5 Secrets of the Best Sales Emails

Why should you spend time planning and writing a sales email? Because when done right, it absolutely works to drive traffic to your business. A recent talk by Heather Morgan from SalesFolk highlighted ways to create the best sales emails for your business.

Download our guide to email follow up after a trade show.

There are many reasons to consider reaching out to prospects via email. First, marketing has changed significantly in the last decade. There is more competition in all industries and it is no longer enough just to shout “I am here!” and wait for the work to appear. Telemarketing and cold calls are hard and not as effective. You need to adapt your approach to continue to gain new customers and projects.

Inbound marketing is the new way to attract and educate qualified leads, but building quality content takes time. You also have to spread this content over multiple channels such as email marketing, Facebook, and LinkedIn to attract leads to your website.

If done right, sales emails can be very an effective way to attract, educate, and retain clients. Here are five principles to follow to create an effective sales email:

Know Your Audience

Are you writing to the CEO? Then your email should address concerns most CEOs have such as cutting costs and boosting sales. Writing to the engineers? Then talk about tolerance, maintenance costs, or customization options. Spend some time looking at the web profiles of the company and individuals you’re targeting. You’ll be able to learn what they’re reading about and where their interests are. You can also see what thought leaders and industry influencers they follow. From this information, you can understand what their concerns are and how they’re making decisions. All this information can help you draft a better sales email.

Get a Reaction

People react to an email for three reasons:

• Curiosity: Humans are, by nature, curious about things they aren’t familiar with. Use curiosity to get people to open your emails by employing leading questions as your subject line.
• Desire: When you can paint a compelling picture of how you’re going to solve a problem and improve their situation, clients are quickly motivated to take action.
• Fear: This is when you talk about situations people want to avoid. You can target their problems and pain points. Just be careful that your email is designed to motivate quick action and not make them give up.

Download our guide to email follow up after a trade show.

Create a Feeling of Trust

Call on existing customers to brag about your company. When it’s someone else exclaiming your virtues, prospects are more likely to take note. Ask your current clients to share a story about how you’ve helped them succeed. Get them to describe what it’s like working with you. Share a picture of your client or their name so that they are relatable.

Have a Clear Goal for Your Email

It is important to be specific about the goal of your email. Do you want the prospect to call you? Fill out a form? If you know what your goal is, you can craft your entire email towards the one simple action you want the prospect to take.

Collect Data

Be a data fanatic. Set goals for your sales campaigns and measure your results. Modern email marketing tools come equipped with email testing capabilities, advanced reporting, and lots of specific insight into what’s happening with each email.

Many people are afraid of cold emailing, but success really depends on your state of mind. If you have a great product or service that can truly help the people you’re contacting, then it is your obligation to sell it.

Now you know you need to send sales emails – but what to write? Check out our free guide of proven follow up sales email templates for ideas of emails to use throughout the sales process, and for every kind of lead. Templates can help you semi-automate your follow up process, save time, and reach more of the leads you want. When you use the right tools, the right leads will come your way.