You have clicked „send email“. It feels like you finally have put the weight down? Hmm… no! It has just begun. Really. You have just made the first step on your email sales journey, because 80% of sales require five follow-ups prior to hearing „yes“ from your customer.
Whether it’s drip email marketing or just sending email, many times you will face the situation where your recipients are opening emails but are not responding. So what should you do in this situation? How do you earn their trust?
This is a short 3-step strategy leading you through an effective way to conduct after sending the initial sales email in order to engage with your prospects. These steps include:
1. Measure Engagement
Engagement is an essential measure of interest. If your prospect is engaging with your sales emails more than once, opening them many times or using the links and attachments you have sent them, you can use this as a measure of interest. The more engaged your prospect is with your content, the higher the probability that you deepen that engagement.
You need to track and measure email engagement, personalize the email templates and reports, learn how prospects engage with your content through document sending and tracking, and follow up with selected prospects that you can identify as highly targeted.
After you have determined which prospects are engaging with your emails, you can move to the next step – Follow up. This is the stage when you can „warm up“ the conversation.
Here’s an example of a conversation that is unfolding as hoped, leading to a crucial connection to a more detailed offer for your prospect, following the simple rule „call fast and open with context“.
[Salesperson]: “Hey Josh, this is Tim over at X Company … am I catching you at an alright time?”
[Prospect]: “Wow, Tim, I was actually just reviewing the email you sent over earlier. Great timing.”
[Salesperson]: “Excellent, I will be brief. I noticed you were checking out some of the information around the link I sent on improving your sales team performance. Wanted to circle back and see if there was anything you had questions on, or if there was further information I could point you towards that would be helpful …”
2. Track Trigger Events, Follow Up Fast, and Open with Context
To increase the probability of responsiveness from your prospects, use the right approach. Create relevant and personalized sales emails. You can do this by using trigger events, such as vacations, birthdays, product launches, or even getting a pet. Deciding which trigger events to use should be a choice you make based on your own in-depth research on the specific prospect.
Among the tools you can use are „Google Alerts“ and LinkedIn „Mentioned in the News“. Google Alerts will notify you whenever a specific prospect, company, product, or industry buzzword is mentioned on the web, while LinkedIn’s „Mentioned in the News“ feature or finding a group relevant to your prospect or their company or industry should provide you with relevant resources, material, or information to follow up with.
3. Add Value at Regular Intervals Until the Prospect Is Ready to Talk Business.
Many times you will catch a prospect at a bad time. Don’t let it discourage you or take it as the end of the road. People are often in situations where they simply have other priorities, plans, or distractions. It doesn’t mean “game over” for you. It means that you need to prove your value to your prospect and think of ways to do that. See it as an opportunity to demonstrate added value. Here are some suggestions for how you can prove your value to prospects:
Share helpful articles, advice, books, and content that are useful to them in solving their issues.
Mention them in an article, blog, or offer to promote them.
Introduce them to someone they might find valuable. This might be a thought leader in their industry or a potential candidate for their team if they are searching for human resources.
Give them insights on their product, service, and content. This might be useful information that you can provide them.
Give them support by sharing your prospects’ company, products, or content on your social media accounts or other mediums.
