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Master email prospecting for increased sales and engagement. Unlock the secrets to boosting your business with effective email outreach.
As more consumers turn to the internet to find product information, several marketers are gradually buying into the myth that email prospecting is a waste of time. This is best what we’ve termed it- a myth. Why, because anyone trashing email marketing is simply out of touch with the realities of one of the best marketing strategies.
Email marketing is inarguably one of the oldest lead-generation techniques. Surprisingly, it's managed to stay effective and relevant even with the advent of other high-conversion methods like social media marketing, product placement, and search engine optimization. In fact, even though open rates have dropped to a dismal 16.97%, research shows that about 90% of businesses still consider email marketing crucial to their overall success.
Numbers don't lie. These stats show that email marketing is still one of the most popular and effective ways to contact prospects. Contrary to the widespread myth that this technique faces an unavoidable gradual death, a recent survey by the RAIN Group reveals that about 80% of buyers prefer communicating with sellers through emails.
That said, this article takes you through the ins and outs of email prospecting, including how it works and its benefits. It also outlines a few tips to help you craft strong emails for your prospecting campaigns.
Discover how email prospecting works, plus its benefits, learn how to write a good prospecting email, and review a few tips for successful prospecting.
Email prospecting is the process of identifying, analyzing, and qualifying leads for cold email outreaches. If done correctly, it can help you generate more qualified email leads, ensure you only target prospects fitting your product or service, and enhance your campaigns' effectiveness. The process can also help you understand your recipients better and create more targeted campaigns with higher conversion rates. We'll delve more into the benefits of outreach prospecting in subsequent sections.
How do you go about email prospecting? Are there any standard procedures for creating prospect emails? The short answer is — No, there's no one-shoe-fits-all process for email prospecting. However, good prospecting emails typically have the following four sections.
Like every standard email, prospecting emails begin with a greeting. Salute the recipient in a friendly, personal tone. Besides the email preheader and subject line, salutations offer a perfect opportunity to make an excellent first impression. We recommend addressing the recipient with their names to add a personal touch.
Why should the prospect read your email? What makes your offering different from others? Immediately after the salutation, introduce the recipient to an irresistible value proposition.
If you catch their attention in this section, they will likely go through the entire prospecting email. And the opposite is true — a poorly written, lackluster value proposition automatically turns off prospects. In worst-case scenarios, they'll send your email to the spam folder.
Below are a few details you can include in your value statement to create a high-level proposition:
This part can come before or after the value statement. Let the recipient know why you emailed them. Is it due to a referral? Did they previously visit your website? Are they past buyers who went missing? If it's a referral, who referred you?
Outlining these details can show prospects that you understand them and genuinely want to help. It can also differentiate your prospect emails from spam emails, enhancing your chances of converting recipients.
The last section of a prospecting email is a CTA inviting the recipient to take a specific step to move them down your sales funnel. Usually, outreach prospecting emails focus less on deriving sales and more on enhancing brand awareness. However, if the targeted lead is qualified enough, such as if they have a history with your brand, you can make a sales pitch. Like in the other sections, avoid being too 'salesy' here.
The following are a few aspects of a compelling CTA:
While the composition of a great prospect email varies from one industry or campaign to the other, the basics are often constant. Below is a sample you can use for inspiration. It incorporated all the components we’ve outlined above.
Hello, Mrs. Mary Lynn,
As the holiday season approaches, we've curated special offers for you. At John & Jill Breweries, we believe in the spirit of giving. And since you're a lover of fine wine, below are a few offers we hope will spread the cheer your way:
These offers only apply to any purchases between now and 31st December 2023.
Click Here to enjoy the 50% discount or complimentary sparkling wine offer. You'll also get a free $5 gift card as a bonus.
Email prospecting allows businesses to interact with potential clients first-hand. Doing so can help marketers create more effective campaigns and boost conversion rates. Here's how.
Let's face it — email marketing can sometimes be frustrating, especially if you're new to it. For instance, according to a recent Backlinko study, the average response rate for prospect emails is about 8.5%. In other words, only 8 out of 100 outreach email recipients reply to them. If you haven't mastered the intricacies of email marketing, these figures could get even lower.
However, they don't always have to be this way. Email prospecting can help you optimize your campaigns and derive the highest potential success. They allow you to interact with potential customers and connect with them more effectively. Doing so can help you understand your prospects better, identify their likes and dislikes, and discover their pain points. It can also help you pinpoint qualified leads and disinterested recipients that require more persuasion.
As you send out different prospect emails and monitor responses, you can gather recipients' biodata, like their names, genders, ages, locations, and so on. These details help you segment your email list and only target customers with products or services that might appeal to them. As a result, you will avoid flogging dead horses and only focus on leads with higher conversion potentials — enhancing your success rates.
One common mistake several marketers make is to broadcast the same email to their entire email lists. This approach rarely yields positive results. And reasonably so — non-focused emails often end up in spam folders. And if they don't, there are meager chances they'll catch the recipients' attention.
Email prospecting allows you to understand your audiences and create targeted messages. The more relevant recipients find your emails, the more they'll pay attention to your messages. After sending several prospecting emails and gathering sufficient information from leads, you can segment them into different groups based on the following factors:
Next, create focused campaigns for each group. For example, as you engage new subscribers with onboarding emails, you can use a different marketing drive to reward active customers with celebratory offers. Now, imagine if you’d have instead sent an onboarding email to loyal customers and loyalty rewards emails to new subscribers. You get the picture. Right? That would be a recipe for chaos, leaving your audience confused and frustrated.
A brand's Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) refers to the behavioral, environmental, and firmographic attributes that make up a company's perfect or most valuable customers. Several people use the term interchangeably with a buyer persona. However, the latter primarily refers to direct consumers, while ICP relates mainly to other businesses in a B2B set-up.
As marketers test varying email approaches on different subsets of subscribers, they learn more about these recipients. The continuous A/B testing helps them identify the best strategies and the most responsive subscribers. The more you do this, the better you'll refine your email lists by only focusing on responsive prospects with higher conversion potentials.
Usually, the most responsive subscribers make up your ideal customers. You can use their profiles to create an ICP for your future campaigns. Doing so can save you time and money by ensuring you only target qualified leads in the future.
Email prospecting can give you a competitive edge over other companies within your niche. First, by helping you understand your prospects better, it enables you to create a better rapport with them and engage them more effectively. Also, it gives you better insight into your audiences than your competitors, allowing you to design more effective, customized campaigns.
Unlike legacy companies that usually have well-sorted-out email lists, you might start at ground zero — with a disorganized list containing recipients from all walks of life. Fortunately, this mix-up can be a blessing in disguise.
As you fine-tune your list and focus on more responsive prospects, you can also review why the rest are unresponsive. Doing so can help you personalize your marketing messages or improve your products to resolve their concerns. In the process, you'll expand your market and appeal to untapped audiences that established companies might have long forgotten.
As you must have gathered, the most crucial aspect of email prospecting is understanding your consumer base. While your final objective is deriving sales, the goal is not forcing your products or services on everybody. No. Instead, the initial stages of prospecting involve identifying potential customers who can benefit from your offers.
Next, you'll customize your marketing messages to suit your prospects' unique needs. If the first approach doesn't work, you'll twitch it repeatedly until you find what works. In the long run, you'll have a customer-centric campaign targeting only your ideal customers. Doing so enables you to develop a better rapport with prospects and communicate with them more effectively.
As we've established, emails are the primary marketing technique for most companies. According to a recent Zippia research, organizations and individuals send approximately 347.3 billion emails daily. Other studies show that the average office worker receives about 121 emails daily. By any standards, your target recipients' inboxes are already overcrowded.
So, how do you create the best prospecting emails that stand out in your subscribers' inboxes? Well, besides trying out different strategies until you find what works for your specific target audience, below are a few tips you can use to enhance your success rates.
Statistics show that people spend an average of 9 seconds looking at an email. Yes - nine seconds are all you have to hook your recipients and sell them your value proposition, or risk losing them forever. It sounds ridiculous, but it's the reality. The good news is that it's achievable.
The first thing to do is to dangle your carrot as soon as you can. Include your most incentivizing value proposition in the first line of the prospecting email. This way, you'll catch the reader's attention and give them a reason to read the other sections. This technique is known as the inverted pyramid strategy.
The other thing you should do is to avoid unnecessary information. Keep the email brief and simple. Use short sentences and keep your paragraphs brief. Avoid technical jargon that some recipients might not understand. If you must use a technical term, offer an elaboration immediately. If possible, use bullet points and figures to highlight your most crucial offers. Doing so makes them easy to identify.
Most importantly, personalize your prospecting email for each recipient. Avoid generic salutations like 'Dear Sir/Madam.' Instead, use the subscribers' name to make the email personal. If you know of any upcoming or recent events in the prospect's itinerary, such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, or job promotions, mention them. Personalizing your email copies can help you connect with recipients more effectively, creating a long-term relationship.
Why do you think you've read this copy this far? The answer is simple — we've established ourselves as an authority in the subject matter, showed you that we understand your pinpoints, and promised solutions. We haven't sold you anything directly, but we've got your attention. How? By showing you that we genuinely care and understand you.
Apply the same technique to your prospecting email copies. Instead of focusing on sales, prioritize highlighting your product's benefits and positives. Help recipients understand why they should use your goods or services or what they'll miss if they don't. Once you've achieved this, you can go for a sales pitch.
End the email by directing the recipient to take your desired action. Use this section to reinforce your offer and give the subscriber a final call. A good CTA uses commanding verbs and should be short and direct.
We recommend using one CTA per prospecting email copy. Research shows that emails with a single CTA derive 371% more clicks and 1617% more sales.
Email prospecting offers a perfect opportunity to create organic email lists and fill your sales funnels with qualified leads. With proper research, it can significantly lower your email marketing costs and increase your success rates. However, as you've noticed, the process takes time. It requires a lot of patience and dedication. There's no shortcut — you must try different strategies repeatedly until you finally find what works for your audience.
We have the best cold email system in the industry because we screen and approve every customer.
