Email is a highly effective sales tool but it’s not a magic pill. You can’t expect to send one email and have prospects flock to your business and buy your products.
So what’s the secret?
The money is in the follow-up: sending more follow-up emails can triple your reply rate. For example, a study saw an 18% response rate to the first email and 27% to the sixth.
To make sure your sales team is using email effectively to connect with high-quality prospects, nurture relationships, and increase conversion rates – you need to implement an effective email follow-up sequence.
Having a systematic approach can also help convert as many customers as possible since 80% of prospects say “no” four times before saying “yes.”
In fact, an email follow-up series consisting of 4 -7 messages delivers three times more responses than those with only 1-3 messages while following up just once can yield 22% more replies.
You can use a drip email sequence to follow up with prospects haven’t responded or share additional content with leads with whom you have had an initial contact to progress them down the sales funnel.
Here’s what you can do to make the most of your follow-up emails:
1. Determine Your Objectives
The most effective emails are succinct and have a clear call-to-action (CTA.) It’s critical that you determine the goal for each email to help you craft highly relevant content that elicits action.
For prospects that haven’t interacted with or respond to your emails, you can ask for a micro-commitment, such as clicking on a link to read an article or hitting reply to answer a simple question.
For leads with whom you have had an initial contact, you can request additional information, which can be synced up with your CRM application to help you deliver a better customer experience or send out relevant collaterals.
You can also use a drip sequence to re-activate relationships with prospects that you haven’t been in contact with for a while. For example, you can get updates on your contacts using MixMax’s LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration to personalize your check-in emails.
2. Automate Your Follow-Up Sequence
To make sure each prospect is getting the right content at the right time, automate the follow-up sequence to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.
This will help you capture prospects that haven’t responded to your previous emails – they may be interested in your products yet haven’t replied due to various reasons, such as lack of time or wanting to learn more before they reach out.
You can also customize triggers so follow-up emails are sent out based on prospects’ interaction with your communications. This will allow you to deliver the most relevant content at the right time, such as additional collateral, calendar invites, surveys, and special offers.
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3. Personalize Your Emails
Customers expect a personalized experience you should send follow-up emails customized to their interactions with your brand.
If you had previous interactions with a contact, you can open the email with the appropriate context to jog their memory and help them better understand your email’s content. You should also clearly state the purpose of the email to communicate why it’s important.
You can also use information from your CRM application to inform the content of your email. For example, by mentioning a prospect’s past interactions with your brand at other touch points to deliver a seamless omni channel customer experience that can accelerate the sales cycle.
Related Post: Mixmax + Text Messaging: Embed an SMS contact form in your email
4. Deliver a Consistent Experience
An email sequence that’s consistent in design and tone can deliver an on-brand experience to augment your brand image and build trust.
You can set up email templates so sales reps can use them as a starting point to personalize their email follow-ups. This can help ensure that the right information is sent out at each stage of the customer journey.
In addition, you can track results and fine-tune the content in the templates so everyone in the organization can have real-time access to copy that works to increase the response rate.
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5. Craft Effective Subject Lines
35% of recipients open an email based on the subject line alone so it’s important that you write an engaging follow-up subject line to cut through the inbox clutter.
Including the first name of the recipient in an email subject line can increase the click-through rate by up to 22.2%. You can also use concrete numbers to communicate the relevance of a message or add a sense of urgency by using words such as “tomorrow.”
Don’t forget to track your email open rates to see how individual contact responds to the subject line so you can fine-tune your copy and improve your results.
Related Post: 7 Sales Email Sequence Examples to Help You Close More Deals
6. Send Your Emails At the Right Time
Depending on the nature of the follow-ups and the specific situations, emails should be sent out at a certain time to ensure that the message is relevant and the open rate is optimized.
For example, a “thank you” message after a meeting, sale, conference, etc. should be sent out within 24 hours; check-in after sending an important document within 48 hours; follow up on a meeting request if you haven’t heard back within 1-2 weeks; and catch up with a connection every 3 months to stay top of mind.
To make sure each follow-up email shows up in the recipient’s inbox at the right time, you can schedule emails with our “send later” feature. Not sure when’s the best time to reach a prospect? The AI-powered technology can optimize email delivery time based on recipient activity to increase clicks, opens, and response rates.
7. Increase Engagement With Polls and Questions
Asking questions or getting feedback from your contacts helps you get additional information to personalize the customer experience, show that you care about their input, and increase engagement through micro-commitments.
Not to mention, emails that include one to three questions are 50% more likely to get a reply compared to those that don’t have any questions while polls in emails can increase response rates by 20-25%.
You can put a simple open-ended question and use MixMax’s Q&A feature to capture long-form answers from the recipients right within the email body. This can also help you start a one-to-one dialog to build rapport and relationships.
Alternatively, make it easy for prospects to share their thoughts with just one click by embedding a poll or survey in your email. You can also gather in-depth information with our Typeform integration and even automate downstream actions to send out the most appropriate next step based on the answers.
A well-orchestrated follow-up email sequence delivered in the right place and at the right time can help you nurture relationships, elicit responses, and accelerate the sale cycle to increase conversion rates.
Using a communication and automation application can maximize your sales team’s efforts by creating a highly personalized customer experience at scale, making it easier to turn your prospects into customers. Give Mixmax a try for 14 days for free, or schedule a demo.
