It is business as usual. You need to follow up on leads and prospects generated through marketing communications, inbound and outbound marketing activities, networking, sales inquiries, sales calls and referrals. Unfortunately, you’ve received zero to few responses. 

Having been caught in the same situation, I spent and tested on some of the better ways to improve the habits of prospecting emails for better responses. Here are a few tips to share with you.

9 Tips to increase responses from prospecting email

1. Create subject lines with clarity and purpose. Make sure your subject line make sense to the prospects’ business issues. Some marketers suggested that a shorter subject lines of 30-50 character have higher click-to-open rate
2. Start opening statements that focus on customers. Begin opening statements with leads/prospects’  interests such as industry events, useful findings, awards or recognition relate to their businesses. For examples “YOUR competitors are leveraging on SEO to achieve and maintain first page rankings”
3. Research the prospects to say the right things in the email copy. Deliver your copy (body) that convinces you know their industry, business issues and challenges to entice them to continue reading.
4. Less is more for a start of conversation.  Write simple and short messages for the first and second emails. Deliver multiple e-mail messages, each with a separate message.
5. Personalized emails for relevancy.  Ensure the subsequent emails, either short or long, deliver relevant content that engage and address to the customers’ challenges. Finding has indicated that personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%. (Source: Aberdeen Group), and relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. (Source: Juniper Research)
6. Segmentation and targeting. Look at the targeted lists of prospects, segment them according to their interested topics. Develop an  ideal customer profile for each segment, and send different emails to each segment. Finding from Monetate’s Intelligent Email Marketing that Drives Conversions (2012) has indicated that “Segmented email campaigns produce 30% more opens than undifferentiated messages”.
7. Reaching with multiple contacts. Follow up with prospects promptly. Make each multiple contacts current and relevant to maximize the likelihood of getting responses. Finding has indicated that 80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th touches. (Source: Sellingly)
8. Initiate Call to Actions that you are committed to. Be proactive to indicate the action you plan to take, in addition to actions to be taken by the prospects.
9. Create options and offer value.  Satisfy the most resistant buyers through effective tactics. For example “offering value such as service options in exchange for specific action.” Market at least 8 times of contact by emails to engage the prospect before giving up.

Email is one of the most effective ways of following-up and nurturing leads or prospects. If done correctly, it is a great start to your sales conversation, a presentation opportunity, or bring you a step closer to your leads/prospects.