You get them in your inbox. I get them in my inbox. Sometimes our email has the intuition to deflect them to our spam folder. In many cases, they’re from people you don’t know or from a company you’ve never heard of, and they’re long – unnecessarily long. They are trying to market and sell something, but do you really care to even read a word of it? These are the so-called “canned emails,” “spam mail” or “junk mail” – however you define it.
But let’s face the facts: It’s a big world out there, and the amount of businesses that can, and are, a good fit for any given technology or product is seamlessly endless. There’s no way your sales reps could ever personally engage every single target company in your vertical unless you operate within an extreme niche space.
An obvious answer is to plan out and execute a marketing mass email campaign. The strategy will vary drastically from one organization to the next. With my experience of sending out hundreds of mass emails, I’ve come to the conclusion that emails that are personable, professional and concise are the most effective.
In sales, finding the best person to connect with at a company is the first and most important step. Keeping this fact at the forefront of our strategy, we’ve seen some of the best open rates derive from a simple referral email (Sorry can’t give away the exact subject lines in this one!). The key was that we kept the email to five sentences or less with proper spacing so it’s even easier to read. The content sounded as if it were written for just that specific contact and not a collective sum of hundreds or thousands of faceless prospects.
Five sentences or less! Tell them who you are and why you are looking to be directed to that correct person. Very briefly describe what it is you do, why speaking for 5 minutes is worth their time, and what you want to discuss, which will hopefully support the notion that you’re worth redirecting. Put any extra details below your signature to prevent the email from becoming lengthy.
Since the email comes from an individual sales rep, and not the marketing department, provide your personal signature, containing full contact information, links, resources, etc. That way, any follow-up responses will go directly to the inside sales rep and not to a general department that then needs to act as the middle man and facilitator of information.
In my opinion, if you’re unsure of what your messaging should be, you should always look to cut and edit – addition by subtraction. Also, with the widespread use of mobile phones for email you have to be conscious and wary that there’s a good chance someone can be reading your prospecting email while waiting in line at Starbucks, and if your subject line stinks and the body is too long they’re going to tap the trashcan.
