Tips to Improve E-mail response rates 🔥

I am no expert, just sharing my learning from past year sending 100s of e-mails myself and working with users who were open to experiment and realise results. I am still somewhere at the start of a long learning curve.

Now that we have my credentials out of the way there are high chances that if you are working in Sales, Business development or Marketing you are sending out a lot of e-mails. Well crafted e-mails sent to the right decision makers at right time are a great way to acquire new customers given they don’t bounce!

E-mails as a form of communicating with potential customers is here to stay and as B2B Marketeer or Sales person you should be focussing on ways to improve open rates and getting more responses.

Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/election2016-hillary-clinton-email-between-two-ferns-l3vR8lBb7SaPCvqRW/links

With a little effort and experimentation you could be getting those leads which would have otherwise landed up in Trash.

A few extra leads ain’t hurting anyone 😍

So how do we go about improving response rates well to understand that lets analyse the anatomy on an E-mail (who doesn’t know about it!)

• E-mail Subject Line
• Opening lines (which appear in preview)
• Main body or Content of the mail

We try to optimise each part to achieve the desired result.

Subject Lines

Improving subject lines will increase open rates. E-mail content and call to actions are worth the effort but an e-mail that doesn’t get opened i doubt would see a response.

Its like the magic key for the reader to open door to benefits and solution to his problem waiting to be discovered in the content. It should catch their attention moment they see your mail.

Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/qydn8D3LybSkE

Here are few ways to improve subject lines

1. Personalised using first name or company name and posing a question specific to the potential challenge faced by the reader. (E.g. firstname, Is automating outbound sales a challenge for you?). When someone calls you by your name chances are you will take notice.
2. Keep them short and crisp. We use something like Easyleadz <> CompanyName making it personalised at the same time. I personally use firstname, Can we talk? a lot and have witnessed almost 35–40% open rates.
3. You can try a few quirky ones as well but be sure to back it up with the content inside the mail. I once tried firstname, I have an idea! though i got decent open rates but my content didn’t back it up and hence very few responses.

Opening lines

Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/stand-up-stand-up-steve-martin-XYHnbilhRxa5W

After your e-mail is opened first thing that catches a readers’ attention is opening line, well it is visible in preview itself. You need to nail it and get readers attention to ensure they continue reading the rest of the mail.

Don’t make it a drag by going on and on about who you are and what you do. Establishing credibility is a must and do it in one short sentence and quickly get down to telling them what they want to read, Benefits!

You can try these variations and check results for yourself

1. Start with mentioning some event around their company/business or something they shared/talked about on Social media. For e.g. If the company raised funding, you can mention Congratulations on your recent fund raise or It was really inspiring to see your company working with great brands like..
2. Compliments could be a great way to warm up to your reader. You can start by complimenting them on a great piece of article/blog they wrote or promotion/award they received. Thanks to Linkedin getting such information is easy. For e.g. Your recent medium blog on Productivity hacks was great, i personally identified with..
3. You can also start by mentioning something you have in common such as School/University you went to or other common interests that you know of and share.

Main body/Content

Now that you have got mail opened and your reader warmed up this is where make or break happens.

Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/me-against-the-world-break-game-show-and-prove-3o7qDVYlD9X4JwE4X6/links

1. Keep the messaging as simple and conversational as possible, without pouring them with every damn feature you have. Crisply convey what you offer and how it will benefit and what paint points your product/service will solve.
2. Always give a call to action, guide the reader towards the desired outcome that you intend. It can asking for a call, filling out a form or booking calendar.
3. Create FOMO (fear of missing out) 😵 by mentioning how their competitors are using your product/service and driving results.
4. In case you are making any claims back it up with data points which helps reader to quickly quantify benefit.

Few other Hygiene factors 🚿 you can take care to improve readability and get responses

1. Keep the mails conversational and break down the communication over a series of mails so that reader can get to know more as to how your product/service could be beneficial.
2. Try to keep your e-mails text only without any special formatting like using special font or font colors. Stick to Italics and bold text to highlight.
3. Use hyperlinks wherever necessary and exclude html banners if possible helps improve deliverability.
4. Use a professional signature with links to Website, Linkedin profile, contact information and if a small possible profile photo (P.S — I don’t use one! 😆)

We at Easyleadz keep experimenting with varying combinations of subject lines for Cold and followup e-mails to test what works best in different scenarios.

Would love to hear your thoughts on how you experiment and anything you did that improved response rates for you.

Originally published on Pulse

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