Writing Followup Sales Emails: 7 Steps To Becoming A Champion

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If you had to pick one thing (I know that there are many, but just think of ONE) that greatly impacts the effectiveness of your outbound sales, what would it be?

To us it’s followups.

An outbound campaign without followups is doomed to fail. And you’re probably thinking – “Duh, I know that”. But if everyone knows it, then why 44% of sales reps give up after the first followup?

Writing followup sales emails is crucial to making your outbound sales effective.

This is why today’s blog post focuses on writing followup sales email – to celebrate their importance.

Writing a followup sales email: 7 steps to becoming a champion

Step 1: Make your subject line stand out

Your followup sales email won’t convert if it never gets opened. This is why subject lines are so important. Make it stand out but do not try to be overly clever…

64% of people say it is the subject line that makes them open the email. To make it slightly more complex, 42% of people say they look at the sender before opening the email.

followup sales email

Source: Marketingland 

Can you combine these 2 pieces of information to create a great subject line?

Yes, you can! And that’s what we did.  Check it out below.

followup sales email

It’s both personal and it includes the sender’s name. Genius!

This subject line gives us an average open rate of 80% so definitely try it out.

Step 2: Make your prospects feel special

Considering the volume of emails we receive every day plus the fact that you are emailing a person to sell them something, making it personal is the least you can do.

What does it mean to make a sales followup email personal? It means much more than including your prospect’s name, but it’s a good start. A personalized follow-up email is tailored to your prospect’s needs, it addresses their pain points.

I know that the specificity of outbound sales is mass emailing but how about personalized emails at scale?  Sounds intriguing?

That’s what Growbots does. Learn more about it here.

Realistically, sending large email volumes won’t allow you to make the content hyper-personalized but you can segment your prospects to better tailor your messaging.

Personalized emails result in 6 times higher conversion rates, however, surprisingly 70% of companies fail to do it, so don’t be one of them.

Step 3: Avoid any spelling mistakes or not necessarily…. 

I am grammar-obsessed, so I cannot believe I am actually saying this, but including a few typos in your followup sales email might work to your advantage. Typos will make your followup look more realistic, like if you have actually sent it yourself.

Plus, it also makes you look busy, and the fact that you’ve randomly thought about your prospect and sent them an email is just nice, more human.

sales email followups

Step 4: Pick the right timing 

“Get the timing right, timing is everything” – it’s so cliche, I know but…

It’s as much about content as it is about timing. Many great emails never get read because they get lost in a massive pile of emails, so you need to make sure you get the timing right.

Here are a few tips that might help you increase your chances of your email being opened.

However, before we proceed, I wanted to say that there isn’t a golden rule; one specific time or day which will guarantee you high open rates. If there was one, it would make people’s jobs sooooo much easier (mine included).

It would make our lives a little boring too.

The best way is to test it, and if you are up for testing then we have a perfect tool for it – it will tell you the best time to send your emails, based on your prospect’s job position, industry, year funded, etc. It’s free, find it here.

followup sales emails

OK, here are your promised tips:

Choose random hours – For example, 8:37 looks much more natural than 8:00. Remember that you want your email to look like they were sent to a friend.

Send it in the morning – You’ll end up on top of their inbox when they check their email after arriving at work.

Don’t it send during lunchtime – Lunchtime is not a good idea, but sending after 2 pm can get a decent open rate.

Don’t discount Sundays – It may seem counterintuitive but Sunday evenings work exceptionally well – the weekend is nearly over and most of us start to think about work and plan our next week by checking our inbox.

Step 5: Make sure to include a meeting scheduler in your sales followup 

After getting a yes from your prospect, you should definitely include a meeting scheduler in your next followup sales email. It’ll save you a lot of time; instead of endlessly exchanging emails to agree on a suitable meeting time.

We personally recommend using Calendly. Your prospect will get a list of all available time slots that will work best for them and for you. The tool will also remind your prospects of the upcoming meeting.

Just automating the reminder is enough to increase your meeting attendance rate by roughly 24%. In our case, the meeting attendance rate went from 50% to 74%.

Step 6: It’s a numbers game – send a lot of followup emails!

What’s the secret to a killer followup sales email? Persistence.

If your prospect doesn’t get back to you within the first day from sending your initial message, high chances are they won’t get back to you at all…

This is why you have to send follow-ups. And do not stop after the first one. Keep going!

We usually send between 5-7 follow-ups to each prospect, however, we are proud to say that 50% of our responses come from the first email we send.

Step 7: Automate your sales email follow-ups 

Using an automation tool to schedule your sales email followups is a necessity. Unless you send very few a day, which I hope you don’t. Outreach automation will not only save you tons of time and effort – as you don’t have to constantly remember to schedule them.

But it will also give you access to statistics, and without these, you cannot optimise your results.

A study done by the Aberdeen group has discovered that 9% more top performing companies used automated lead management technologies than companies that lagged behind the benchmark.

When you consider the number of prospects that your sales reps have to reach out to every day plus tracking all their responses, doing it without an automation tool is a recipe for disaster. High chances are you will miss out on some opportunities.

Have we forgotten about something? Let us know in the comments.

no prior experience & time required

Find your winning outbound formula with Concierge

no prior experience & time required

Find your winning outbound formula with Concierge

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