What You Can Sell through the Email
So what can you actually sell via email? - Everything! Old stuff, services, freelance work, your opinion, plazma, ideas, videogames consultation. That’s right - pretty much all that can be picked up, even a boring product. And why not to use the cheapest way to do that such as an email campaign?
Now let us focus on how to make sales via email!
Email Selling Features
What is crucial in how to sell via email is to know your audience while mastering an email. Use the language of your potential customer. Focus on benefits, not just features. Just put yourself in their shoes and make them at least open your email. This is where subject line is the king. It’s first what pops out on the screen leading to the decision to open your email. Keep it short and enticing.
If you ask people how they actually feel about the email campaigns, you’ll get responses like: “ugh”, “yikes”, “annoying” and so on. Well, you got the idea. And when you come to selling via email the biggest issue is your content.
Your potential customers are fed up with the marketing/selling campaigns and almost immediately say farewells to your email. The content itself must persuade them to buy but without an explicit drive forward message of buying. The thing is that everybody is making up super “efficient” techniques creating killing templates to sell products through email and voila! They do not sell. Just be yourself, type in a corny, not popular opinion, let the speech stream and do not start with “I was just wondering…” (my face goes down when I see that phrase).
To organize sales using email seem very impersonal at first sight, which it actually is. However, even simply adding your signature with social media links and maybe a picture of you, will remind the recipients that you are a human as well. There is also a good idea to use Gmail sales option as it allows you to adopt your domain name. Gmail for sales will also promote your brand with increasing its awareness.
Understand Your Client and the Buying Process
Each business is unique but all of them are targeted to sell their products eventually. One strategy, used in your former business campaign cannot and shouldn’t fit in similarly. Salespeople got to devise a clear step-by-step roadmap on how the buyers make up their mind to go with your goods.
The best way is to interview them in order to grasp the vital information from the first source. When you get on a call or send out an email, you clearly understand what has to happen next after each step has been taken.
It doesn’t mean you are going to follow the plan exactly as it is structured, since it may vary from case to case. While some businesses sell in 5 steps yours might do it in 2.
Design a Strategy and Develop Tactical Plays for Each Step in Your Sales ProcessOnce you find your clientele and understand how they think, the crucial point is to draw an explicit email sales strategy on how to operate and manage your sales process. The guidance for direct email sales process has to be clear to all the salespeople in your company.
- Design the main stages where the sale has to go through along with its particular moments taking place meanwhile;
- Make sure everybody understands the order of each stage and doesn’t go backwards or skips a few of them;
- Do not complicate things as you will not have time to clarify them to your workers every time a bizarre case comes into view.
Stages in the Sales Process
When it comes to actions you have to be precise on where to start and how to make sure the deal will be led to a closed won. As it was mentioned above, your business is unique and you are the one to make up the appropriate sales process stages. BrightGauge developers broke the sales process into 4 main stages, which are the following:
Connect
Before you can sell through direct email, there's a lot of preparations to do. The very first thing we do with a stranger after having met them is to get to know them better. To find out if we are the best fit for them and in no way to be afraid to send them to our competitor. Once we see that it is our perfect customer we can move forward in our relationship.
Qualify
The contact is made and you are ready to dig deeper into what their budget and deadlines look like. Start qualifying your prospect using the Budget/Authority/Need/Timeline tool.
Evaluation
At this stage you reach the mutual understanding with the prospect. You should be aware of the best solution you can put on their table, understanding their budget along with the details of the future purchase. Finalize the plan and get ready to close a deal.
Decision
This stage can be compared to standing at the altar when you are pretty sure the bride will say yes, but those words are still a few minutes away. Now the prospect is in charge and has final words. At this point there should be no surprises and you are one step away from a closed won (and your commission). Nevertheless, do not give your hopes up and get all frustrated when the bride runs away on you. C’est la vie. But let’s believe in a better outcome and happily ever after.
Manage, enforce and optimize your sales process
Sales training
This process includes not only the newbies of your company, but also the current salespeople. You need to keep in mind how important it is to revise and learn about new trends in the industry every now and then. Just make a habit gathering with your sales stuff every so often to go over their struggles with the workflow and make sure you resolve it asap. It will give you an insight on how things look like and where your representatives stand.
CRM training
Your sales process can and should be enhanced by means of a CRM. Forget about the spreadsheets and start using the best solution to track your customers. Sometimes salespeople are just simply unaware on how to operate it, so make sure they have an appropriate training.
Weekly meetings
Your main concern are people and their buying process. Every week brings a new case which can be unique in its nature. Let all your stuff know about it and discuss possible options to close the deal. Stay in touch with each other and keep track on what’s happening within your team.
Now you have to realize how essential it is to make up a strategy to optimize your sales process and make sure that your co-workers are familiar with how to manage emails from the customers since it is one of the important ways of communication. Be ready to constantly evaluate and eliminate issues along with keeping your working environment “well fed” and joyful.
Track Key Metrics Across the Sales Process Using Email
The key point in your business is by all means your revenue. Therefore you need to fully be aware of how to measure the company’s success by using different tools and metrics. This means you need to be selective in your endeavours and fully realize what stands out and matter the most in your workflow and what actually makes a sale. Thus, it would be easier to focus your attention on what can make it big, than thinning over the variables that bring you nothing or about 0.000001% of the revenue.
All the metrics for your business can vary. You can evaluate the open rate, response rate, click-through rate, but only through trying all the ways you can get the full picture of what drives your sales. No pain no gain! Devise a plan, set the deadlines and see what benefits your company the most.
The thing is that you can create multiple email samples designed in the best way possible, but the reality can strike you with like 10% open rate and you will go wonder on what went wrong. Maybe in your case you didn’t take into consideration the time frame you were sending out the email campaigns or simply the targeted audience wasn’t yours.
Remember, whenever you try new campaigns, just chunk your leads in a few bunches and then make an observational report on what worked within your campaigns. After having collected all the necessary data, start thinking about what moves, actions are the most crucial and brings you money.
Once they are selected, do not forget about the others, they will support the main ones meanwhile.
How to Write a Killing Subject for Your First Email
Now let's get to the meatiest part: how to sell through email. When it comes to writing your very first email, you face a big pain in… something… As an email recipient, you are usually busy scanning your inbox and choosing the prioritized mails to respond to. That is why it is necessary to put yourself in your targeted audience's shoes and create a subject for sales email you personally would like to at least open. Here are some pieces of advice you could pay your attention to:
1. Keep it short
You are not pasting the whole body for sales email in your subject. It takes time to read the whole thing and to be honest I am already bored. Entice me, lure me to open an email and find out what is so special inside.
2. Be specific
Cut it to the chase. No water in your sentence. There are 2 seconds to read the subject and decide whether to open it.
3. No CAPS
Stop YELLING at your customers. They will have no desire to anxiously open your email when the subject line is shouting out the words.
4. Personalize
It doesn’t mean you need to put the recipient’s name into the subject, because it will be perceived as spam and immediately removed. All you need to do is to make sure the deals you offer relate to the customers’ needs, e.g. the products they looked at but never bought, events happening in their area, something that is close to what they might be interested in.
How to Write a Sales Email Body People Want to Respond to
My congrats! The subject line worked and the recipient is about to read the message itself. Now it is a high time not to screw up.
- Be simple and clear with your intention. The email is a means to either inform the customer or encourage them to reply;
- Introduce yourself. People want to feel like they are e-communicating with a real human being, not a bot. Explain, why you are referring to them;
- Do not overcharge the message with different issues. If there are multiple ones- inform the addresses in advance, e.g. “Please find the following questions below”;
- No flooding. Keep it short. This is a mobile world and we get messages all the time to read on the go and we are not willing to stop and enjoy your essay (there is also a possibility to be hit by a bus);
- Close-up with a friendly signature: “Kind regards, Best regards, sincerely, cordially” etc. Do not forget to mention your name again, position, company website, social media links if relevant (LinkedIn for sure). Also, a quick tip - no corny quotes, it looks ridiculous.
Further suggestions:
- Respond to clients within a 24-hour time frame. If you are putting them on hold, make sure they are aware of it so there will be no surprises;
- If you cannot provide them with a solution at the moment, no panicking, just redirect them to another person responsible for this case and monitor the flow;
- We are no gods, therefore not omnipotent. Do not get your customers hopes up promising something you cannot do. Be frank and suggest another workaround;
- Be visual. People, mostly in their nature perceives the information while looking at it. Use screenshots making the website or CRM navigation easier;
- Send links to tutorials, resources that might be of help. Even if it is your competitor’s website, if that helps resolving the issue - use it by all means;
- Become their magic wand that cares about them 24/7.
This is the way on how to make a success with sales email!
