5 Steps to Increase Email Response Rates

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If you are not getting responses from prospects, you aren’t alone. Thousands of salespeople struggle with getting a prospect’s attention. Some prospects are overworked and simply don’t have time to check their inbox, but most of them pretty much have a part-time gig deleting sales emails.

By implementing these five tips while crafting your next prospecting email, your chances of getting a response will increase significantly. Now, I cannot promise the response will lead to a giant sale that will allow you to crush your quota for the month, but I can promise that your quota will remain unfulfilled unless you get a response in the first place. 

1. Don’t Subject Them to Another “Magic” Subject Line 

From this point on, you need to start treating the subject line of an email like an author would treat the title of their new novel. Although we aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover, let’s face it, we all judge a book (even a little bit) by its title. 

Or, worse yet, I think we have ALL misjudged the main theme of a new article based on its misleading or glamorous headline. 

The point remains the same; the subject line of your email is going to be the first thing your prospect sees, and you need to make a stunning first impression. No, this is not where I tell you to use their name in the subject line, or come up with some sneaky pickup line to get them to open your email.

Remember, this is a professional email. This is NOT clickbait. 

Rather, you should try phrasing your subject line in the form of a question. That’s right, just ask them a quick and simple question. You see, people feel obligated to provide an answer once a question has been presented to them, generally speaking. Asking them a question will pique their interest and get them to open your email.  

To be more specific, your question should be tied to the main action item of the email. What do you want from this prospect? Are you looking to set up a time to get on the phone with them? Are you trying to schedule an appointment? 

No matter your objective, the subject line should be asking them a question as opposed to informing them of something. We have all seen the classic, “MAKE MORE MONEY WITH THESE EASY STEPS” or “WE WANT TO HELP YOU” subject lines. Technically these would be exclamatory statements, but I like to think of them as informative statements. The writer is trying to inform the prospect of some service or product. 

So let’s say you are trying to get the prospect to click on a link and check out your newest product release. Try this very simple, yet effective, subject line: 

“Have You Ever Seen Something Like This?” 

Notice what I did there. I asked the prospect a question, but I also treated the subject line just as an author would treat the title of their new novel. I capitalized the first letter of every appropriate word. This just makes the subject line look much more professional, and I promise you that this makes a huge difference in getting someone to open your email instead of trashing it. 

Also notice that I asked the prospect an intriguing question that would pique almost anyone’s interest. They may be thinking there is some new technology on the market they aren’t aware of, and they are supposed to be an expert on that specific technology, just as an example. 

The other clever thing I did in that subject line was to ask the prospect for their opinion. People love to voice their opinions and they feel extremely flattered when someone asks them about their opinions. Remember, everyone has an opinion, and they want you to know what it is! 

2. Keep it Short and Sweet 

Well that seems pretty obvious, right? It is, but it isn’t always intuitive in sales or for salespeople in general. When we give presentations, or pitch a product, we are trying to say as much as we can about the product in the hopes that something sticks, right? We want to make sure we don’t overlook a value proposition or a beneficial feature when we pitch the product or service, and there is nothing wrong with that. 

But your prospecting email is not a product pitch or a sales presentation. A true prospecting email is the equivalent of the first DM you send to someone you like on social media. In that case, you wouldn’t say hello and then immediately jump to what your likes and dislikes are, or what your career aspirations are. If you were to do that in your first message to a person you like, there’s a solid chance you’re getting ignored. Or, more than likely, blocked. 

Also, forget about the content for just a minute. Just imagine how YOU feel when you open an email from a wordy colleague and it looks like a novella is open on your monitor. If you’re like me, you get an immediate sense of dread when looking at a 17 paragraph email. Now imagine that the email is from someone you don’t even know! Worse yet, from someone who is looking for you to spend money on their product!

My general rule of thumb is to keep a prospecting email to no more than 4 paragraphs. But those paragraphs should also include no more than three sentences, or line spaces, whichever occurs first. As a side note, there should also be a double space between each of the short paragraphs. This is more for the aesthetics of the email. Similarly to keeping the email itself short, having spaces in between each paragraph makes the email appear less daunting to read. 

3. “It’s Not Me, It’s You” 

No, this is not about writing a break-up email, though that is actually going to be the topic of a separate post. 

If there is one thing that people love to talk about, it is themselves. I think it’s safe to say that this is almost exclusively true for salespeople (yes, this statement is assuming salespeople are extroverts, though there are studies that suggest introverts can be just as effective at sales). 

On the other hand, if there is one thing that people like to hear about, it is themselves. So, as salespeople we need to keep this in mind at all times. This may be the most critical tip on this list once you get the prospect to actually open your email. 

The whole point of this is to use words such as, “you”, “your”, “you’re” or “you folks” instead of words like, “I”, “we”, “our”, or “me”. People don’t want to hear about YOU and YOUR company. They don’t care about you or your company. They care about themselves, and the company for which they work. They care about their problems, and it is your job as the salesperson to get them to care about your solution to their problems. 

When crafting your prospecting email, you should be particularly aware of the words you are choosing. Whenever your fingers try typing out “I” or “my” you should be thinking how you can replace those words with “you” or “your”. Sometimes, this can mean you need to rephrase your sentence to allow these words to make sense in the context of your sentence. 

There are times when the words cannot be replaced, and instead they need to be removed completely. This will feel rather awkward the first time you try it, and that’s perfectly normal. Here is an example of when omitting the words can be used. 

Instead of, “I hope you had a great weekend”

You should try, “Hope you had a great weekend”

This probably seems extremely trivial, but this was a purposely trivial example. We all know the cliché, “the devil’s in the details”, and that is the perfect way to approach a prospecting email. By dropping the “I” in that first opening sentence, the prospect now becomes the first and only subject (quite literally) of your sentence, and that will subconsciously make the prospect feel good. It is such a tiny detail, but I assure you it makes all the difference in the world when they read the entire email. 

Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that it is impossible to exclude those words (“I”, “me” etc.) from every single sentence in every single email. 

My general rule of thumb for this is to be sure you use “you” words far more often than you use “I” words. I mean this literally. When you first start doing this, it is best to actually count how many times you use each word, and see which one is used most often. 

In fact, as a fun activity, why not go through a sales email YOU get and figure out which words were used more by the salesperson who sent the email?

4. Spelling and Grammar 

This is where the grammar police will go through and point out all of my mistakes (and they are more than welcome to do so. Please!), but this is one of the most important tips I could give to anyone for any form of communication. 

You will see some videos or blogs saying how it is perfectly fine to speak casually in an email, and to use some shorthand we have all learned from countless hours of texting our friends and family. It is my opinion that all of these people are absolutely incorrect. 

If you are a professional trying to do business with another professional who does not know you, you need to be… guess what? Professional! 

Luckily, a lot of email programs have built-in spelling and grammar checkers, and they are certainly useful. But, these tools are nowhere close to perfect. Sometimes they will pick up on grammatical errors that are not incorrect, and a lot of times it doesn’t catch some of the most common mistakes people make when typing. 

Let’s focus on the aforementioned common mistakes people make for a second. The most common mistake I see people making is using the wrong form of a word. The trickiest ones are, “your”, “you’re”, “to”, “too”, “two”, “there”, “they’re”, “their”, “it’s” and “its”. 

For those of you who are guilty of this, below is a very brief grammar lesson. 

“Your” - possessive form (your person)

“You’re” - contraction for “you are” (you’re a person)

“To” - action verb (I am going to the store)

“Too” - (I went to the store too) OR (That store has too many shelves!)

“Two” - a quantity (I went to two stores)

“There” - a location (I put the car over there)

“They’re” - contraction for “they are” (They’re driving the car over there)

“Their” - possessive form (That is their car over there)

“It’s” - contraction for “it is” (yes, it’s at the house)

“Its” - possessive form (the house is old, but it has its charm)

There are a million other examples of common grammatical mistakes that can make your email appear rushed or poorly written that are not covered in this article. Ultimately, this can make the reader question your intellectual abilities, and in a lot of cases this can decrease their level of trust in you, and therefore your product. Remember how we all have judged a book or two by its title? I promise you that people judge others based on their lack of grammar and spelling ability. Whether or not there is any validity to those judgements is for an entirely different discussion, but this is just the reality of the business world. 

Aside from spelling common words correctly, there is also something else to consider that is rather important, in my opinion. This is mostly true for B2B sales but you will notice that a lot of companies these days stylize and punctuate the name of their company uniquely. It is my opinion that if you mention the prospect’s company, or name of their product, you are sure to spell and PUNCTUATE them correctly. If you don’t it simply makes you look unprepared, and I have personally seen prospects completely dismiss a salesperson because they didn’t spell or say the name of the company correctly. Remember, details matter when it comes to this type of stuff. 

Since I am in the process automation industry, I will show you an example of when I have had to personally learn this lesson the hard way. Endress+Hauser is an extremely well-liked and popular brand in the US market. This is for good reason. They manufacture and support an extremely high-quality product and they sell them through a channel of highly-skilled representatives that can commission and support the instruments on site. Needless to say, they have a strong brand, and like any company that has built a strong brand, they are proud of it (and should be). 

The company name is spelled, “Endress+Hauser”. There are no spaces between characters, and they use the ‘plus’ sign in their name. A lot of times the name is shortened to simply, “E+H”. 

They are not called, “E&H” or “Endress and Hauser” or “EndressHauser”. If I were to write an email to someone who works for this company, or for their representative partners, I make absolutely certain that I spell and punctuate the name of the company correctly. This shows that I took the time to LOOK at the company’s name, and shows that I respect their brand enough to get it right! Again, this can seem like a very trivial concept, but the details matter! 

5. Just the Highlights 

Even when you keep an email short and sweet with perfect grammar while avoiding “I” words, some prospects are just simply too busy to read your email when they first see it. In fact, some people will archive emails they want to save for later so that they can read them when it is more convenient. 

You want your email to find its way into the archive folder and you can accomplish that with the first four tips we went over. But if we want to seal the deal, we have to really make sure we are clear with what we want the prospect to do (after they decide against trashing the email, of course). 

The best way is to use the highlighter tool. That’s right, use that bright yellow highlighter that sticks out on a computer monitor like a scuba diver in an above ground pool! 

The sentence you most likely want to highlight is the last one. Any well written email will have a call to action as the last line of the email, and customers are generally aware of that so let’s take advantage of it!

By highlighting the sentence you are basically telling the prospect where they should be reading if they don’t have the time to digest all of your words at once. This can actually make the prospect feel as though you are aware that they are busy, and you respect their time enough to not waste any of it. You cut right to the chase, and that is appreciated by almost everyone, not just prospects. 

The working theory here is that they can easily skim through your short and sweet email, and easily decide whether or not they want to take action on it, save it for later when they have more time to read it carefully, or trash it. Either way, you are saving them some time, and that is worth more to them than any value your product could bring. 

Not to mention, a lot of people have incredibly short attention spans these days. In fact, if the “10 min read” on this article didn’t scare you off, congratulations! Compared to the 8 second attention span of the average adult, you are laser-focused. 

But don’t worry, it will take your prospect less than 8 seconds to read your one highlighted sentence!

CONCLUSION 

Will these five tips alone make you instantly better at sales? Absolutely not. 

Will these five tips work every single time? No.

Will these five tips help you craft a well worded, easy to digest email that cuts right to the chase and increases your chances that the prospect will take the VERY first step in the transaction process and respond to you? You can count on it. If you don’t believe me, give it a shot and try to prove me wrong!  

When I first used this technique, it was just ONE tip. One day I made the subject line of an email a question and sent it to a prospect who hadn’t responded to my previous fifteen (or more?) attempts to get an appointment with them. 

They sent me a response within twenty minutes. Yes, I am completely serious. 

I tried it again with another prospect.

And again. 

And again. 

And it just kept on working. No, I was not getting a 100% response rate because I’m not perfect, and neither is anyone else, but my contact rate was going through the roof. 

In fact, my contact rate was so high that I wasn’t just getting responses from people telling me they would meet with me or wanted a product demo. I was getting responses from people telling me “no, I can’t meet with you” or “sorry, just not interested right now”. 

Some may take that as rejection and defeat, but I was ecstatic at these results. Before this, if someone didn’t want something from me, they would just ignore the email all together. Now that I started making the subject line a question to them, they felt compelled to respond. No, they didn’t always turn into huge sales, or even a visit, but I was actually getting people to take the time to read my email, and respond to it. They took their time, and responded to my email saying they were not interested, instead of just ignoring it like everyone else. 

After that, I just kept on improving on and thinking of ways to get people to at least respond to my emails and “justify my existence”, as I used to always joke with my boss. 

After a while, I started creating ways to turn more and more of those responses into long term customers, and that’s what I do best. I get people to engage with me, and I can teach you to do the same. 

These are only FIVE tips out of hundreds of ideas and concepts I use in sales to build trusting business to business relationships. 

Send me a message on LinkedIn if you think Sales Therapy could be of value to you!