Email Prospecting Techniques the Best Salespeople Use

When it comes to successful prospecting, email can be one of the most effective tools in the business. Most prospects check their inboxes several times throughout the day, providing you with plenty of opportunities to engage. Emails are easy to create and quick to deliver.

A strategically crafted email can be read in a matter of seconds and allow you with the opportunity to connect with a new prospect for a lot longer.

However, it can be difficult to nail the perfect email technique when it comes to prospecting. With billions of emails being sent every day, prospects’ inboxes are overfilled and many emails end up untouched and deleted or sent directly to junk boxes. You need to create a punchy email that stands out from the rest and catches the readers attention with a strong call to action. Generic sales messages won’t work, and the more you send, the more chance you have of being blocked from sending emails to prospects in the first place, so it is best to adopt a good technique from the beginning.

Here is a list of the top 4 email prospecting techniques the best salespeople use for maximum response rates.

1. Get creative with visuals

Email opening rates have decreased in recent years and, according to MailVU.com, the average email click-through rate is just 5%. However, some of the best salespeople always use a visual in their emails, and with the technology available today, you have the opportunity to get creative with your prospecting.

Try including a video in your email instead of text and see how many responses you receive. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy – just a video of you introducing yourself as you would in person. If you don’t fancy trying your hand at video, try using a GIF, picture or a meme. A picture says a thousand words and can convey a message within seconds. Using a visual will humanize you and is a great way to break the ice with the prospect, but make sure it’s relevant to the pitch – reference a quote, movie or current event.

2. Measure and evaluate your success

Instead of trying to come up with new and wonderful ways to entice your prospects with text every time, try evaluating why the emails you have previously sent haven’t worked. Taking the time to consider why your previous techniques haven’t worked will help you to come up with far better and well-thought through alternative methods.

By doing this, you may immediately notice that you have some high-performing email templates and some low-performing ones. Have a look at these two types of templates – what do they have in common? How do they differ? This will help you to evaluate what works and what doesn’t and prevent you from sending out too many low-performing emails in the future.

Tracking your success will provide you with lots of data to help you improve. You will be able to see whether:

– one particular template works better when sent to a prospective demographic

– the length of email affects the click-through rate

– the use of a visual increase the response rate

Once you can clearly see what works and what doesn’t, it will be easy to find templates that have the best chance of the lead generation.

3. Make your call to action easy

The easier it is for your prospects to read and reply to your emails, the more responses you are likely to receive. It may seem obvious, but time and time again emails are sent which are too long, confusing and open-ended.

Use no more than six sentences in your email. If you are aiming to deliver a message with a single clear concept, your message needs to be direct and to the point – it shouldn’t need to be longer than six sentences long. Note that clarity applies to your sentences too – no waffling! Any more text and your prospects are likely to close the email before reading the first line.

Break your text up into several sections to focus your email. Using one sentence, describe the single concept you are trying to convey to the prospect. Alternatively, provide a line of advice which you believe will engage the prospect into reading on. Make sure it is relevant to the pitch and will draw the reader into wanting to find out more.

Finally, ask the prospect a question or give them a simple action step. Make it clear how they can complete the action step, or answer the question you have asked by providing them with specific directions to help them act quickly.

4. Add a personal note

Many prospects are turned off by cheesy sales pitches. Instead of creating a generic prospecting email try to make your emails individual, thought through, and less generic. By all means, use a high-performing template to save on time, but tailor it to suit the prospect you are contacting.

You can easily find out more about prospects through connecting with them on public social media platforms like Instagram or Twitter. This will allow you to get a feel for their persona by the type of posts they share and like. Take note of any recent achievements or current projects and use this information to create an individualized email.

Start using the above techniques to increase your prospecting success.