Everything You Need to Know about Sales Follow-up Emails from Startup Hypeman

The first cold email is tough, and a lot of thinking goes into ensuring it beats every other one out there and grabs your prospect's attention. However, follow up emails are also critical and play a significant part in the sales funnel. These emails are not just cold emails, but also act as lead magnets to ensure that your prospect is engaged enough to transition through the sales funnel to convert.

Let’s take a look below at everything you need to know about sales follow-up emails to get killer responses and conversion.

1. Customize Your Email by Customer Personas

Customer personas help a sales team get to the ‘why’ and obtain information about the customer's needs. By developing customer personas for your organization and tagging potential prospect emails to these personas, the sales copy can be more strategic and pointed towards addressing their pain points. Ultimately boosting the chances of converting these prospects.

2. Send a Follow Up email with Intent

It’s easy to embrace the generic tactic of a “Hey just checking in if you got my previous email John” follow up. Unfortunately, this is likely to fall flat. Instead, craft your follow up emails with intent so that you’re pushing the conversation forward in some way even if the first email generated no engagement. A common way to do this is to provide an additional value of some kind, such as useful information in the form of a content piece that the recipient would find helpful or asking for additional information from the recipient.

Here is a highly recommended one:

Hey _____, just bumping this to the top of your inbox.

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3. Craft an Attention-Grabbing Subject Line

An effective subject line can be the single biggest driving factor in boosting open rates and replies. Some fundamental rules to follow are to keep them short, straight to the point, and casual. Try to include a level of personalization such as the recipient's name or company to show you’re not firing off a generic template. Ideally, the subject line is crafted to nail a specific problem or need the recipient has, which is then explored deeper within the body of the email.

For example, “{{First Name}}, have you automated away your content marketing yet?”

{First Name} - this might help for your content marketing

These questions help personalize and address the pain point of a manual content marketing process that the prospect may be looking to solve.

4. Tips for the Body of Third or Later Followup Emails

If you’ve crafted a killer subject line, then the body is just an in-depth but similar copy. You want to include personalization that goes beyond just the prospect's name, if possible. This means identifying the prospect's company and whatever they are trying to solve. Try to keep the copy short and sweet, so that ideally, all it takes is three seconds to digest the information in one-go and respond.

Finally, always provide value in some form. You’re not going to get a demo booked or an online order without first giving something in return. So share relevant value to the prospect, such as industry insights, a link to an eBook, or even free access to a product or tool.

5. Drive the Conversation Forward with a CTA

Call to actions are rarely engaged if the prospect hasn’t had a chance to understand whether you’ll help them solve their problems in some way. A series of decisions need to occur for them to engage, so the sales copy must be crafted to lead them to action. I am adamantly against including a booking link in the close as I feel it's too presumptive. My recommended CTA's are "are you interested?"and "Does/Would it make sense to chat?". We can say the final follow up email can be a 'Whenever it's the right time, if you do want to talk, here's my calendar

6. Use Email Automation for Follow-Ups

There are plenty of email automation tools that can help take care of follow-ups and track the performance of emails that were sent out. Tools such as MixMax, Close.io, and Outreach are powerful marketing tools where you can customize templates, set automated follow-ups, and build workflows depending on the way a recipient behaves to the email or based on which customer segment they fall under.

7. How long to wait before following up on an email

Even though there’s no rule set in stone for how long you should wait before following up, a good example is to wait 3 days before the first follow up, and then another 5 days before the second. More advanced marketing tools now carry out follow up emails based on recipient behavior. If the recipient hasn’t opened the email, then follow up timelines are more aggressive, but if they have opened it but chose not to respond, then a more relaxed sequence is established.

Keep in mind that when emails are sent out, it can impact the open and response rates, so make sure to mix things up if you are unsure about which time of the day works best for your given customer segment. For example, real estate agents do a lot better with email openings after business hours than during the day. After all, they spent their 9-5 on open houses or with clients.

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8. How often should you follow up with your prospects to increase response rate?

To boost response rates, the magic number is a series of 7 emails, including the first cold email. This concept is known as the 8-touch sequence, where the wait time between each email follows a factor of two. That is after the first follow up, wait two days, then after the second, wait four days, then eight after the third, and so forth. Do this until 7 follow up emails are carried out unless they respond.

9. When to stop sending follow up emails

Ultimately, if eight emails have been sent, and there's no response, then it’s time to stop. Even with automation tools doing the heavy lifting, there’s no point in carrying out an infinite amount of email follow-ups. If anything, this will likely get your email blocked. Instead, the last email should be more about “sounds like this isn't the right time. When/if that changes, here's my calendar link”. You should be able to read the prospect and know when it is time to send that final message. It is also important to mention to them of your understanding that they have no interest in the product and services, and always wish them well on their future endeavors. Ideally, add some value in this last email, such as a link to a content piece published by your company that may resonate with the recipient.

10. Assess your email data

Data can provide immense insight into the performance of your sales emails. Carry out an approach where you’re experimenting with a variety of subject lines, body content, and sequences. Insights can be derived on which email resonates the most through metrics such as open rates, in-email link click rates, response rates, and how these eventually correlate to actual sales.

Startup Hypeman can help you craft compelling marketing messages to convert your prospects.

Conclusion

Email marketing, if done correctly, can help convert a significant number of prospects. It can be challenging writing a compelling subject line, writing the full-body email, creating an enticing CTA, and following up with prospects. Fortunately, Startup Hypeman can show you how to write a compelling sales message. All it takes is some initiative and guidance, and you are on your way to growing a successful business.

Rajiv NathanMay 13, 2020