Although it may seem old-fashioned, email is still one of the absolute best sales channels you could use. In fact, it’s almost 40 times more effective for customer acquisition than Facebook and Twitter combined.
That being said, it’s in no way easy to sell via email. The volume of sales emails sent is huge, having gained the status of a staple of online selling over the years since its inception.
The first email was sent in late 1971 when two computers the size of a wall successfully shared a message through something called the ARPANET, and the world changed forever. Today, you, I, and everyone’s grandma, receive an absurd amount of emails daily. So it’s no surprise that only 9% of sales emails get opened.
At ZeroIn, we have vast experience crafting cold sales emails. We send them daily to warm those contacts up until they’re ready to convert. Today, we’re sharing our five essential cold sales emails tips (and more, including over 40 templates in our free eBook).
5 Essential Cold Sales Emails Tips
1) Know your prospects
Cold email outreach is a tried and true strategy for generating sales. However, knowing your prospects can help you write emails that resonate with them and aren’t wasted.
The success of marketing initiatives and sales pitches often depends on who you’re targeting. If you do it well, it will be a piece of cake for you; not so much if you don’t select your prospects wisely.
When choosing who to target as potential customers, it is important to build your ideal customer profile. This way, you can reach the right people and provide them with a memorable and personalized experience.
Ensure you pick a decision maker within the company that is in-charge of your desired product or service.
The more selective your target audience is and the better you monitor it for changes, the higher your chances of being successful are.
2) Subject line
If you don’t want your important emails to get deleted, it’s a good idea to avoid sending out emails with cliche or salesy words. These types of words are common and are well-known to be spammy which is why they’ll end up in the trash or spam folder.
Some words to avoid would include: “Free”, “Buy” or “%” sign.
The best way to attract attention from a potential customer is to be highly relevant, not offensive. Writing something like “We have your child” will likely be seen as purely sensationalist and it’s unlikely that you’ll make any sales this way.
Don’t be deceptive. In the body of the email, make sure you deliver on what you are offering and don’t let them down. Otherwise, you’ll completely lose the prospect.
3) Personalization and human touch
Just because you can automate your entire sales email process, doesn’t mean that you should. Always have a brief introduction about the company or the prospect before getting into your pitch so as to show that you did some research on them.
When we asked C-level Execs what emails get opened they pretty much said they deleted 100% of generic emails.
To stand out, include a complimentary sentence in your email. Even if it’s something unrelated to the rest of the email, add a sentence that showcases that you have spent some time researching their company. Remember that executives receive hundreds of cold emails per month.
This doesn’t mean that you should spend 20 minutes personalizing each email, but take two or three to Google the company, glance over their website, news section, etc. Over time, you’ll get a hang of what works best for your niche.
Adding the human touch into your emails and showing human emotion of trying to help someone improve their business will never go out of style. Sure, you’re selling a product, but because your product can actually help their company — and that’s why they’ll choose you.
Always show that you put your prospects and their issues first.
4) Risk-free option
This is the best way to convince your prospects and, what is more important, let them see for themselves that you practice what you preach. That way, they can be more willing to invest.
Offer a free trial of your product/service for a limited time or in a limited amount to prove the value you offer prospects.
In the B2B space specifically, when large amounts of money are in questions, people can’t afford to make mistakes.
A risk-free offer is the best way to convince someone who might be a little hesitant to make the move.
5) Follow up
It’s odd, but 44% of all sales people don’t follow up on their emails.
There could be many different reasons as to why your email has gone unanswered.
There is a chance they didn’t like the offer, but it might have not been the case.
It is quite common to forget about the messages you receive. A lot of time can pass between a message arriving in your inbox and you having time to react to it. They may not have been interested at the time, but now they are and your product or service would fit well for their purpose. They might not have decision making authority today, but tomorrow could be different.
Follow up on those who opened your email, clicked on your offer but never replied, and especially those who replied, but didn’t convert.
Don’t Forget About A/B Testing Your Cold Sales Emails
There is no doubt you should be split-testing your emails because you want to know what works best for your audience, when it works, and why. If you don’t test your emails and try different variations then you’re just shooting in the dark.
This is one of the cheapest ways to find out what content is compelling to your audience, and it gives you valuable data that you can use in the future with other similar prospects.
At the start of any A/B testing campaign, it is important to research your competitors and how they’re marketing their products. This can lead you to some great ideas.
But there are three things you should know:
- What is it that you’re testing
Is it the subject, email body, time of day, or CTA?
A/B tests won’t produce the data you need if you’re testing multiple variables at once. Instead, you should only be testing one variable at a time and keep others exactly the same.
If you’re testing the opening line, make sure that the subject line, body of the email, and CTA remain the same, and that they’re sent at the same time.
- Do you have enough data to know that the result is valuable
It’s just the way statistics work. Your proof will not be valid if your sample is not big or diverse enough. You should be aiming for at least 100 emails from 50 different companies and then split them in two.
One version of the email goes out to the first group, and the other to the second group.
- What metric is the best measure of success
So do you monitor the open rate, reply rate, click rate or conversion rate?
Yes, the conversion rate is definitely the most important, but you shouldn’t disregard opens, replies and clicks, especially if you’re testing variables such as the subject line (in this case, opens may be a more indicative metric).
Most importantly, testing never stops! Once you test each of the variables, you should start over with yet another version of the email. There is always room for improvement!
Sales emails A/B Testing tools
Most email software solutions include tools for A/B testing. However, in a rare case when your email campaign software doesn’t offer one, set it up manually.
Split your current list into two separate lists, and then send one version of your email campaign to one, and the second one to the other.
We have included concrete cold sales emails A/B testing ideas in our free eBook to get you started — in addition to other essential tips and over 40 email templates to help you leapfrog your competition.
The eBook contains:
essential tips,
key dos and don’ts,
A/B testing ideas and
tested email templates