In 4 simple steps, you can create a flawless email cadence that generates responses.
Think of prospecting like speed dating. You have 5 minutes to introduce yourself and have to make yourself memorable. Because at the end of those 2-3 minutes comes another person looking to make themselves memorable as well. It’s the same way with the first email in the prospecting cycle, except you don't have 5 minutes, you have 5 seconds. As outbound sales development becomes more pervasive, the difficulty to crack into cold accounts ever increases. Thus, the ability to articulate a business case for your solution and inspire action out of your audience using just a few words is a must. Here is how we break down our first email.
When you are making introductions, keep it short and sweet. You don’t want to tell your whole life story, just talk about who you are and where you are reaching out from. It always helps if you put personality in your introductions.
This part of the email is the body paragraph. In a few short sentences, we describe what our services are and who we’ve helped with our capabilities. It’s important to use buzz words to show that you can speak their language.
The last sentence of your email should include a call to action. We like to ask our clients if they are interested in connecting to learn more about our services. It’s important to always end your email with a call to action. You want to leave it in the hands of the prospects. It’s on them to respond to your question. Because like any great seller, you will be following up to ask again.
Following up is important if you want to move leads across the funnel. Following up should consist of a quick touch base, generally in the form of a “bump” email. We recommend making this one a threaded email, where you are responding directly to the first email you sent, bumping it to the top of their inbox. This can serve as a simple reminder to your prospect that you are still around and interested in connecting.
The third email is all about re-introduction. Always remember that your prospect is receiving a ton of emails (just like you) and are cleaning through their inbox. Your third email should be a way that you (re)introduce yourself. Remind your prospect why you are here. If you are looking to add more value to the email try adding:
Since the first two emails didn’t give you the engagement you needed, it’s important to try and reel them with content that can be valuable to them and their team. Don’t forget to place your call to action and ask them if they’d be interested in connecting on a call, or watching a demo of your service.
The fourth email should serve as your “break-up” email. You’ve reached out to your target on three different occasions, and you don’t want to seem overzealous and pushy. If you stop reaching out after the fourth email, you can always reach out to them a month later and refer back to the last few emails you sent them previously. Before diving into your value proposition, let them know how you’ve been taking the time to reach out to them. More importantly, you want your prospect to know that you were reaching out because you have something that is valuable to their business. If you have any case studies you haven’t used, now is the time to highlight those. End the email with a call to action that makes it clear this will be the last time you will be reaching out to them (for now).
Creating a successful email cadence takes trial and error. You’re not going to get it right every time. In fact, despite how successful a cadence maybe, you are always going to have to change things up and find new ways of reaching your prospects, which is how we were able to schedule 400 meetings in 30 business days for our clients. Test new cadences, identify what works best, and build upon those insights to scale your sales pipeline.
