- jeremyo
- Nov 18, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 21, 2021
In the past I regarded email as a telephone avoidance platform which was to be frowned upon. Of course these days it is the main tool for salespeople to connect with clients and prospects. We have all had the experience I am sure of calling a client them not picking up - but then replying to the subsequent email you sent. In fact I find it almost considered rude to make an unannounced telephone call now except where is it infrequent or a client you know very well.
So we all use it now as a replacement for calls, but still very much on a one one to one basis of communication, but then the emails mount up. You have your very personalised emails, that are like conversations, with clients and hot prospects that are all researched and very personalised. Then you have people you just want to stay in touch with on a regular basis and those that have no interest now - but you know they are relevant you just need to make sure you are in contact when they have a need. That is a lot of emails to send - how can you do it?
Email Automation
Email automation is the obvious answer. And it's not just for marketers salespeople should be using also. Spend your time on the hot prospects that are most likely to convert, and then set up some email automation to stay in touch with others. There are many providers out there but I use MixMax, here is how I set it up for one of my campaigns.
Segment your database by something that gives you some personalisation e.g Industry, challenge faced by prospects (lead gen in my case), or type of services needed.
Write a series or sequence of emails covering a campaign period, it can be for one month, a quarter, or a whole year. Some of the messages can be repeated but they should all offer something of value to your prospect and be a reminder of who you are and how you can help.
In my example there were some clients that had not replied to email for a very long time and advertising agencies that would only speak to me when they had a client that was interested. In both case I needed to stay in contact, for when the time was right, but not invest too much time in writing personalised individual emails.
I focused the content of the email on a topic I knew to be of interest to many of them (Account Based Marketing) and identified a challenge many were having (Such as prospect nurturing). I then wrote a series of 6 different emails, each one different, and set it up to run three emails the first month, two the second and one in the final month. These sequences you can decide on for yourself. For my next program I am considering one for the whole year. You can always interrupt any of these sequences and jump in anytime, as I have done if something relevant comes up where you want to make direct contact.
In my example it was only a small list of 100 prospects, over a three month period. Now almost half of them opened, 15 emailed back to me and 5 set up meetings/conference calls with me. Now you might think not a fantastic result, however I am selling some high value services so five meetings was a pretty good return - and they were definitely not prospects that I would have spent time on ordinarily - so they were unexpected meetings that I did not have to work to hard on to get. Plus I did maintain contact with others which may help me in the future.
Email effectiveness
Some information I came across regarding what works with emails:
Number one driver of email open rates is some urgency or offer date in the subject line. It improves open rates by 38% Also identify your prospect, by title or industry in subject line to make it personal increases performance by 25%
Some of the content and data for this post came from the following podcasts and are worth listening to:
Email effectiveness:
Email / CRM automation:
MixMax:
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