In today’s marketplace where improved remote sales processes and enhanced online marketing initiatives are the need of the hour, sales teams can’t do without cold calling or email prospecting. While every sales team will have their own sales mix to follow, most sales outreach processes have to include some amount of cold calling and a fair bit of email prospecting.
There is never a one-size-fits-all strategy that can work in marketing and sales as several leaders always reiterate. The factors involved in determining sales success for a given company or situation are several and in order to tap into opportunities at the right time, sales teams today have to constantly redefine their salestech stack and overall processes to ensure they meet customers where they are, when the time is right, using sales messaging that has a higher chance of resonating with them.
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The first step to creating this customer-centric journey and moving a prospective buyer across the buying stages involves strengthening email marketing and email prospecting efforts. Because in an online selling environment, proper email marketing can help increase customer retention and wins.
Most B2B buyers and millenials prefer communications from businesses to come via email. Most sales teams begin their sales outreach with a combined social media (LinkedIn) and email prospecting cadence.
Here are 4 Secrets That Can Help Improve Sales Email ROI
Find The Best Suited Time To Send Emails With Downloadables
Open rates matter to marketers but open rates are not the only thing that will define the success of an email marketing strategy. When it comes to implementing a sound email prospecting process, it is important to not only identify the optimal time to send emails to boost open rates, it is important to understand when different kinds of emails should be sent. Salespeople will usually need to support their email prospecting with different collaterals about the company, the product, key features and offerings, etc. This might mean that your intended recipient needs to view or download an attachment.
Online studies have often suggested that the best time to send business prospecting emails are Monday to Wednesdays. The middle of the week is usually a better time to send emails with attachments as well because there is a higher chance of them being viewed or downloaded.
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Weekends are not Great for Email, But Wait!
Most B2B and tech marketers will avoid sending prospecting emails or marketing emails over the weekend. But for salespeople, here’s a little secret – the weekends are a good way to drop in a message or line via email on something loosely related to your prospecting conversation or product, but not quite. It can be a good way to stay on top of mind of your prospect and ensure that your email does not get lost in the deluge of everyday mails they are already being sent.
A simple tactic could involve sharing some news on a recent industry update, sharing insights via a value-add interview or article. A simple statement like, ”thought you’d be interested in something like this,” can work wonders!
Salespeople Need Short and Sweet Subject Lines!
A recent SalesLoft study had once suggested that one-word or two to three-word email subject lines see the maximum open rates. Short, crisp lines that address the main meaning or theme of the email work best, for instance; “Let’s Talk,” “Company Brand Name” (e.g: Zendesk) or simply “About Zendesk”.
Keeping in mind that personalized emails with personalized subject lines will have a higher open rate can help sales teams craft words or terms that create that appropriate sense of urgency in their prospect’s mind.
Using Email to Identify Buying Signals and to Close Deals Faster
With the right sales tools, email can tell you a lot more about your prospect’s buying behavior. Salespeople who send collaterals as part of their usual sales cadence are in a better position to improve the information they send out if they know whether their prospect downloaded the attachment and if they have details of whether the prospect sent the attachment forward to other team members. Simple signals of these kind indicate an interest in the product and salespeople can easily structure their next step to help move the prospect forward based on this information.
Investing in an end-to-end email tracking tool that is integrated with the teams CRM will help maintain a unified vision of the target company while helping to optimize the overall email outreach and prospecting process.
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Email will always be an important part of the sales process and even more so today given the need to go through every stage of the selling process virtually. Sales reps are known to send hundreds of emails daily as part of their standard activity. Then there are the usual follow-ups that also need to be done. Investing in a more structured and data-backed approach is what can boost efficiencies when it comes to email prospecting.
