Why do so many of our sales emails get ignored and deleted?

Truth is…how to write good sales emails isn’t exactly something they teach in training class. Sure they may give you some templates that are “company approved” but how well have those worked out for you?

Don’t sweat…it just means it’s up to us to learn how to hunt in the digital jungle.

Now there are definitely some major mistakes that are leading to your emails getting the spam treatment. You should avoid them like fleas. Let’s break down the biggest ones.

5 Major Email Prospecting FAILS

1. Didn’t Capture Attention Quickly? FAIL

Question: How long does it take your prospect to decide whether to read or delete your email?

Answer: You have about as long as it takes to read this sentence to capture your prospects attention in an email.

That’s assuming you made it past the subject line test…most don’t.

If you pull that off (this will help) you must cash in with your opening line.

Research shows it takes a prospect less than 3 seconds to decide if they are going to read or delete your email. People are busy. Chances are you are not alone in their inbox. If you want to survive the 1^st round your 1^st sentence must pack a punch.

Example:

“Hey Steve,

June Solder asked me to reach out to you right away about your upcoming renovation when I mentioned I saved a recent client of mine 32%.”

Always start with a bang.

 

2. Didn’t Do Your Homework? FAIL

Question: Why are commercials and advertisements so annoying?

Answer: Most of the time they are not relevant to us so we view them as an irritating interruptions.

Don’t be a mosquito

The key to email prospecting is relevance. If you have not done any homework you’re flying blind and prospects can smell that almost immediately. One the flip side, if you actually do the initial research you will have ideas and understanding that will make people confident.

So make it worth your prospects time…seriously.

Larger opportunities (also known as whales in the sales world) require the most research and understanding of their specific business and needs ahead of time. They are also worth a lot more money.

Smaller opportunities may not require as much homework on them individually but it’s damn near mandatory you know their industry and have worked with companies like theirs.

In other words…Doing prospect research is code red critical.

 

3. The Email Is Focused on YOU & Not THEM? FAIL

Question: What makes your prospects tick?

Answer: Their needs, problems, desires, headaches and goals.

Why on earth would you want to send them a sales email focused on you, your company, your unique methodology, your marketing buzz words…and have nothing to do with THEM?

Effective sales emails are prospect centered, establish relevance, and bring something valuable to the table.

Take out most of the “I” “us” ”our” and “we” verbiage from your emails. Replace them with words like “you”, “your” and statements about benefits that have helped past clients like them.

Instead of being a creepy sales guy and “pitching”  what you do and offer. Use specifics like numbers, stories, company names and time frames to make it real and relatable for the prospect. Now you sound like your worth paying attention to.

#SalesTruth When email prospecting remember it’s about the reader, never the writer.

 

4. Still Writing LOOOOOONG Emails? FAIL

One thing you have to remember is times have changed. I feel sorry for my old English teachers because the way society communicates these days is not the way it was taught in the past. Why are you still writing your emails like this? This is way too much information to cram into one paragraph. People do not like reading long blocks of text and often times it is a major turn off. This is the text message and social network sound bite era. Long winded, rambling messages are no longer cool and should be never be sent again. They are intimidating and easy to procrastinate on instead of reading right away. I mean seriously when you compare the length of this paragraph to the rest of the page it looks out of place and you probably were not excited to dive into it just from first glance.

There is even research that backs this up.

In 2004 the Poynter Institute conducted the Eyetrack III study which revealed that shorter paragraphs actually received TWICE as many eye fixations as long ones.

Here’s what that means for you. Readers read text with short paragraphs twice as much as text with longer paragraphs.

Just think, that was back in 04. Do you think attention spans have gotten longer?

Get your point across in less than 100 words or you risk failing the eyeball test. Which will result in a quick “Whoah I don’t have time for this, I’ll get to it later.”

I’ll get to it later in most cases leads to…never…

Stop scaring prospects away with long drawn out emails.

5. No Call to Action? FAIL

Question: What is the purpose of you sending an email in the 1^st place?

Answer: To start a conversation.

If you’re not trying to create some kind of engagement with your prospect you have no business sending an email in the 1^st place. It might as well have been deleted if the prospect does not feel like they need to respond.

The easiest way to do this is to…ask a question.

By asking a question you are giving your prospect an action to complete which means your sale moves forward in a low pressure way. Here are a few examples:

“I’m confident I can help, let’s set up a quick 5 minute conversation to see how my ideas would work for your business. When is the best time to speak?”

“I can show you a few examples of our results with businesses like yours. Would you be interested in seeing what we did for ABC and XYZ company?”

Your prospect not taking action on an email because you didn’t ask is worse than being deleted. You need to stop wasting your time and start asking for responses.

Always be moving the sale forward.

The TakeAway

Emailing prospecting is one of the best ways to reach out to today’s buyers…If you do it well. The good news is most of your competition is making at least 1 and probably all of the 5 mistakes above. Now you have an advantage.

Dodge the delete by avoiding these Email Prospecting Fails

• Not capturing attention
• Not doing your homework
• Not focusing on them
• Not getting your point across quickly
• And not giving them something to do next

Here’s What You Should Do Next

1. If you found this useful share it with a friend.

2. Sound off in the comments. Are there an additional email fails you can think of that can help others?  What irks you the most?

3. Review the emails you are sending now. Avoid these fails to max your response rate.