7 Tips to Ensure Your Prospects Are Opening Your Emails

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Email is by far the most efficient way to reach your prospects directly. However, more often than not, your prospecting emails will go unread, buried at the bottom of cluttered inboxes. Learning how to ensure that your emails are being opened is one of the first steps to improving your sales success.

Continue reading for 7 tips to make sure prospects are opening your sales emails.

1. Research Prospects

You will have the highest chance of success if you have a reason for reaching out to a specific prospect. Do they fit the profile of your ideal customer? Can your solution help this person?

These questions are all essential to ask yourself before you hit send. There is no reason to waste your time contacting people who are unlikely to want what you are selling. Narrowing your list of prospects will be especially helpful for execution of the next tip: personalizing your emails.

2. Personalize It

Prospects are much more likely to open an email if it is personalized in some way. This could be as simple as using their name, including some industry data, or offering specific services that are relevant to them. 

Sending prospecting emails from an email address that includes your first and last name will also make the emails feel more personal. 

3. Craft an Enticing Subject Line

The subject line is the first—and potentially only—part of your email a prospect will read. Successful subject lines must have at least one or two of these components: personalization, curiosity, urgency, humor, command, or solutions. 

If a subject line can hint at the value you can add or ask a question that only you can answer, your email will become more enticing. Wendy Connick wrote this helpful guide to crafting a compelling subject line.

4. Highlight What You Can Do for the Prospect

Prospects will want to know what you can do for them. To make sure you get this point across, include it in the first few lines of your email, or ensure that it sticks out some other way. 

Focus on the specific benefits you and/or your product will add to their lives rather than highlighting the product itself. Leading with your unique selling proposition will make your email stand out from the rest.

5. Include a Call-to-Action

Having a goal is key to the perfect prospecting email. Before hitting send, make sure you know what you hope to get out of the email. This could be scheduling a meeting, downloading a resource, signing up for a demo, etc. 

Whatever it is, make sure that the prospect knows exactly what you are asking them to do. You will be much more likely to receive a response if your call-to-action is something that can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. 

6. Keep it Short and Sweet

This step is simple: after drafting your email, edit it to be as concise as possible. No one wants to read a paragraph when a sentence will do the job. 

Lavender, an AI writing assistant, will not only calculate your email’s read time but also give you suggested improvements and insights into your prospects. 

7. Perfect Your Email Signature

Your email signature can be the place for prospects to access your call-to-action, such as a link to booking a meeting. Make sure it also includes essential information about you. Giving prospects more information about yourself will make you more professional and trustworthy.

If there’s one tip you should take away from this post, it’s that putting yourself in the shoes of your prospects is the key to boosting sales. Ted Rubin and John Andrews, guests on NASP’s podcast Leads to Growth, discuss this crucial piece of advice: subscribe to your own email lists to see how it feels. 

Email prospecting is an incredible strategy for growing your business, but only if you approach it with these essential steps in mind.