Writing a Killer Sales Email

By Leigh Schevchick

As a sales rep, you probably spend a lot of time in email composing messages to customers. But did you know that the average open rate of a sales email is less than 1%? That means if you email 100 prospects, only one of them is likely to even open it. Less will read it. And only a tiny few of those will follow your call to action. While these aren’t great odds, we do have some ways you can tip them towards your favor.

Brainstorm before even writing anything

This is a crucial part. Start by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and figuring out what they really want. This involves:

• Doing research on them
• Thinking about the value of your product or service
• Talking to marketing about content and documents they have that might be helpful
• Talking to other departments about recent upgrades and common pain points
• Thinking about ‘the story’ behind your offering

Start with a story

Ever seen this statistic?

Coming at a prospect with a bunch of numbers and data probably isn’t going to be helpful to your email efforts. Instead, consider how you can use that information to create a story. Stories can take many forms, but explaining how another client solved a problem with your product or solution is probably the most common method.

Carefully consider your subject line

Today, it seems like everyone has attention fatigue. This means you have exactly three seconds to grab someone’s attention and incent them to read your email (out of the hundreds they get every day). Before you hit that send button, spend some time thinking about your options.

Brainstorm a few different ideas including ones that:

• Have numbers in them (“8 Ways We Can Help You…”)
• Make an audacious-sounding claim (“The Greatest E-Mail You’ll Get All Week…”)
• Tug at heartstrings (“How Our Product Saved An Iowa Farmer’s Life”)
• Are funny (“How We Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Pants-Free Friday”)

Once you have a list of 15–20 possibilities, do two things:

• Run them by a colleague
• Use a headline grader tool — these are usually available in most email marketing programs

Narrow those down to the 3–5 best possibilities and have your colleague vote on the final ones. Remember nothing is ever perfect. Your job is to select the best possible option.

Compose the body

There’s an odd split to e-mail lengths. When an email is too short, the recipient may forget about it or think it’s less important. But when an email is too long, people don’t read it completely or or just ignore it. It’s a hard balance to strike.

If this is an initial communication with prospects, you should aim for about three paragraphs, structured as such:

• Introduction: Who you are, what you do, and why they should care
• Story: Where’s the value of the product/service?
• Conclusion: What can they do to learn more? Go to a page? Contact you?
• Signature/Sign-Off

Use a powerful image

Human brains process visual information faster than text, so using an image is always a good idea. If you have existing customers, try to get a photo of them using your products or services. Avoid using stock photos. While the can seem like the best option from a legal/free standpoint, they can easily turn off customers. Using real images of people interacting with your work can be a quick and easy value-add for killer sales emails.

Bounce the completed project off some people

Once you selected your headline, body copy and images, run it by one or two colleagues just to make sure their aren’t any typos and looks like it can convert. Use feedback to make the appropriate changes. When you’re ready, schedule the e-mail to send. Showpad can help with this entire process.

Pick the perfect time

Mondays and Fridays are dead zones for receiving work emails. People are either catching up from the weekend or checked out looking forward to the days ahead. So aiming to send them out Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday is your best bet.

Let us know what other tips and tricks you’ve seen for killer emails.