Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

8 eMail best practices and poor subject lines

  

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When referring to inside sales reps that send tons of emails instead of calling, my colleague Trish Bertuzzi notes that “we’re not pen pals” in this business, and I agree with her. Too often, they’re more about call reluctance than communication. Still, I’m often asked to discuss email module in my telesales training courses. And there are times when you’ll need it.

Here are some of my email recommendations::

1) Stay away from gimmicky or salesy email subject lines that encourage prospects to toss your email before they even read it, or are blocked by a spam filter.  Subject lines that have automatically gone into our SPAM blocker include:

 ”Call request”
 “Congratulations”
“Don't Risk Business Continuity”
“Executive Webinar Tuesday”
 “Is this your website?”
 “Let’s meet for lunch”
 “Meeting request”
“Sales discussion”
“Gucci Handbags, Rolex Watches, Jewelry 50% OFF!”

Instead, in the subject line, leave a short, compelling, interest-getting message. Be brief, and make it targeted to the business your prospect is in. Two examples I’ve liked were:

“How do you improve building inspection profitability while intelligently controlling your costs?” (made by a maker of thermal cameras, directed to building inspectors

“Healthcare Law: What Businesses Can't Ignore” (excellent ‘Fear of Loss’ attention getter, relating to Compliance)

2) Particularly at the executive level, poor spelling and grammar can reflect poorly on both the individual and company sending the email (read my blog post on grammar for more). Professionalism means a lot. Use your spell checker. Also, be particularly careful of subject-pronoun disagreement when it comes to plurals. It often sounds something like this. “When a software developer can’t get instant test results, they often call us to get a demonstration of our testing solutions.” This is the most common type of grammatical error I see, and I probably see it a hundred or more times a month. “They” refers to more than one engineer. For better grammar, replace “they” in the above example with “he or she.”

3) Many are picking up email on PDAs. Use 10 point Arial print, and avoid the use of graphics.

4) Brevity is appreciated by people that receive many emails per day. Make your email no longer than 2 or 3 extremely short bulleted lines or paragraphs that can be read “above the fold.”

5) Include a brief value proposition as a reason for returning your email that is in the interest of the prospect (two examples above). People buy because you will either help them make money, or prevent them from losing money, so always have an element indicating this in your email. Asking a prospect to call you “so I can explore more about how your company uses servers” will rarely get returned.

6) Include only 1 company link. Be careful of putting additional links in your email. You want your prospect returning your call instead of getting all the info he or she needs off your website.

7) Don’t send attachments unless specifically requested to do so. Many people are wary of clicking on attachments they haven’t specifically requested.

8) Reconsider whether email “blasts” to prospects that haven’t “touched” your company are doing more harm than good. People don’t like to be spammed, even when they're at work, and if they’re spammed repeatedly, they won’t consider doing business with you.