In this article, you will be able to focus on the strategy and writing of your Sales email: Email marketing strategy, examples of successful campaigns, and automation tools. Our goal is that by the end of this article, you will be ready to revise or start your strategy and achieve much better results. 😎
Sales email is an old idea that hasn’t gone out of fashion:
Email, the mother of the Internet, never ceases to amaze us. It was in 1971 that Ray Tomlinson developed the ARPANET (the progenitor of the internet), created an email address, and sent the first email over this network. The first social network was created 26 years later and was called Six Degrees Emailing. Thus, after the release of the first e-mail system, it took more than 20 years before e-mail became perfect. One would think that it would go out of fashion and become an outdated means of communication, but in fact, quite the opposite happened.
I don’t know if you realize it, but getting 20% more revenue from your marketing emails is a huge result. And of course, you can do more. If you’re in B2B technology, this could be 50% of your income. In any case, you are the only owner onboard your boat. It is up to you to decide how much energy and effort you want to put into generating leads. ☠️ All we are telling you here is:
Email is still in vogue and is a vector of success:
Obviously, search email is a fast and efficient way to increase your earnings.
You can very easily have an email marketing strategy by combining it with other acquisition channels (YouTube, LinkedIn…).
How to create a database for sending sales letters?
A very good question. Let’s say you never had a database. She is empty. Nothing. Nothing. How will you do it?
Buy a database? No. ❌
Often illegal and expensive, can be of very poor quality and you are never sure of its origin.
Through a blog that has calls to action, white papers, and other ways to get the email? Yes, but no. ❌
This is a very good technique. And this is clearly a good long-term strategy. The problem is, you can’t just bet on it. Doing inbound marketing with a blog is labor-intensive and you need faster conversion channels, especially if you are just starting out. You need to get money in your wallet. 👛
Through the “Finder” (search) of data, also known as “enrichment”. No ❌ but yes. ✅
You need to find a potential client’s business email address and you don’t have any database at your disposal, email search tools can be very effective. But not just any tool, at any price. For example, the Lusha tool is insecure and bombarded by the CNIL. Not the most pleasant sight. ❌ Waalaxy’s Mail Finder works with DropContact so it complies with data protection laws. ✅
Focus on Email Marketing Strategy in 2022
To create a sales email marketing strategy, you need to learn both the basics of sales and the technical fundamentals. Let’s figure out together how to strategize and how to prepare and set up email before we get started. These two steps are an integral part of your search strategy and cannot be separated. 🚩 Without a prepared (technical) mailbox, your emails will end up in spam. 🚩 Without good targeting and copywriting (strategy), you will be blacklisted or spammed by your potential customers.
Rethink your targeting!
In fact, we can’t say it enough, targeting is the key. 🔑 And your targeting can change… sometimes we are surprised to see some people buy our products even though they don’t have the profile we originally set. The goal may change, data tells us, not conventional wisdom. If you haven’t reviewed your goals, it might be time to take a look at who is buying your products and who isn’t. If, on the other hand, you’ve never thought about building a typical persona, here’s free material from Hubspot to help you create a typical customer.
7 STEPS TO INCREASE OPEN RATES IN 2022:
Think Inbound Marketing
Reminder:
Inbox = offer quality content = the client comes to you.
The main goal of inbound marketing is to lead a future potential client who does not know you yet or knows little to become a client. Typically through creating quality content that offers valuable information to the potential client to make their professional life easier and prove your prowess in this area… That is exactly what I am doing at the time of writing this article. 🤠 You have several ways to hit your target right in the heart 💜 :
Post content on social media. (Infographics, tips, guides).
Organize life hacks and webinars. (not to be confused with a product demo).
Create video content on YouTube. (Here is an example )
White papers on topics that you understand.
Podcasts.
Natural links in search engines.
There is a real trend towards incoming
Outbound = active search for sales = you come to the client.
I know what you’re going to tell me: the sales email is for search. Yes, but that’s how it used to be. Purely commercial email doesn’t exist in 2022, or at least it doesn’t work anymore. There is too much competition in the market and therefore a lot of spam. The best way to grab the attention of potential customers is to show them what you can do and how to do it. This is done by sharing information:
News from your sector and how to deal with it.
Case studies with numbers about your successes and failures.
Tutorials, little hacks, and best practices.
Little free tools to make life easier.
Depending on your field of activity: examples and infographics.
How to do inbound marketing with a sales letter?
It’s simple: a “cold email ” is an email that you send to a potential client with whom you have never communicated. And you sort of stumble, trying to make them understand:
As you can see, one of the challenges is grabbing their attention and creating a connection. Especially with email, the world of spam par excellence. Here you will have to use your creativity and copywriting skills. 👩🎨 But this is not the biggest problem. 😱 In fact, usually the most difficult thing is to find a qualified database that won’t cost you a failed heist and prospective customers who are really interested in your products.
Search depends on your target audience. If you do not specialize in B2B, then everything that is written below is not for you. However, if your customers are potential targets on LinkedIn.
You have an easy way to find this information while qualifying your prospects and writing to them in the process. 😎
In fact, we are not the only ones on the market who do this, but we do it well:
Fully integrated with your CRM, without having to puzzle over CSV files or manual searches. To explain the difference between inbound mailings without a mail finder and with a mail finder, I made a small illustrative example:
Here you need to figure out how to add contact forms or calls to action to ask potential customers to write their e-mail and agree to receive your messages. As a result, they must pass the “visitor” stage, i.e. somewhere to read your content, go through your site, answer a questionnaire…😭 Thus, you lose a lot of contacts who, despite your excellent content, will not take a step towards writing information about their business. 😨 Thanks to the “search email” option integrated direcHow to get a qualified database?
Okay, now that you know your persona and how to get emails from leads, how do you turn LinkedIn’s billions of users into several
hundred highly qualified leads?
You are not going to send letters with sales offers all over the world. No. ❌ Actually, I forbid you to do that. This is not good. Not for you, not for them, not for the planet. In addition, you will have a big bold zero as your starting bet. And you will tell us that nothing works. 😅 So, you will have to find a qualified database on LinkedIn. Don’t worry, we have a complete guide that explains how to do it and gives you the secret techniques to get even more leads.
How to find your clients on LinkedIn 🔥
How to form your strategy?
Let’s summarize and check how careful you are:
I kindly suggested that you check your targeting.
We have determined how to create a qualified database and find your leads on LinkedIn.
We talked about Inbound and the best way to reach out to a prospect for the first time in your sales letter.
Now, this:
You have a clear goal
That you were able to upload a list of prospects to your CRM.
That you know how to refer to them (if you run out of ideas, examples are provided later in the article).
We can finally talk about your b2b strategy! ✨
This tool will allow you to connect with your target audience either on LinkedIn or via email or both. You will be able to select a campaign (sequence of automatic actions).
For example:
Automatic connection request on LinkedIn + Automatic email + Finding a potential customer’s email address + Automatic email sent in progress.
Multi-channel prospecting into CRM, you can bypass this step. 😎 (bypass… another word that sounds a little sexier in English than in French) And you can delete the visitor box directly. Via LinkedIn,
we find the email address of the potential client and you can contact them directly. Most people leave their email addresses available online.
All you have to do is select the people who match your goals in a completely automatic way and add them to your email campaign to reach them for the first time with your best pen.
Now that you know how to act strategically, it’s time to get to the heart of the matter: Technique. 😱 Don’t worry, I promise we will teach you. Here are 4 tools and tricks that can improve your open rate by more than 50%. 🔥
Understand your sender rate
The sender score applies to all mailings coming from the same IP address. It is this indicator that determines whether mail services (Gmail, Outlook …) trust your IP address. This is more or less what we can call your “reputation.” In short:
you will have a bad reputation and your emails will automatically end up in spam.
You have 3 stages of reputation loss:
🟢 Your email is sent to the contact’s inbox, simple and clear.
🟠 Your email goes to spam.
🔴Your email is blocked and the recipient will never receive it.
To understand your sender rating, the first step is to check if your mail is blacklisted. Someone can get blacklisted very quickly, so make no mistake, it doesn’t just happen to others. On the MX toolbox website, you can check for free whether you are blacklisted anywhere.
Improve Spam Score
Too late, you’ve already spammed the whole world and you need to start all over again?
This is fine.
Everyone makes mistakes. We forgive you. Assuming you never do it again! Mail-tester is a free tool that allows you to calculate your spam score online. If your score is below 7, it means that some of your emails will end up in spam. You will have to review your letters. To do this, we have a number of tips, both in this article and in the video tutorials, links to which I will add during the course of this guide. Watch carefully. 👀
Check the deliverability of your emails!
GlockApps is a tool that measures the quality of delivery
your letters!
Why do you need it?
On average in Europe, 51% of letters never reach the mailbox. 26% end up in the spam or junk folders, and 25% are never delivered.
This is more than half of the database.
Of course, this is an average, it depends on the base you have and your targeting. If your open rate is around 20% (or less), it’s important to check to see where your emails are going.
How to do it?
GlockApps sends a test to a large number of addresses with different server settings.
This results in a full performance audit of the sender (i.e. you) and offers you a list of recommendations to improve deliverability. A simple test will let you know if your server has a low trust index and how to find solutions.
Clean up your email database to send emails faster
All you have to do is import your list and Kickbox will assign it a deliverability score (called Sendex) and then sort your database. They promise a deliverability rate of at least 95% for your next campaign.
There are many other programs on the market. You’ll also have to keep updating your leads and deleting email addresses that haven’t replied to you. You yourself must determine when a potential client has “burned out”, i.e. he will never answer your emails and is simply not interested.
Good Practice: Cleaning every 6 months is the absolute minimum.
Setting up a mailbox for marketing emails
In order to make sure that you have every chance to increase the deliverability of your emails, you need to set up your mailbox. This set includes the elements we’ve already talked about, and it improves deliverability by increasing the trust of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Tutorial contains:
How and why you should use a warmer to improve the deliverability of your emails.
How to program the DNS of your mailbox? This is what all emails you send go through. Some sort of ID.
How to program DKIm? It is used to identify you as the owner of the email you are using.
How to set up DMARC? That is, redirecting letters that cannot be sent to the company’s email.
Maintaining a table of A / B tests of letters >> HERE
As you can see, testing is an integral part of your digital strategy.
You should definitely send different approaches to the same goal.
Attention: Identical target = not the same people, but the same person.
These are completely different things. 🛑
If you send the same potential customers two identical messages in the same week to see which one they respond to, they’ll just get pissed off and your test will be useless. 😅 So, you take a sample, usually 100 people is normal.
Let’s imagine that they are managers of small companies with less than 10 employees, in the service sector, in France.
You find their email via Waalaxy’s email finder and contact them via Cold Email with a classic approach. In doing so, you take the same target without duplicates (with Waalaxy you have protection against duplicates, so you don’t have to worry about it). If you don’t have the tool, do a manual check. And there try original approach.
Analyze both results:
The indicator of openness.
The number of clicks on links.
Response factor (if it can be measured).
Now that you know what type of approach is best for your goal, you can grow your sample by reaching thousands of people without making a mistake.
Think about it: 🐠 With only a 5% increase in open rate, out of the 10,000 people you contact, that’s another 500 qualified leads who will find out about you and are more likely to become your customers.
This is not unimportant at all. So take the time to test!
Building a Sales Email Series
The sequence o
f emails using the AIDA method is the most used. If you want to know more about this approach, click here. But in short, it will consist of 4 emails. They all have a very specific purpose. 🎯
#1 is “A”, the attention of the potential client. What topics are of interest to you? The goal is not yet to provide them with solutions but to show that you have information or knowledge that may be of interest to them. 😏
#2 – Interest. You understand and know the problems of your potential client. You will even soon offer him or her a magical solution to all their problems. 🤫
#3 – Desire. It’s there, it’s beautiful, it’s reliable, it’s affordable, it’s a turnkey solution that will turn their life into a blooming field of flowers. 🤩
#4 is for action. Something that will make them click, a miraculous call to action, a link to the holy grail, a gilded white sheet. In short, it is in this email that you encourage them to click (buy, make an appointment) and not before.
This technique should be the best of all, but it’s also the most used, so it can easily run out of steam.
Again, it’s up to you to try other techniques. 😁
Follow a potential client via email
The follow-up email is a delicate art between “not too much and not enough.” It is often difficult to figure out how to renew contact without making him feel attacked.
I leave it to you to decide what to do, but you must be careful what you do.
Introductory letter
The best thing to do in an introductory letter is to prepare the next steps.
For example, you can add at the end of the letter:
I’m going to publish a full article on this topic, I’m currently working on it.
Taking this opportunity, I will give you a preview.
Or:
In 15 days we will organize an event in Paris on this topic, there are no places yet, but as soon as the link appears on the network, I will send you greetings and pass it on to you.
In my examples, the language is very laid-back, it will of course need to be adapted to your purpose. Why end the letter this way?
You avoid looking like a spammer.
You act as if you are having a perfectly normal conversation with a specific person.
You personalize your exchanges and use expressions such as “little hello”, “preview”, which allow you to create a connection with the interlocutor.
Don’t miss this opportunity – it’s one of the most important things about cold email and at the same time the hardest to achieve because you’re completely at a distance and your interlocutor doesn’t know you from Adam or Eve. 🍎
You have a great introduction for the rest of the emails. All you have to do is continue where you left off.
Email follow-up Here is an example of a finished, meaningful follow-up email:
Hello to you! Remember last week I told you about an upcoming event/article? So, everything is ready! It was a bit rushed, but we are happy with the result. 😁
We compiled the 7 best email templates with statistics and a super high-quality case.
20 Prospecting Templates for Sales 🔥
Feel free to tell me what you think. 😃
Email back
So, everything failed. It’s normal, it happens. Perhaps the subject of the letter was not particularly relevant to your interlocutor, and he was not intrigued by the issue you raised.
To still grab their attention, you can try sending a final email to win them back.
Let’s go back to our first example:
Hello, on Monday I sent you an email about the best lead generation templates. Feel free to tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that this is not your priority right now. I understand. I’m actually tackling other topics that I suspect will be more relevant to you at the moment.
Here are the 3 most read so far:
Become a LinkedIn Influencer: Get 75K views per week on LinkedIn
How to get thousands of email addresses quickly
Find clients with content creation
To use our example #2 :
Hey! I told you about our event last week, and judging by your response (or lack thereof), it’s safe to say you weren’t thrilled with it. Or maybe you just couldn’t come? I can understand, sometimes they are very long and it’s embarrassing to watch us 😂 We summed up the entire live broadcast on YouTube, in a podcast: how to generate (without ads) THOUSANDS of leads using LinkedIn?
Again, you just need to tailor this example to your audience. If they don’t open this sales email as well, we advise you to give them time before contacting everyone who didn’t respond again for a new campaign.
Remember that the more often you are reported as spam, the more your deliverability drops. Be careful. Clean up your database regularly. Do it for them, do it for the planet, do it for yourself. It doesn’t matter why you do it. Just do it. Otherwise, your email address will die. 😬
PART 4 – Sample Sales Letter and Article Summary
It’s time to wrap up our article on writing a sales letter and give you some copy and paste examples to get you started. This is the last part of our article, and I’m almost sad to say goodbye to you so soon.
Creating an email: what not to do
7 Content Mistakes:
Not very clean formatting.
Too much advertising copywriting.
Text language.
No questions.
There is no story or context.
Spam words.
(Lack of) signature.
3 errors related to tools:
Using the wrong tool.
Lack of personalization or weak personalization.
The Wrong template depersonalizes the message.
How to write a successful sales letter?
Be clear: From the very first lines of your sales letter, we need to know who you are and what you do.
Define a unique and original theme: no verbal spam.
Convince a potential client with a well-known or original method that you have tested and that works in your sector.
Personalize the content in relation to your purpose.
Provide potential customers with added value in your email. No aggressive sales emails, just good tips to understand the market… thanks to your tool 😉
Think about relevance, not abundance. Don’t text your prospect every day and don’t text without saying anything. If you don’t have anything to give, then skip it, send content late if necessary, but make sure it’s high quality when you send it.
Continue with thoughtful follow-ups thanks to our email system, which was discussed above in Part 3.
Analyze sent emails and track results.
Learn to introduce yourself again
Please don’t be too boring. 😴 Too many “marketing managers”, “communications experts”, etc. 🚂
On the other hand, you:
“Passionate about the evolution of the healthcare technology market.”
“I am constantly looking for new tools to automate boring processes”
Write what exactly drives you and makes you offer solutions?
Define a unique and original subject line
The subject line, I cannot stress enough, should not contain verbal spam.
What often works in the French tech industry are short and not very optimized titles. This trend has completely changed. 😱 Why? Because the vanguards of this movement have already understood everything.
There is so much spam in users’ inboxes that the best way to avoid getting trashed is to text like you’re a friend. I have highlighted a few specific examples that I found in my inbox.
Title for sales mailOf course, you should always adjust to your goal.
But Scalezia’s (Benoit)’s open rates are impressive, so their subject line and headline are worth considering, and why not test your target. 😜
Items that don’t work
Too much text. (maximum 30 characters).
Be too vague. (What are you talking about?)
Using useless and not very effective words.
Use of misleading sales words “earn 10 times more by reading this”.
Write each word in
capital letters. READING HURTS.
Aggressive headlines “You must read this or you will regret it.” Don’t laugh, I’ve gotten this before. I didn’t click on them. I never regretted it. 😅
Convince the interlocutor
To convince the interlocutor, you can use the AIDA method.
Aida method for sales
Personalize content in relation to the character
You wouldn’t tell your grandpa to clear his browser’s cache when he’s buggy.
You tell him to press the little button on the top left and follow your instructions, right? What is the vocabulary of your target? Should you make some things less complicated?
The Complication is the story of my life. I had to learn how to explain the topics I write about to the average person.
Otherwise
it will not be easy for grandma to understand. 😂So, you need to adapt to your goal and speak its language all the time 😉
Give value to your email
Give preference to the words: “tips”, “recommendations”, “study”, “research” for your emails.
The purpose of this is to give quality to the interlocutor. Your emails should offer solutions, tools, alternatives to the problems that your interlocutors face.
If you don’t know what the problem is, you should definitely think about it. Your copywriting will revolve around your decision.
Analyze sent emails
Most tools have a built-in dashboard that allows you to analyze the results. You need to consider the open rates, clicks, and downloads or purchases associated with your campaigns.
I will not tell you what is a good or bad indicator. This is completely unproductive. ❌ Make sure you follow all the best practices, then analyze your results and then run tests to improve your results.
But what you can do is go and see what the best in your industry have implemented as a strategy. 💡dashboard sales mail You can also set custom tracking links to your emails. Here is a simple guide on how to do it. 🤗
Email Marketing: A Case Study
I warn you, we will be original and bizarre because this works in our business. I’ll leave all the fun of making your own little changes up to you.
promo code
Search Approach #1
Email subject: hello first name, how are you?
Phrase: I saw that you were interested but the price did not suit you. There is a big promotion here!
Content – application of the AIDA method. A note: Have you seen the 30% off promo yet? I – interest: Business will cost you only $28 per month instead of $40! D for wish: You can still:
Send personalized campaigns: LinkedIn + Sequential emails. 🚀
Automate many smart ways to connect with new leads with Auto Import. 😲
Find, upload, connect with thousands of new leads with an email finder. 💌
physical event
Approach #2
Subject: Hello, this is Elodie. Would you like to meet?
Phrase: My small team and I are organizing a great event. I think it’s not far from the company office!
Content – use the AIDA method. A – Attention: We are organizing a meeting in Paris to exchange ideas on business growth and development. I – interest: There will be many large boxes and a few nuggets – a list of French unicorns revealing their secrets to success. 🦄 D for Desire
New tool – new function
Approach #3
Goal: Do you want change too?
Phrase: I, too, am tired of struggling with finding e-mail addresses of enthusiastic people.
Content – application of the AIDA method. A – attention: I knew that many people on LinkedIn are passionate about technological innovation.
The thing is, I had a hard time finding them. Therefore, together with the development team, we decided to develop a new feature: auto-import! Just for fun:
You see hundreds of people commenting on a post about finding new technical solutions… 😲 You know in advance that they will be interested in your proposals!
Questions for the article
What are the 3 fundamental differences between cold and marketing emails?
#1 Goal. The purpose of a cold email is to start a relationship. The goal is to create a connection with a potential client. The purpose of email marketing is to encourage a potential buyer to buy.
#2 Interlocutor. A marketing email is sent to a contact who has already signed up, such as through a newsletter or lead magnet. The purpose of a cold email is to start a relationship with a contact you haven’t talked to before.
#3 Copywriting. Cold email is almost like writing to a friend. It is more flexible in terms of writing. Email marketing is much less flexible. Short phrases are designed in much the same way as an advertising poster or sales page.
How to send a marketing email?
With a tool that allows you to send emails. There are several effective and safe tools on the market.
sales mail and linkedin
How to optimize email marketing campaigns?
Improve your reputation (Sender Score) to be considered a trusted email source.
Prepare your email address with the email warmer.
Take care of your databases so that you are not considered a spammer (segmentation is in your interest).
Tailor the message to your audience.
By creating your own email templates to ensure they are personalized.
Optimizing email frequency with A/B testing
Check unsubscribe requests to see if your emails are too aggressive or repetitive
Submitting quality content: Focus on interesting content, not direct advertising.
Use a comprehensive mailing tool that makes your job easier and has a complete dashboard.
Create a report to optimize the following email campaigns (percentage of opens, clicks, downloads, payments, other indicators depending on your activity).
What are the benefits of email marketing in a digital strategy?
The price is very reasonable.
No need for technical knowledge.
Basic knowledge to make your emails successful.
A good way to boost your brand image.
Ideal for getting to know your potential customers and analyzing their reactions.
Personalized communication through targeting.
Easy to automate campaigns.
Technology is in constant development.
Now you’re ready to find new customers, write your first sales letter, and launch your campaign. We can’t wait to read you. 😁