Are The Sales Emails You Are Sending Out This Bad?
Originally I posted this on LinkedIn.
The email above was forwarded to me earlier this week and after thinking about it for a few days, I figured I would write up a few ideas about why this email sucks and likely burns a lot of your premium prospects and, more importantly, how you can improve it or make it more meaningful to the people you are sending it to.
Because this email is so bad, I want to highlight some things that are wrong with it in the hopes that you don’t make the same mistakes and you start having better conversations with your prospects.
First, let’s look at what’s wrong with this thing:
There’s no personalization, no differentiation, no nothing that would help make anyone do anything but click delete: Here’s a rule for life…just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. That’s what this email wreaks of. We have mined these emails and have these emails, so let’s just go ahead and send them out to everyone we know.
Why blast out that you have so much inventory that you can basically pick and choose? This email has basically reinforced the idea that Mavs’ games and Mavs’ suites are commodities by doing several extremely unwise things with their experience:
- “Available for all 44 home games…including the following premium games”: WTF!?! You just told your market that there is no need to rush, we have all of our games available and in so many options.
- Listing all of the variations of suites available, which is compounded by the piling on of amenities and features: This screams: “WE ARE PANICKING OVER HERE AND WE DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT OR NEED, BUT HERE’S EVERYTHING WE HAVE!”
NO Real Call-to-Action! No real connection to anything relevant except give me your money: After spewing all of this information of all the features of the suites with pricing…don’t worry, just email an untended email or call our switchboard where we will send you off to the next available operator that will be happy to write down your credit card information.
Okay, enough with the what’s wrong…because I could make a whole post about what is wrong with the strategy at play here.
Let’s move on to how you could take this email and turn it into something that is actually worthwhile and helps you have conversations with your premium prospects.
First, let’s set highlight a few things that we need to understand about the premium market in sports and entertainment:
- Premium sales are almost never one touch purchases.
- Premium buyers are going to be looking for much different value than single seat buyers.
If the market for anyone’s money is difficult, the market trying to reach and do business with premium buyers is even more stiff which means that they expect more from the sales process.
Now how do we take this email and turn it from spam into something that might be useful for your sales team?
First, you have to have an understanding of your market: The Mavericks may or may not have a good understanding of the premium buyers in the Dallas metro area, but from the looks of this email, they don’t.
As a salesperson, Sales 101 should begin with understanding your audience.
Why do they value?
What are the challenges they are dealing with?
What are they looking to achieve?
What can we do that helps them reach their goals?
I could go on, but you hopefully get the point.
The key is that you need to spend some time understanding who the person you are trying to reach is, what their world looks like, and how your product or service can help them.
If you can’t answer that and can’t craft outreach that is reflective of this understanding: STOP! DON’T PASS GO!
Next, segment your audience…all premium buyers aren’t created equally: Having worked with American Express on their ticketing services for Black Card members, I got a real world window into the fact that the biggest mistake you can make with premium buyers is to treat them like they are the same as everyone else.
This level of buyer wants to be treated as an individual and demands it.
Like we discussed in the working assumptions, the competition for their money is uber intense.
This email shows absolutely no thought and consideration about segmenting the audience.
What do I mean by segmenting for a premium sports sale?
Let’s start with simple stuff:
Is this a personal or business purchase?
Are they going to use it for entertainment or business development?
Who are the level of decision makers that are going to be using the suite? What’s going to be important to them?
These are just to get you started.
The key is that you need to break down the audience you are trying to reach into segments so that you can communicate to them in a way that is meaningful for them, not just easy for you.
Finally, personalize your communication and outreach: If I never see another undifferentiated sales email, it will be too soon. Maybe I will just start posting them somewhere on my website and shaming people until they put a little more thought into their sales activities.
As detailed above, this email has absolutely no personalization from start to finish. It is brutal in its banality and its navel gazing focus on what is important to the Mavs: you have money, you have a pulse, you are a buyer.
On so many levels, this is just terrible.
The biggest being that how easy is it to hit delete on this email?
How many of these undifferentiated, unpersonalized emails does it take before emails from the Mavs become spam to their list?
When that happens, how expensive is it to the team to try and figure out ways to actually reconnect and rebuild the trust with this market.
I’ll answer for you: Not many and if you can do rebuild trust its going to be costly and time consuming.
The better way to do this is to focus on personalization and differentiation with your communications.
This email could be powerful if you did 3 simple things:
Address it to a person: Lesson one from the Black Card, premium buyers want to be treated like individuals, not just one of many. So pick a person and try to open a conversation.
Create value from the outset: Instead of throwing a price list at someone, how about take a few minutes and understand what is going on with them. Then, address something that you have been able to learn about them as a way to open a conversation with the buyer or prospect.
Because, as I have learned over the years…these premium sales are almost never one touch purchases.
Give the person a reason to take the next step: Alan Weiss is a consultant I have learned a tremendous amount from and he talks about setting a minimum and maximum for each meeting or interaction. If you are sending out an email campaign for some sort of premium product or service, again, the likelihood that they are going to make a one touch purchase isn’t great (and in the instance of this email is non-existent because by default its going to be a two touch sale at minimum because there is no online buying option). So give the potential buyer a reason to make the next step.
Is there some enticement you can offer?
Some value that they can gain by picking up the phone to talk?
What’s the benefit to them for setting up a call with you to discuss?
Whatever it is, make it compelling.
That’s it! My rant is over!
But this isn’t the first terrible sales email I have seen, but I am sure it won’t be the last.
I hope that this piece spurs you to be more thoughtful in your sales outreach and to be more conscious of the message every message makes to your buyer.
So remember:
- Understand your market
- Understand your buyer and segment
- Be personal
