How to Create Sales Emails that People Want to Read

Your prospect is getting bombarded with emails on a daily basis. How do you make sure your pitch is the one that the prospect actually reads? The short answer is to make it better than everything else out there, but that’s easier said than done. Below, we cover four ways you can take your sales emails to the next level.

1.      Make it Catchy

“Hello, my name is Bob Smith and I work at Accent Manufacturing XYZ, a provider of top-of-line manufacturing products…” Have you fallen asleep yet? It’s important to provide clear information about who you are and why you are contacting your prospect, but that doesn’t mean you have to be boring. With the first line of any email, you’ll either hook your prospect’s attention or not. Take your time developing this part. Don’t be afraid to go for an interesting statistic or start the email off with a question. Just make sure not to go too off track or send them a novel in email form.

A catchy email is short, sweet, and to the point without being boring. And of course, don’t forget the subject line. The best email body in the world won’t do you much good if the generic subject line causes your prospect to skip over it. Effective subject lines are typically 50 characters or less, enabling the reader to skim them quickly. Try to convey a reason to open the email without being too vague. And just like with the body of your email, subject lines that contain something personalized, such as the prospect’s market or a relevant pain point, can catch the reader’s attention.

2.      Make it Relevant

Why would your prospects read an email that has no bearing on their current situation? If you can’t think of a good reason to be contacting your prospects beyond “I want them to buy my product,” then you shouldn’t be emailing them. You have to give your buyer a reason to read your email, so start by finding out their needs/interests, and then connect the dots between what’s relevant to your buyer and what your company can do to address THEIR needs.

3.      Make it Personalized

It’s obvious, but true: you’re more likely to read something from someone you know. Capitalize on that by personalizing your emails. This does NOT mean starting your emails with “Dear friend” or “long time no see!” (that’s one of the biggest sales email mistakes you can make).

Instead, the trick is to get to know your buyers (even if you haven’t been introduced yet) before you reach out. Find out if you have any mutual acquaintances, have the same alma mater, went to the same tradeshow, etc. You don’t have to become best friends with your prospects before you try to sell them something, but you do need some sort of connection to raise your email above a generic template. Leveraging LinkedIn as a research tool can be a great place to start.

4.      Make it Clean

Effective sales emails are always easy to read. Start by taking a look at the structure of your email. Are there any dense paragraphs? Does the email come off as a short novel? Does it contain unnecessary jargon? Try to use simple sentences and explain yourself clearly.  Keep the paragraphs short (around 75 words or less), and consider adding in bullet points for visual appeal.

Grammar is another important aspect of a clean email. We understand: you’re a sales rep, not an English professor, and you probably weren’t hired solely based on your impeccable grammar skills. That said, nobody is going to keep reading a sales email past the first typo or grammatical error. Not only will you lose that prospect, but an error-filled email reflects very poorly on your company.

If you struggle with grammar, have another rep or a member of the marketing team read over your email before you send it to an important prospect. You can also use a free tool like Grammarly to automatically check your emails for errors.

Most sales reps view emails as a low value activity—just throw a bunch of emails out there and maybe something will stick. Simply put, that’s the wrong mindset. Sales emails can be incredibly valuable…if they’re done correctly. Follow the steps listed above, and you’ll see your response rates grow.

What’s your secret for successful sales emails? Let us know in the comments!