How to write an actually good sales email

Whether or not your customers will pick up the phone depends a lot on who your customers actually are. If the people you’re contacting trend younger, or you’re targeting the influencers of the decision-making unit, rather than purchasers, your first point of contact might be emails, rather than phone conversations.

That’s where the art of the sales email comes in.

So, how do you write a good one? Well, we’ve got your back.

There are two key things you must consider at every step: first, your desired outcome, and second, your audience.

Key thing one: outcome

Your desired outcome is not likely to be getting a sale from the email. It’s probably not even booking a meeting from the email.

The goal of a cold sales email should be to coax your prospect into responding in some way. From there, you could schedule a call, offer a demo, show your prospect to your content marketing resources — the many possibilities unfold before you, a veritable buffet of opportunity.

But first, you have to get that reply to your email. And for that, you have to do the second key thing.

Key thing two: audience

You know your market. That’s your job.

But what do you know about this particular prospect, personally? Get up close and personal with their problems, needs, desires and motives. This sensitivity is what will really distinguish your sales email from the scores of generic ones they get every week.

With those two considerations in mind — the outcome you want and the audience for whom you write — we can talk about some of our top tips to nail your sales email.

• Subject line

We at the MarketBase+ blog are confident that you have an inbox and you know what a subject line is for. Our advice: keep it short and keep it relevant. Use it to spark curiosity.

• Opening

Take this as an opportunity to make it personal — write something that tells your recipient that this email is meant just for them personally, rather than “them” as a representative of a carefully segmented cohort.

Here’s an example: have a look at their LinkedIn page. Did they post something recently? Great. Tell them what you liked about their post. It doesn’t have to be deep or meaningful, it just has to be authentic.

• Body copy

The key here is to remember that it’s not important to your prospect that you want to sell them something. They don’t care. What they care about is what value you can offer, and how it’s relevant to them.

Information like where they sit in their company hierarchy or what technologies are available to them can go a long way to understanding what’s valuable to your audience, so make use of that information here.

• CTA

Don’t ask for a big commitment in a sales email. Just get your prospect to respond, whether that be replying to you or pushing a button to go look at your content marketing collateral.

Remember, the goal of this email is to get the opportunity to talk again, not to convert a sale on the spot.

• Follow up

“Just following up,” is great for your co-workers and suppliers, with whom you already have a reciprocal relationship.

You don’t have that familiarity with your prospects. Talk to them like it matters to you what they thought of your email. For example, you sent them a sales email and they didn’t respond — do they have any feedback on that for you? Where did you lose them?

Don’t forget: it’s all about the outcome and the audience. Done right, the sales email can be a valuable tool to getting you to a second date.