When done correctly, prospecting emails are one of the most effective methods of generating leads for your business. The idea is to contact potential clients who may not be aware of your company and tell them a well-crafted story that addresses their needs.
B2B prospecting emails should give your prospects something to think about, provide context for future phone conversations, and demonstrate the expertise that makes you the seller customers want to buy from.
However, the success of a cold prospecting email hinges entirely on how you approach it.
In this blog, we’ll walk through the components of an effective B2B prospecting email campaign and how to use these emails to bring in more clients for your business.
B2B Prospecting Emails & Lead Generation
Businesses spend a lot of time and money on generating leads for their business. The best use of these resources is sending out prospecting emails. Prospecting emails are also known as cold emails, because they’re sent to someone who has not yet been contacted by the organization.
There are many ways to incorporate email in your prospecting efforts, including:
- Forwarding a relevant article to a prospect and requesting feedback
- Providing valuable content (like an ebook, white paper, or blog)
- Sharing an upcoming event or webinar
- Explaining a common industry pain point and how your product or service can help overcome it
Benefits of Using Email in B2B Prospecting
Prospecting without emails is like panning for gold without a sifter—you could potentially miss out on valuable pieces of gold without it—and without prospecting emails in your marketing strategy, you’re risking losing out on new leads. Email is a time-tested marketing channel that’s proven to have a directly positive impact on B2B prospecting. In addition to being a low-cost way of establishing relationships with potential customers, email can deliver messages in a personalized and timely manner.
Email prospecting campaigns can:
- Easily target specific audiences based on their location, interests, and company size
- Build customer loyalty through personalization and frequency
- Offer a higher ROI than other channels by combining multiple messages into one campaign
Best Practices for B2B Prospecting Emails
Including email in your lead generation, nurturing, and conversion strategies is essential for success, but creating an effective campaign takes expertise and strategy. While you may not consider yourself an expert, some foundational best practices can significantly improve your email marketing results.
Provide Value
Share relevant ebooks, case studies, blog posts, white papers, and short videos. Supplement your emails with links to supporting collateral like industry reports, white papers, and case studies from similar customers to demonstrate subject matter expertise. This will inevitably help to build loyalty between you and your prospects.
Position Yourself as an Expert
Your buyers want you to understand their priorities and challenges. They also want you to help them solve problems and achieve their objectives. Your prospecting emails are an opportunity to demonstrate your awareness of the things that matter to your prospects on top of your subject matter expertise. You need to build credibility if you want to earn a seat at their table.
Don’t Reveal Too Much Too Soon
The purpose of a prospecting email is to generate curiosity and entice your audience to ask, “How can you help me?” You don’t have to tell them in great detail what your product is or how your service works; you just need to get them thinking about the results it can deliver.
Be Direct and Skip the Pleasantries
Because inboxes are more crowded than ever—and your prospects are busier than ever—your outbound prospecting emails need to be short and sweet. Write in tight, impactful bursts and eliminate the fluff. Get to the point and do it quickly.
Avoid telling your prospects about your company and your product right off the bat. Instead, talk to them about the things they care about: their goals, obstacles, and needs. Effective prospecting emails are customer-centric and problem-oriented.
Adopt a Multi-Touch, Omnichannel Strategy
According to TOPO’s Sales Development Benchmark Report, it can take more than 18 touches to win a meeting from an outbound engagement. Instead of trying to cram all your talking points into an email, make phone calls and engage with prospects via LinkedIn. Going the extra mile will convey to your prospects that they’re more than just an email address on a list.
Avoid Overdone Email Trends
We all know how stuffed our inboxes get on a daily basis, usually filled with unsolicited emails. All those messages crowding your prospects’ inboxes and competing for attention promise to deliver 10 times the growth, 15 times the savings, and 20 times the productivity. Prospects have seen them so many times that they’ve learned to tune them out entirely. Instead, try a compelling customer story that illustrates how you’ve solved problems or achieved objectives just like the ones that matter to the reader.
Personalize Emails as Much as Possible
It’d be great to be able to personalize every single outbound email with deep research on each prospect, but that’s not a practical strategy. Instead, personalize your messaging by tailoring your value propositions to specific buyer personas. Share customer success stories relevant to the prospect’s industry and market segment, and reserve hyper-personalized emails for later stages of engagement (Source).
Don’t Sell a Product or Service—Sell a Meeting
The goal of an outbound prospecting email isn’t to get someone to buy your product or service, but to convince them to schedule a meeting and learn more. A well-crafted email can earn you a discovery call that may turn into a qualified opportunity.
Following Up With Prospecting Emails
Even if your prospecting efforts mainly revolve around cold calling, you’ll still benefit from having a sales follow up email sequence in place after you speak to your prospects. Send them an email recapping your conversation, include links to valuable resources that align with the pain points they expressed, and thank them for taking the time to speak with you (Source).
This might seem redundant, but in reality, most prospects will appreciate your brief follow-up email because it shows that you care. It’s also worth mentioning that only 2% of sales are made during the first point of contact. If you don’t send even the simplest follow-up email, you’re potentially missing out on 98% of your sales (Source).
A follow-up email sequence is a perfect way to nurture your prospects through the funnel and keep the conversation going. If you’re looking to craft the perfect follow-up email, check out this blog.
Key Takeaways
With these basic principles, you should have what you need to start creating valuable prospecting sequences. Remember that your objective is to entice your prospects by providing value and building curiosity.
Don’t forget that this process takes time, so you need to be patient. Your prospects are busy people, and you’re one of the last things on their minds. It takes consistent nurturing to build enough awareness and curiosity for a cold conversation.
Still, struggling to see results? Put your B2B email prospecting efforts on autopilot with Sapper. We act as a natural extension of your existing sales team to help you to build a reliable pipeline for B2B leads with qualified prospects. Contact us today if you want to learn more about our proven process.
