One-to-one email prospecting is by far the most successful lead generation method in high ticket B2B sales.
If you do it, please do it right! On behalf of our clients we do email prospecting since 2012, actually we stopped cold calling in 2014 because our emails are more effective – compared to cold calling.
When we do email prospecting for our clients, we aim for a response rate of 50+ percent and often we end up in a range of 65% to 80%. That’s why I think I’m entitled to give you some email prospecting tips here…
Email prospecting is not about sending one cold email to one person in a company. It is about sending sequences of different emails to various persons in a company.
A real life example of a client’s prospecting campaign. Performed in February 2020.
Apply these 11 tips to your email prospecting process and your reply rate will increase drastically
Increase your email deliverability
You have to make sure that your emails don’t end up in the SPAM folder. Here’s how:
- Get your DMARC/DKIM/SPF domain settings right. Depending on the email service provider (Microsoft 365, Google Gsuite, IMAP/SMTP) but also depending on your email client you have to get your settings right. Yes, Hubspot on top of of Microsoft 365 show different results than Hubspot on GSuite. Test your emails with tools like Mail Tester.
- Don’t add attachments to your emails.
- Don’t add pictures to your emails – not even in the signature!
Make your emails better readable
Most of your emails will be first seen on smart phones. That is the point when the recipient decides to keep or delete your email. Make your emails mobile friendly.
- Use plain text emails if possible. They will be shown with the default font of your prospects’s email client.
- If plain text is not possible use “Sans Serife 12” and test the readability on iPhones and Android phones.
- Don’t use more than 5 bullets in a list.
- Keep your email body between 90 and 120 words. Use short sentences. Again, they “scan” it on their mobiles. If it’s too long or too complex it gets deleted.
PRODUCT SPLINTERING GUIDE
How Software And Services Companies Double The Number Of Mid-Market Customers In 180 Days.
Call for the right action
This is of course the most critical but also the most difficult part when you craft your emails. A sales email is not to present or even sell your solution or service. A sales email has one – ONLY ONE – goal: raise the curiosity to want just a bit more. In many high ticket B2B sales process this is “a discovery call”. Think of human relations. Asking for too much too early hurts the relationship.
- Only one CTA (call-to-action) per email. You can test hard CTAs like “reply to this email”, “click here to read more”, “book a meeting in my calendar here” or soft ones like “let me know your thoughts”, “are you interested to …?”, “how do you handle…?” or “who do you recommend to talk to?”
- Do send follow-ups! See the chart above. Reply rate on intro email is just 9%. But don’t sent more than 4 follow-ups. All researches have shown that you don’t get more positive responses if you follow-up more than 4 times on your intro email. BTW: as you can see above our email sequences often have only 3 touch points (2 follow-ups).
- Make each of your follow-up emails valuable. Don’t just say “Not sure if you received my previous email? Please reply!” – add your remaining 2-3 benefits to your follow-up, show a different use case, use different keywords.
- Timing is essential. Sending a follow-up email to a CTO 24 hours after your first email is just as unsuccessful as sending if 30 days after. How does their internal process look like? How long might it take him to reply to you “I checked internally, let’s talk”?
Still struggling and need an expert? Take a look at our lead generation services.
