Re-thinking Sales Emails: How to Get 30 to 50% Open Rates by Wowing Your Prospects with What You Can do for Them

It’s time wow to your prospects with what you can do for them (by what you’ve done for others)

As a small business owner, I receive ten to twenty prospect emails a day from salespeople trying to schedule a meeting. I ignore most of them—or worse—despise the lack of effort most salespeople put into them. They bore me with uninspiring subject lines, meeting requests with no reason for why I should want to meet with them; and they send the same email over and over, week after week. When was the last time any of them wowed me? Or made me think their solution could really make my job easier? Hardly ever!

That’s because very few substantiate what they could do for me or what they’ve done for others in a quick and easy read. It’s time to re-think sales emails from merely a “reach out to schedule a meeting” effort to a fight for the right to be heard. How do you earn that right? By validating what you can do for me, and by backing up that claim with a verifiable source or case study. Then writing an email presenting that information in a succinct and convincing manner.

Fighting for the right to be heard starts with hard data and a verifiable source

Before you start work on your sales email flow, take inventory of the stor(ies) you have to tell and the proof data from them that you have to present. Did your company do work for clients that can become a good case study? Create a blog, recorded webinar, or video testimonial that brings out the data points you’d like others to know about how your product works and makes companies successful. Those content assets become the foundation for your next sales email series. Remember it’s one thing to say something about yourself and your company, but it’s a whole lot more believable when someone else says it about you.

The next step is to map the proof points to your audience and make sure you are talking about things that matter to them. For instance, a CIO and CFO may be interested in the same product, but for different reasons, but they both sign off on the budget for the purchase. So be sure you’re presenting data and proof points in emails to them that have information relevant to their priorities.

The final step is writing the sales email. Three factors affect email results and in this order 1) quality of the list 2) offer 3) copy/creative. We discussed the content offer and the target audience above and so now we’re down to the actual copywriting. Let me put it kindly. You can’t be boring, and you can’t be long about it.

Good sales emails start with a subject line that helps the prospect know what you can do for them, usually by alluding to what you’ve done for others. This brings a validated proof point right to the forefront of the discussion and gets them interested in learning more.

You can help them get even more interested in reading or viewing the case study by bringing up more data points of money/time/cycles you saved a client in bullet points in the copy, while blending in subtle messaging about your product as the solution. And by engendering that level of credibility and interest you might even get some replies back asking for a meeting. We recently re-wrote a series of emails for a technology client for their IT titles in financial services target. By focusing on financial client case studies and proof points we got on average a 42% open rate, 11% click to open, and .8% asked for a meeting or a free trial.

Beyond the convincing, proof driven, content we have the following advice to offer you in writing sales emails:

• Personalization is a key priority in text emails.
• Subject lines should be as brief as possible—ideally 50 characters or less.
• The first three lines of an email need to reflect subject line content.
• The email should always include a content asset (case study, guide, report, etc.) as an incentive to respond. Note: “asset” is often referred to as “fulfillment piece.” This asset should be substantive and provide validating proof points for you to use as subject matter in your emails.
• The asset is always Hero. Subject line and subsequent email content should focus on the benefits that the responder or their business will enjoy by acquiring it. This requires careful consideration of an asset’s content or services—then reflecting the most important of them in the email.
• Tie in your company’s value in terms of the benefits noted in the asset.
• The less you tell the more you sell. Email content should be kept to a minimum; and content formatted for easy skimming. A couple of options:
  • Avoid exclusive use of full paragraphs of information; try using hyphens to create short, easy-to-read bulleted lists.
  • Use multiple line breaks between sections to create white space and break up content so it isn’t difficult to read.
• Calls-to-action should be prominent, as compelling as possible and kept to a minimum in terms of offerings. Giving readers multiple fulfillment options can depress response.

A Template for Putting It All into Practice

The following is copy featured in one of our client’s text sales email targeted to IT decision makers in financial firms. We changed the client name to XYZ Company for the purpose of this blog article. It follows all the above best practices noted above. Part of a campaign focusing on Payments and Fraud Prevention, the email’s content and formatting can serve as a basic template for your use:

Written by Laurie Beasley

Need help with your email content writing, lists or email marketing? Contact us.

Summary

Article Name

Re-thinking Sales Emails: How to Get 30 to 50% Open Rates by Wowing Your Prospects with What You Can do for Them

Description

As a small business owner, I receive ten to twenty prospect emails a day from salespeople trying to schedule a meeting. I ignore most of them—or worse—despise the lack of effort most salespeople put into them.

Author

Laurie B. Beasley

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.