You’ve got the data and cold email templates to design a killer campaign. Sprinkle in a few of these tips from the pros, and supercharge the entire thing.
Don’t forget to test different subject lines in addition to the main body. Some subject lines like “quick question” are falling out of favor, while others may trigger spam filters. That said, take the advice with a grain of salt and test your subject lines on your audience. There’s an exception to every rule.
A popular alternative: try sending a calendar invite with a specific time and date with specific details in the notes section
Using video within an email is gaining in popularity, and can increase your click-through rate by 300%. Tools including Soapbox and GoVideo make it easy and user-friendly.
Plan for follow-ups
Personalization is key. A few quick and easy ‘cheats’ include mentioning their micro industry, location, and/or relevant competitors.
Try the Double Tap: send an email late afternoon/early evening, then another the next morning with a link or resource you ‘forgot’ to include in the first one. The omission humanizes you and your brand, and gets your name in front of them twice.
Keep it short and to the point, and be absolutely certain it’s mobile friendly.
Eliminate phrases like “if it’s not too much trouble” and “I apologize for bothering you, but …” from your messaging.
Personalize in human ways, not just business ways. Visiting their city next week? Ask for a restaurant recommendation, for example.
Now that you know how important it is to follow up, and how long (give or take) you should wait before sending each email, let’s go through how to write the follow-up email itself.
the idea being that you can then link everything together into a custom follow-up template.
1. Add Context
Try to jog your recipient’s memory by opening your email with a reference to a previous email or interaction.
Openers you might want to try include:
I just wanted to follow up on the email I sent last [day of the week email was sent] about [subject of email].
I just wanted to follow up to see what you thought about [subject of email].
2. Add Value
You should never send a follow-up without upping the ante and demonstrating your worth.
Opportunities for organic, natural interaction and follow-ups arise from giving them something valuable as a gift, be it a relevant physical item shipped to them, or a webinar, case study, template, or other digital resource.
3. Explain Why You’re Emailing
Go on to explain the reason for your follow-up email, in a manner that’s both direct and concise. Just tell the recipient what you want. If this hasn’t changed since your last email, remind them.
Focus on them here. Remove ‘I’ statements from your text. They honestly don’t care much about you or what you think or believe.
4. Include a Call-to-Action
Make it easy for the recipient to respond. For example, if you’re trying to arrange a meeting, suggest a specific date and time (and place, if you’re arranging an in-person meeting).
A lot of marketers and sales personnel make the mistake of leaving it vague and ambiguous. Make your call-to-action crystal-clear and hard to resist.
5. Close Your Email
Wrap up in a way that feels natural to you and is sympathetic to your interactions with the recipient so far.
While I have a few suggestions below, this part is really quite personal – as above, wrap up however you feel comfortable.
If you want to know full details about Cold Email.
Best of all, these email tricks will also make the odds of you booking a call, meeting, or second interview much better.
Mistake #1. Your Emails Lack Personalization
The more personalized and customized your follow up email is, the more likely it is that you’ll get a response.
When someone hears their name, it makes them self-aware. It makes them focus on you and eliminate other distractions.
Mistake #2. You’re Not Researching Like the Pros
If you don’t have a lot of experience sending cold sales emails or if you don’t even know how to send a follow up email, it may seem like it makes more sense to send more messages instead of spending time on researching your follow up email strategy.
Tapping into emotion increases the likelihood you’ll get a response – don’t be afraid to appeal to vanity.
Mistake #3. Not Cleaning Your Data
When you leave extra spaces in your spreadsheet, that carries into your email automation, making it obvious you’re not sending a personal email.
Mistake #4. Your Emails Are Too Long
If you’re trying to reach someone important, chances are they’re pretty busy. This means you need to keep your emails short. Otherwise, they simply won’t be read.
Mistake #5. Lacking a Clear Call-to-Action
If you want to dramatically increase the odds of getting a response from your follow up emails, especially a positive one, it’s important to have a clear call-to-action.
Mistake #6. Failing to Leverage Social Proof
You want to tell people why you’re worth their time by providing social proof that they can’t deny – and that they don’t have to search for themselves. Because chances are, they don’t have the time.
Mistake #7. You Sound Like a Robot (Show Your Personality)
Remember how we talked about the importance of customization? Well, that goes for templates, too.
Your boring and predictable templates are costing you. Be unexpected or even humorous. You’ll want to tread carefully with humor, as not all jokes are appreciated by all people.
If you want to know full details about Cold email.
Top executives can easily get twice that number. It’s all part of an internet ecosystem that sees nearly 300 billion emails floating across cyberspace each day.
If you’re still doing a shotgun blast of a one-size-fits-all message to every qualified company, you’re probably one of those that thinks cold email doesn’t work.
1. Segment Your Lists
Ditch the mass mailings and segment your outbound email campaigns into smaller groups based on specific criteria. Start by subdividing your list by industry and job role. This allows you to personalize your email messages to deliver a more relevant marketing message
2. Skip The Formalities
Most of the people you’re emailing will see the first few lines on their phone or in the email program’s preview pane. If you don’t provide value in the first few sentences, your email is headed to the recycle bin.
Get to the point and focus on what you can do for them. Don’t waste time introducing yourself, your company, or your products. If they’re interested, they’ll click-through or go online and research.
3. Craft Your Subject Line
Anything that sounds like corporate-speak or marketing will get deleted. You want to write a subject line the way you would write an email to someone whom you’ve already established a relationship.
If possible, use the prospect’s name, company, or recent accomplishment in the subject line as long as it’s relevant. Just as there’s no reason to ever do a cold call, there is no reason to do cold emails either.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If your subject line comes off like clickbait, you’re hurting your reputation.
4. Composing Your B2B Email
If you’ve crafted a subject line and first sentence that gets someone to open your email, congratulations! You’ve already beat the odds. Now, it’s time to compose the body of your email in a way that engages them right away and drives them towards your goal.
Try different strategies and approaches until you find the ones that work best for you. Using referrals, invitations to events, offering something for free, or using a mutual connection can all benefit your email.
5. Keep It Short
Keep it short. If it’s too long, B2B buyers may decide it’s not worth the time to read. Also, studies show shorter emails get better response times and faster responses.
6. Include a Strong Call to Action
Every email needs to drive prospects through the customer journey to take a specific action. It’s more than just the button or CTA at the end. Each part of your email should provide the reason someone should click when they get to the end.
7. Include Complete Contact Information
You’d be amazed at how companies send emails and forget to include complete contact information. Name, business addresses, website, and phone number are a must. It’s also required by law.
8. Stay Legal
Each country or jurisdiction may have different regulations governing the use of email marketing campaigns. You’ll want to review Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States if your B2B email marketing campaigns are directed at businesses in these countries.
If you’re using a third-party delivery service, it’s still your responsibility to make sure they follow the rules as well.
9. Test and Optimize
Look at the emails you get each day. What makes you delete one and read the next? You’ll quickly identify the triggers that work for you. While it may not work for the next person, it will give you some insight into what motivations lead to action.
10. Follow-Up!
No matter how great your email is, it may get ignored. Be relentless in your follow-up tactics until the prospect tells you to stop or you determine it’s no longer a viable lead. Most sales occur after five or more attempts. Yet, most salespeople don’t make more than 1 or 2 attempts to follow-up.
The subject line, messaging, and structure of your follow-up email will also play a big role in determining how successful you are. Here’s a look at the key steps to writing a fantastic follow-up email.
1. Define the Purpose
First things first. You want to determine exactly why you’re sending your follow-up email. If you have a detailed sales funnel, this step will be much easier.
Now that you have this objective in mind, you can think about how to achieve it via your email.
2. Create a Spectacular Subject Line
With your subject line, you have a small window of opportunity to capture the attention of your recipient. So you have to capitalize on it as much as possible. Here are the features of the best kinds of email subject lines:
Catered
The best subject lines are developed by using quantifiable data.
Short
Data from Marketo suggests that the optimal length of subject lines is currently 41 characters spread across 7 words.
Detailed
Your target audience has a limited amount of time, and they want emails that respect these terms.
Engaging
Finally, you should try to find a way to make the subject line engaging without feeling spammy.
3. Be Direct and Clear
Most email recipients receive an average of 121 emails a day. In other words, you must be brutal about determining whether an email is worthy of readers’ time and attention.
If an email wastes readers’ time, it can have a negative impact on your relationship with your prospect.
Your recipient will appreciate that you respect their time, so you will be much likelier to receive a response. It also helps you build positive feelings.
4. Get Professional Help
Every business delegates responsibilities in different ways. In some companies, sales professionals are responsible for crafting their own follow-up emails.
To make sure everything is correct, you’ll want to enlist the help of a copywriter, so you can put your best foot forward by writing an amazing email.
5. Think About the Next Follow-up Email
When it comes to email marketing, perseverance is key. A study from Iko System demonstrates that the sixth email in a marketing sequence can receive a huge boost, in terms of the response rate.
Today, we’re going to be looking at how to use follow up emails to convert in a variety of scenarios. We’ll be looking at examples and providing templates for the following types of email follow up:
Cold sales follow-up
Warm sales follow-up
Free trial follow-up
Lead magnet opt-in follow-up
Product sale follow-up
Giveaway entry follow-up
Contributor outreach follow-up
Promotional outreach follow-up
Let’s get started!
The cold sales follow up formula
Cold email outreach is a big part of modern sales, and we’ve covered it fairly extensively on the Close blog.
Before we can get to the follow up email, it’s important that our initial email is strong, so we wanted to start by sharing a tried and tested cold sales email template with you.
The warm lead follow up formula
With cold email outreach, there’s a timeline. If you follow our formula, it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, done. You spend a week on a prospect and move on.
With warm leads, it’s a different story. There is no timeline. You continue following up until you get a yes or a hard no.
How to follow up with free trial signups
The SaaS business model is a bit different than most other business models. Rather than pursuing a one-time sale, your goal is to get users signed up for an ongoing subscription to your software.
How to follow up with lead magnet opt-ins
A lead magnet is simply something of value given away in exchange for a website visitor’s email address.
Lead magnets tend to be educational in nature, and accordingly, the follow up should nearly always be educational in nature.
How to retain customers with a strong post-sale follow-up
It costs 5x more to attract a new customer versus keeping an existing one.
Every business model demands a slightly different approach, but we’re going to focus on three highly effective strategies for the purpose of this discussion:
Onboarding
Education
Incentives
How to follow up with giveaway entrants
As we discussed earlier, lead magnets are a fantastic way to build your email list over time.
Giveaways allow you to place tangible, irresistible value in front of your target audience without breaking the bank.
Tools like Rafflecopter or KingSumo Giveaways make it easy for you to incentivize entrants to receive additional entries by referring their friends.
How to follow up with expert contributors
One phenomenal way to amplify your content’s quality and reach is to tap into the expertise of other influencers in your niche.
This campaign got a 60% response rate and resulted in Conversion Science’s most successful post of 2016.
How to follow up on promotional outreach
As more and more marketers are realizing, creating really great content is just the first step in the content marketing equation.
If this can work in the marketing niche, where people are constantly bombarded by hundreds of emails, it will most likely work in your niche as well.
Conclusion
The success of email marketing is ultimately in the follow up.
If your open rates are lower than you would like, here are 10 easy ways to improve them.
1. Keep Your List Fresh
You’ve probably heard the advice that it’s important to email your subscribers on a consistent basis so your list doesn’t go stale.
But even so, over time, email subscribers can still go stale. Some people may have changed email accounts, or maybe they just aren’t interested in your brand anymore.
If you are trying to revive a cold list, try conducting a survey. In exchange for answering your questions, they get a free gift (like a $5 gift card, for example).
2. Segment Your List
When people decide whether or not to open an email, one of the most important factors is whether or not they think the email is relevant to them.
Lyris found that 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists experienced higher open rates, 28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates, and 24% experienced better deliverability and greater revenue.
3. Avoid Spam Filters
Spam filters have gotten more sophisticated in the past several years, but they’re still not perfect. Your emails–even your best emails–can still get caught in the dreaded spam folder, never to see the light of day.
If you want to maximize the reach of your email marketing campaigns, you’ll need to do everything possible in order to avoid being flagged as spam.
4. Perfect Your Timing
Timing can have a huge effect on whether or not your subscribers open your emails, so think carefully about what time and day you send your emails out.
But the bottom line on email send time is this: imagine a day in the life of your particular audience.
All of these questions will help you decide on the best time to send your emails.
5. Make Your Subject Line Stand Out
When it comes to email open rates, your subject lines are everything. Your job is to make your subject lines stand out.
Companies have used email marketing for years, often copying the same subject line formulas. As a result, these common subject lines are often filtered out as white noise.
Make sure your subject line and call to action are as specific as possible. If you send them a wall of text with no clear direction, they aren’t likely to reply. If you want them to take a certain action – tell them!
Don’t flag your email as high priority:
No matter what you’re selling, your follow-up message is probably not a matter of life and death. If you really want to stand out in your contact’s inbox, take the time to write a relevant, punchy, personalized subject line.
Be respectful of their time:
Give prospect’s a reasonable window of time before sending a follow-up message. Sending a follow-up email too soon tells the recipient you don’t respect their busy schedule.
Each time a customer contacts your support team, they expect a response.
So, it’s important that you solve their issue quickly and efficiently.
For example, you can personalize the email and send it from the CEO, Head of Customer Service, or even the customer service agent that they originally dealt with. Alternatively, you can use your company name.
2. The ‘Survey’ follow-up email
A ratings scale is a great way to get high volume responses, but if you’re looking for more detailed feedback, you can include a link to a survey within the follow up email.
Google, Typeform and Survey Monkey all offer free tools, so creating a survey for your customers doesn’t need to be expensive.
3. The ‘Just Checking In’ follow-up email
This purpose of this email is to delight and surprise your customers.
Far too often, businesses sell a product and then leave their customers to it.
To create an even greater customer experience, include context by adding the product or service they’ve purchased within the email. which you can import directly from your CRM software.
4. The ‘Anything else?’ follow-up email
It’s common to solve an issue, but not hear back from the customer.
The “join us” template is a great way to follow up with a user who you haven’t communicated with recently. It’s a way to check in with them and offer assistance, should they need it. However, it also doubles as a way to get them to subscribe.
5. The “Join us” follow-up email
One of our loyal readers, Lorie, left a comment asking me how she can follow up with a customer who has signed up to the freemium version of their product but has not yet subscribed to a paid plan.
6. (and 7.) The “Thank you” follow-up email(s) from Apple
Apple is renowned for being a customer service leader (scoring 93 out of a score from 100).
So, when I reached out to their customer service team recently I had high expectations.
Of course, Apple being Apple, not only did they meet my expectations, but they far exceeded them!
Conclusion
This simple, yet effective strategy is only used by 3% of all companies – representing a huge opportunity to gain a competitive advantage – and one that should not be missed!
Sales followup Email is quick to send, you can easily track comments and feedback, and best of all, it’s scalable. Whether you follow up with a select handful of clients, or have thousands of customers to contact, you can do it all by simply using good old fashioned email.
Types of Sales follow up email
There are have some types of follow up email.
They are:
1. Following Up After Your First Meeting
For Example:
I’d like to thank you for your time and find out how you’d like to proceed from here.
2. Following Up After a Sales Demo
For Example:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to meet with you today.
3. Following Up After a Sales Call or Meeting
For Example:
[NAME], I’m writing to say thanks for giving me the chance to speak with you on [DAY] – and to deliver some good news.
4. Following Up After Leaving a Voicemail
For Example:
I tried calling but assume you’re busy at the moment. I know how it goes.
When you have a moment, please call me back at [NUMBER] or reply here to let me know if there’s a better time for me to phone you.
5. Following Up After a Trigger Event
For Example:
I trust that you’ve had a chance to read my previous message and check out our products online, so I thought it was a good time to check in with you again.
6. Following Up After a Networking Event
For Example:
I was thinking about what you said about [PROSPECT PAIN POINT] and thought you might appreciate this case study on how we helped a similar company achieve [GOAL] in [TIMEFRAME]: [LINK to relevant case study or article].
7. Following Up When You Have the Wrong Contact
For Example:
I reached out to you a few days ago about [COMPANY OR PRODUCT] and it struck me afterwards that I may have missed the mark.
8. Following Up After Radio Silence
For Example:
I emailed you a while ago about [COMPANY OR PRODUCT] and how I think we could be a great fit for [PROSPECT’S COMPANY].
9. Following Up After Multiple Follow Ups
For Example:
I’m sorry we haven’t been able to connect recently. The last time we spoke, you seemed quite interested in [PRODUCT OR SOLUTION].
10. Following Up with A Breakup Email
For Example:
I’m in the process of clearing out my sales pipeline and I thought I should let you know that you’re on my delete list.
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