Email is a critical part of a prospecting strategy, as long as it’s used in the ways in which it’s intended for. HubSpot defines a prospecting email as an outreach email a salesperson sends to a potential customer to introduce themselves, their business, and how they can help their prospect.

Email prospecting is not for building relationships, communicating a strategy, sharing an idea, or conversation in general. Create your prospecting email the right way, integrate it into a sound prospecting plan, and then you can dramatically enhance the cold calling process by getting your first close—the appointment.

6 Ways to Increase Your Odds of Success in Email Prospecting

1. Use your subject line and earn your open rate. State your purpose to your prospect without sounding like you’re a robot or a well-imagined marketing statement. Show your relevance to the prospect in a concise manner that earns the “open” using your own words. 

2. Prepare yourself and write a quality Valid Business Reason (VBR) for the prospect to respond to you. Pay special attention to the first two sentences using a quality VBR using insights on their business that show Empathy, Expertise, and Problem Solving Skills. You must accomplish that in the first two sentences or your chances of getting the prospect to complete the reading of your entire message go down quickly. 

3. Use bullet points to show evidence and reference for the claims you made in your VBR. A long, verbose email scares the prospects. They will quit before they start.

4. Use links instead of attachments for reference. Many people will not ever open an attachment from someone they do not know. Use a link to send them to learn more about you. Make certain that you re-name the link “click here” and use it in a sentence. (See YouTube for help re-naming links.)

5. Have a clear Call to Action that is easy to respond to. That may include giving them two appointment options to pick from to book an appointment with you. Maybe you have a link, and they can book the appointment themselves. At the very least, ask them to convert and make it easy.

6. Create a prospecting plan that integrates your email attempts with your other prospecting efforts. We recommend seven attempts in ten business days using a combination of phone calls, social media, written notes, walk-in cold calls, etc. to highlight your emails. Schedule your attempts, so they feed off of each other, providing a cadence or rhythm that is beneficial to gaining their attention. Send an email and then make a phone call a day or two later. Send another email and then write a personal note that highlights your email attempt again. Build off of that strong VBR you wrote, and now you are building a strong presence of mind with your prospect. 

Your goal is to get your prospect to see that you are well-intentioned and committed.  If they passed by your email attempts the first or second time, your other attempts will help them enter your name in their email search engine.    

Track The ROI of Your Prospect Email

Email has proven to be one of the best digital marketing channels, particularly for driving engagement and yielding high sales conversion rates. However, if the only way you’re measuring success is with conversion rates, you’re not getting the entire picture.

Most sellers don’t track their email attempts. They press “send” and hope for the best. Your sales process is strengthened when you know who is opening your messages, who is actually spending time on them and reading the content. It makes an even bigger difference to know that it’s being read multiple times or forwarded to others. Email tracking will help you see opportunities and it will help you with your timing. 

If you do not have a CRM with an email tracking component, then you need to spend five minutes on a search engine evaluating personal options. There are several products out there with a free trial period.  After that, the services begin at about ten dollars per month. We strongly recommend an email tracking partner because it will give you a much better sense of control in the prospecting process. 

To be successful with cold email prospecting, you need to understand how to successfully track and measure performance metrics. Once you know how to calculate ROI, you can start creating engaging cold email content that drives results.