3 Questions Every Sales Professional Should Ask the Email Marketing Manager
How many conversations do you have with prospects in a given day? And how many emails do you send to prospects in that same day? Is it safe to say you send more emails? Probably.
What’s the point? We’ll here it is …
You spend most of your waking hours perfecting and tweaking your sales pitch. What about your emails? How much time do you spend to polish them? Let’s be honest — not enough.
By upping your email game, you’ll find a simple way to boost your sales instead of wasting time lying on the flat of your back and looking up toward the ceiling at night pondering how to tweak your pitch to hit your number.
It’s time to have a cross-legged, powwow sit-down with your email marketing manager and get a few pointers (and if needed to reduce cross-divisional stress, get a couple puffs on that proverbial peace pipe as well).
Here are three questions to pose that will put you on your way to getting rock-star email results.
What is the best time to send out emails?
If you were told you could double the response rate to your emails by changing the time of the email would you do it? DUH. Well, the good news is that’s in the realm of possibility.
At XANT, we typically see over double click rates by sending between 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. compared with just a few hours later. HubSpot found the same trends.
What subject lines perform best?
I’ve seen several sources say that longer titles perform better. A subject line study done by Adestra last year shows that the optimal length for an email subject line is roughly 120 characters and 21 words long. Whoa, that is long! Take caution though. We tested longer subject lines various times and they were epic fiascoes.
Our data shows that shorter performs better. But maybe that’s because we target prospects who primarily work in sales management and are presumably busy. And this is why you’re asking your email marketing manager, right? What works for us or somebody else won’t necessarily work for you.
How do you draft killer message content?
By killer message content, I’m referring to content that your prospects will actually respond to. (Dangling preposition? Who cares?!) Make this your bible of content drafting.
- Make it short(er)
Mark Twain said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” While people might enjoy Mark Twain’s ramblings, you’re not Mark Twain. Write an email, not a novel. Take the time to make your messaging clear and concise. Enough said.
- Personalize it
Here’s a tip to try. Make reference to something unique you remember about your previous conversation. We do it here at XANT and it works wonders.
If your message looks like it could be an automatic message, it might as well be an automated message. While typical merge fields are better than nothing, make it a point to make your messages personalized.
- Make the call to action clear
Your email should have a purpose. What is it that you want your prospect to do? As a pointer, I would recommend putting the call to action at the end of the email message so it’s the last thing the prospect reads.
Make the CTA the clearest section of the email. You should be able to clearly see what the call to action is even when skimming the email. One easy trick for this is to put it on a line by itself.
Now you have a good starting point on what questions to ask. Put it on the calendar to meet up with your company’s email guru. Get the answers, put them in practice, and have email do some of the heavy lifting in reaching your sales number.
Free eBook: 42 LinkedIn Tips for Inside Sales
Gain access to 42 tips from industry experts Ken Krogue and Jamie Shanks on how to grow your business through LinkedIn.
Photo Credit: David Lipscomb