With all the different kinds of emails people get in the world, it’s challenging to break through the noise and gain someone’s immediate attention.
When emailing prospects in the sales pipeline, you have to give them information relevant to what they might be looking for in a product or service provider.
But how do you get to the point of crafting prospecting emails that get responses from potential clients?
In this blog, we’ll cover the following topics:
What Is a Prospecting Email?
As we’re probably aware, B2B prospecting is the process of implementing new potential sales opportunities into the sales pipeline. Sales development and marketing teams send prospecting emails to pique the interest of prospects in your target market, encouraging prospects to invest in your company’s product or service.
The end goal of an outbound prospecting email in lead generation is to pitch a prospective client and persuade them to attend a sales meeting with a member of your sales team. During these meetings,team members present prospects with a personalized sales presentation highlighting the prospect’s wants, needs, and pain points in hopes of them signing a contract with your company.
How To Write a Good Prospecting Email
Writing a good prospecting email is more than just having appropriate grammar and spelling, and it’s certainly more than a simple “buy my product!” While anyone can hop online and send an email, it takes a growth-driven sales and marketing professional to write a prospecting email that gets responses. To write a good prospecting email, you should:
Research Your Prospects
Like any other lead generation method, researching your prospects is vital to sending good sales prospecting emails. Developing a target market and determining the buyer personas is essential for catching the attention of the right prospects. Researching your prospects before contacting them enables your sales reps to send content that aligns best with their purchasing process, industry, pain points, etc. This increases the likelihood of them opening emails, responding to your inquiry, and reducing their time spent in the sales cycle.
While this may sound like a tedious process, many sales tools and technologies in the market empower sales development teams to divide prospects into different categories so they always get sales and marketing content that aligns with their business. This could include the industry they serve, their buyer personas, stage in the sales funnel, etc. Segmenting prospects into these buckets can help you maximize your email outreach efforts, generating more (and better) sales appointments for your sales team to pitch.
Write Engaging Subject Lines
- Personalizing email subject lines with the prospect’s name
- Keeping the subject line under 30 characters while getting your point across
- Having the subject line be a call-to-action, creating greater urgency
- Using emojis (sparingly, and if they make sense to your target audience)
Keep Email Content Short and Sweet
Have you ever opened an email thinking it would be a quick read but it ended up being a short story? Emails became a convenient form of communication with a few quick-hitting points, reducing the need for frequent phone calls. However, as we all know, that’s not always the case.
When writing an email to a prospective client, it’s important that you keep the content short and sweet. This enables your sales and marketing teams to get their point across while showing that you respect and value the prospect’s time. This increases the likelihood of them reading through the whole email and sending a response.
While you may have a lot of good content you want to share, you should spread it out over a reasonable period of time. If an outbound prospect doesn’t unsubscribe or forward your email to their junk folder, this isn’t the last email they receive from you. When crafting your outbound prospecting emails, it’s important to get the base of your message out there first and potentially direct readers to your website to read a blog or learn more about your business. As the prospect starts making their way to the end of the sales funnel, you can send more content that showcases your business as a trusted industry leader, such as sharing case studies.
Include Social Proof To State Your Case
As we just mentioned, sharing case studies and client testimonials is an incredibly impactful way to pique the interest of potential buyers in the consideration stage of their sales journey. Including social proof in your outbound prospecting emails is impactful because it allows the prospective client to envision themselves in your customer’s shoes.
Another way you can provide social proof is by sharing statistics of your company’s impact on its clients, the community, or the environment. For example, let’s suggest that you’re a solar company that wants to highlight the benefits of solar panel installation. When it comes to sharing your proof of impact, you can share how much money you’ve saved clients on their monthly energy bills. This encourages the prospect to think about their current solution and how they could use these savings to go towards more pressing, everyday business matters.
Use Data To Send Emails at the Right Time
Timing can significantly affect whether or not a prospect opens your emails. Understanding the right time to send an email can be tricky because it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution from one email marketing team to another. While you can follow all the best practices for the “best time to send sales emails,” it all comes down to your specific target audience.
As you consider the best times to send emails to prospective clients, you must use the data you’ve gathered from your campaigns. If you’re just starting your outbound prospecting email campaigns, try sending emails at various times throughout the day to see the difference in open and response rates. This data can be analyzed through your email marketing platform or customer relationship management (CRM) software for easy accessibility and the opportunity to see your impact through visual reports and dashboards.
Different Approaches To Starting a Prospecting Email Campaign
While there are various approaches to lead generation, such as cold calling or emailing, there are also different methods to initially engage potential buyers in your target market. As you consider your options, it may be worth trying a variety of them to see how prospects interact with your content.
When it comes down to it, there are four different approaches to starting a prospecting email campaign:
Solution-Driven
A solution-driven approach is an effective prospecting email method because it highlights the core pain points a prospect may be encountering with their current product or service solution. With a solution-driven approach, you’re showing the prospect that you hear their needs and that you have a product or service that can eliminate this problem from their list of stressors.
Here’s an example of a solution-driven approach:
Value-Based
A value-based approach to outbound prospecting email campaigns initially highlights the successes of the prospect, followed by how your business could accelerate these successes. More often than not, this includes showcasing that you work with the prospect’s specific industry and how you’ve been able to help them enhance their everyday business functions.
Here’s an example of a value-based approach:
Common Grounds
If you notice that you and a prospect have some things in common, this could be a good approach to introducing the conversation. A common ground approach can make introductions warmer for the prospect, encouraging them to at least hear your company out.
Here’s an example of a common ground approach:
Company Announcement
While a company announcement approach is often used for inbound leads and company newsletters, it can also be beneficial for outbound prospects. For example, let’s say that you’ve identified a lot of decision-makers in your target market who are looking for a particular product or service solution. A company announcement approach to outbound prospecting email campaigns can show potential buyers that you heard the need for a particular product or service and you delivered what they were looking for. This can show prospects that you respect the insights of customers and you’re open to expanding your business to align with their needs.
Here’s an example of a company announcement approach:
Key Takeaways
Writing prospecting emails isn’t an easy task, and writing effective ones is even more challenging. While there is no surefire way to make sure your sales emails get responses, there are some different tips to follow and approaches to try to engage with decision-makers consistently and guide them toward the end of the sales funnel.
At Sapper Consulting, we collaborate with growing businesses to help them craft effective prospecting emails that generate better leads for their sales pipelines and secure more sales meetings. If you need a hand building an outbound prospecting email campaign that yields results, contact the lead generation experts at Sapper!
