company through Settings --> Content Drivers.
- Openers: Very similar to Full Emails, except much shorter! These are designed to be additive to your existing templates or sequences. Outreach and Salesloft-using SDRs/AEs love using our openers to paste on top of templates in manual steps of their sequences/cadences. Best practices for using openers in Outreach/Salesloft can be found here.
- Prospecting Panel: The insights pane shows users the information Autobound has aggregated on a given prospect. This info is what will power the content suggested in Full Emails, Openers and Chat. More on the Insights Panel here.
- Settings: Within settings, you can build your Content Drivers (which improves the quality of the content Autobound suggests), and invite other users.
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What are Content Drivers?
Content Drivers enables Autobound to suggest messaging that’s tweaked to your specific value proposition, based on the Persona you're reaching out to, or competitor they're using.
There are currently three types of content drivers. Here's what they are, and how Autobound determines which to use when suggesting you content.
Especially for brand new users, your Company Description is what'll most often be used by Autobound when generating content.
However, let's assume I'm a new user, and I've created 1 Persona-specific Value Prop (Head of Sales Enablement) and 1 Competitor-specific Value Prop (Lavender) into my Content Drivers.
Now, if I'm reaching out to a prospect who matches my Head of Sales Persona, Autobound will use the specific value prop I've saved for my Head of Sales Persona, rather than the company description.
If I've built my Head of Sales Persona out correctly, the emails Autobound suggests should be highly relevant to the specific pain points and problems that a Head of Sales faces, and how Autobound solves for them.
An important best practice!
Update each Content Driver until suggested content is spot on. This is an iterative process:
- Open Autobound for Chrome on a prospect's LinkedIn
- Update your Content Driver based on the pain points your company solves, and benefits you provide
- Autobound should've updated the suggested emails. Review the newly generated emails & critique how they could be better
- Make additional changes to your Content Driver - rinse and repeat!
Personal or Team?
Personal Content Drivers only impact content suggested to YOU. They are prioritized over Team Drivers, so content can better fit your voice and style.
Team Content Drivers impact content suggested to EVERYONE in your organization. Only Managers and Admins can update Team Content Drivers. You should put your BEST messaging here, so new team members are set up for success.
Your team should invest heavily in perfecting your Team Content Drivers before letting users build Personal Content Drivers. It's important to get everyone on board with your core value propositions.
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Teaching Autobound your Company Description
For 70% of users, the Full emails you'll see suggested initially won't sound as good as you'd like.
When you first sign up, Autobound uses your company's LinkedIn "About" section to figure out what you do. This usually isn't perfect, so a crucial step to getting the most out of Autobound is updating your Company Description!
When generating suggested emails & openers, your Company Description is the primary location Autobound pulls from to pitch your company. (unless the prospect matches a Persona you've built, in which case you can tweak the messaging you'd like incorporated to be more specific to that Persona - more on that here).
We suggest that ALL USERS edit their Company Description 2-3 times right after initially signing up. This refinement process is especially important if you're inviting others into your org who will be using the Company Description you save (see Shared Team Content Drivers below).
Don't forget the best practices for creating Content Drivers 🙂
- Open Autobound when reaching out to a prospect...
- Critique the content Autobound suggests (how could it be better)?
- Figure out how you can make this content better, by creating/editing a Persona, creating/editing a Competitor, or editing your Company Description
- Update the matching Content Drivers based on the pain points your company solves, and benefits you provide
- Autobound should've updated the suggested emails. Review the newly generated emails, rinse and repeat!
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Teaching Autobound the Buyer Personas you target
In the world of B2B sales and marketing, it's absolutely crucial to make your message specific to the buyer persona you're reaching out to. It's not "one size fits all" - you need to ask the right questions, surface the right benefits, reference the proper case studies, etc. based on the job title, industry, etc. of the prospect you're reaching out to.
Personas is arguably the most important category of Autobound's Content Drivers. Personas allow you to customize your messaging based on firmographic details of the prospect you’re reaching out to. Autobound knows the industry, job title, company size, etc. of anyone you're reaching out to.
You're able to save keywords into these filters, then create specific messaging you'd like Autobound to use when a prospect you're reaching out to passes the filters for a specific persona.
Be careful not to make these too restrictive. 90% of users only need to put one or two keywords into the ‘Job Title’ filters, and won't even use the other filters we provide.
You'll know that a prospect matches one of your active Personas when you see the Persona's name on the Insight panel.
When you're reaching out to a prospect that doesn't match a persona you've created yet, we'll walk you through building one, actually writing out the pain points, value prop, and key benefit on your behalf! When you see the banner that say's "Too Generic" after Autobound has suggested emails, that's a fantastic opportunity to teach Autobound what your more specific messaging is for that buyer persona. This will enhance future suggestions, and also improves Autobound's recommendations to other team members in your organization.
In the below example, we've specified the messaging Autobound's AI should suggest whenever a team member reaches out to a prospect with "Sales Enablement" in their job title.
When creating your Buyer Personas, don't forget the best practices for creating Content Drivers 🙂
- Open Autobound when reaching out to a prospect...
- Critique the content Autobound suggests (how could it be better)?
- Figure out how you can make this content better, by creating/editing a Persona, creating/editing a Competitor, or editing your Company Description
- Update the matching Content Drivers based on the pain points your company solves, and benefits you provide
- Autobound should've updated the suggested emails. Review the newly generated emails, rinse and repeat!
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Teaching Autobound your Competitors
A great way to customize your sales pitch is recognizing which competitor your potential customer is currently using. This can impact your value proposition and what you would like to highlight in your pitch.
Autobound gets this data from third party vendors. We know which products certain companies use by...
- Looking at their cookies and site data
- Using machine learning to identify customer logos on company's "customer" pages
- Press releases, and more
Competitors is another category of Autobound's Content Drivers. They allow you to customize your messaging based on the specific pain points you'd target, questions you'd ask, or case studies you'd reference given the competitor a prospect is using.
To create a Competitor, click Settings>Competitors>Add competitor. Now, add your competitor’s company url and a description of your competitor-specific messaging. Be sure to be heavily focused on the pain points prospects using that competitor exhibit, and the benefit you're able to offer.
When creating your Competitors, don't forget the best practices for creating Content Drivers 🙂
- Open Autobound when reaching out to a prospect...
- Critique the content Autobound suggests (how could it be better)?
- Figure out how you can make this content better, by creating/editing a Persona, creating/editing a Competitor, or editing your Company Description
- Update the matching Content Drivers based on the pain points your company solves, and benefits you provide
- Autobound should've updated the suggested emails. Review the newly generated emails, rinse and repeat!
Unfortunately, we won't get it right 100% of the time. Here are a couple issues that are still unresolved (we're working on them)
- "Autobound doesn't realize that this company uses one of my competitors that I've already built in"
- "Autobound thinks this prospect is using a specific competitor, but I know they're not"
- "How do I tell Autobound which competitor a prospect is using"
If you're running into these issues, hang tight, we'll have fixes soon.
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The Insights Panel
Surfaces relevant insights on a given prospect, which impacts the content Autobound suggests.
Examples include...
On the individual level: initiatives in current role, interests and hobbies, job changes, work anniversaries, schools attended, promotions, & more. We’ll also identify experiences they share with you, such as if you both worked at the same company, live in the same city, etc.
On the company level: funding rounds, acquisitions, press releases, company initiatives, names of customers/investors, product launches, competitive technologies used, and more.
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What else feeds into the content Autobound suggests?
You can think of there being three location categories that Autobound pulls information from to drive the content we suggest.
#1 is publicly available online data: Autobound’s “listening engine” combs through the digital footprint of your email recipient, their employer, and industry to surface the most relevant and personalized insights. This includes...
- 35+ news events aggregated from thousands of sources
- Information on the prospect and their employer from LinkedIn
- Relevant market trends identified
- Job openings, & more
Here, our engine found a John Steinbeck quote on a prospect’s Linkedin page and personalized a full email with the information!
#2 is information you, the user, builds in: Primarily, your Content Drivers. The more context you can give us on things like the Buyer Personas you target, and your value prop/pain points addressed for each, the better.
#3 is Autobound's intelligence engine: Over time, Autobound becomes more capable of generating sensical, on-the-fly content that ties various insights together.
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Integrations
We have native integrations with Gmail, LinkedIn, Outreach, and Salesloft. However Autobound works in over 30+ sales tools, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Groove & others (via our Chrome extension).
Gmail, Outreach, Salesloft, and LinkedIn functionality
Autobound starts working when you enter a recipient’s email address into the “to” field of an email. With 1 click, you can view Autobound’s suggested emails and email openers. On LinkedIn, Autobound recognizes who to generate content for based on the prospect's profile you have pulled up.
Best practices for teams using Outreach, Salesloft, or other sequencing tools
Autobound works best in manual email steps built into Outreach and Salesloft. A best practice is building a (personalization_reminder) within your manual email template, to guide users on how to use Autobound in a given manual step. Here's an example.
Autobound conveniently sits right on top of Salesloft and Outreach, making it very easy to send personalized content at scale.
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Organizations
Users can now invite their teams into Autobound!
To invite users into your org, go Settings -> Users -> New user
User roles are as follows...
Admin- Can manage team content drivers- Can manage billing for multiple users in the organization (coming soon)
Manager- Can manage team content drivers
Member- Can create personal content drivers
Within Organizations, Team Content Drivers are the real value. Team Content Drivers impacts content suggested across your entire team, which is hugely beneficial for anyone trying to relay best practices on sales messaging across their organization (especially for Sales Enablement practitioners).
When anyone at Autobound is reaching out to a prospect who matches ANY of these buyer personas, they’ll have the absolute best messaging threaded into their emails, based on how I’ve programmed Autobound’s specific value prop/pain points solved for each persona.
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That's all for now! Questions? Reach out to support@autobound.ai.
