Why 100’s of Your Emails Go Unanswered

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Let’s just face facts here. The average attention span these days is about eight seconds before someone moves on to the next “thing”. 

The same applies to the 100’s of sales emails your customer needs to swim through every day to get to the emails which are important to them. You want your email to be one of importance.

So why do yours go unanswered?

Your Subject Line Sucks!

Sorry, not sorry. I’d be willing to bet you don’t pay too much attention to the subject line of your emails, and that’s understandable. Who cares about the subject line, right?

Well, you care about them now. 

Since the subject line is the part the customer is guaranteed to see, regardless of their inbox settings, it’s almost the most critical part of the email if you want it to at least get opened. 

Generally speaking, I like to use subject lines in the form of a question. 

People feel compelled to answer a question posed to them, and a customer will be more likely to at least open your email if the subject asks them a question. 

The question can be related to your “action item”, asking for time, asking their opinion, or anything you would like to ask a prospect! 

It’s best to ask open ended questions, but in a subject line that is rather difficult without sounding too awkward. The best open ended question I would use as a subject line would be, “What Do You Think About This?”. 

That example subject line is actually good for a couple other reasons: 

• It asks the customer for their opinion

• It’s an intriguing question 

Your Wrote Them a Novel

Most salespeople, and rightfully so, tend to be a little overzealous when writing emails to a customer or prospect. They are enthused about the product, and want to genuinely connect with the customer. Those are absolutely fantastic traits to have!

The issue is enthusiastic people tend to be very wordy with their emails, or writing in general. 

Trust me on this one, I am admittedly guilty of this - in a big way! 

I tend to be extremely enthusiastic when writing, and I like to be as thorough as possible. Unfortunately, that translates into several lengthy paragraphs crafted with complex sentence structures that seem to just run on forever without actually saying anything of great importance or relevance to the overall theme of the writing. 

See what I did there? Not too complex, of course, but I could have said that in a handful of words instead. 

That is something I am currently practicing with my articles, and something that I have mastered when it comes to writing emails and it absolutely makes a difference in response rate. 

My rule of thumb is to keep each paragraph to no more than three sentences, or line spaces, whichever happens first. 

Each paragraph should be separated by a single line space, and you want to keep the number of paragraphs to three, and never more than four. 

A “paragraph” can actually be just a single sentence. 

The entire point of this is to make your email as easy to read as possible. Rather than seeing a giant wall of text they have to read through, you want the customer to feel as though they can skim your email quickly. 

People would rather skim anyway, so why not just make it that much easier for a customer to do so?

The Customer Has No Idea What You Actually Want!

When people skim through a document or an email, they typically miss a few important pieces you intended them to read. 

That’s just the reality of it these days. 

To continue with the theme of making your email as easy as possible to read, you need to start using one of the most attention grabbing tools. 

The yellow highlighter!

You can use the highlighter tool to draw the reader’s attention to the “action item” of your email. What I mean by “action item” is the action you want the customer to take after reading, or skimming, the email. 

As an example, if you want to schedule an appointment with the person, your action item would be to schedule a meeting. If you’d like the person to review an attached document, that would be your action item. 

The action item is generally going to be the last sentence of your email. 

However, if you’re simply looking for a response, then your action item could simply be the question you asked in the subject line. For example, if you’re simply waiting on a signed document from a customer to move forward with a project, just highlight your question! 

It could be something as simple as, “when do you expect to sign and return the document?”

In fact, if your action item is truly that simple, they may not even read through the entire body of the email. The question you used in the subject could help you get a response on its own. Either way, you should use the highlighter tool. 

CONCLUSION 

If you want your email to stand out from the overflowing inbox of your customer, then you need to grab their attention early, make the email extremely easy to skim, and quickly draw their attention to the action item. 

Remember that the average attention span of an adult is only eight seconds. By incorporating these tips in your email crafting, they should be able to read and respond to your email in under 8 seconds. That significantly increases the chances your email will get a response! 

No, they won’t always be interested in your product. No, you won’t always land the meeting. But, in my unpopular opinion, I’d rather get a response that says, “no not interested” than to be ignored entirely! 

Try these tips today to see results instantly. Okay, maybe not instantly, it could take a few hours, but you get the point. 

And, if you try them and you still don’t see a difference, then send me a message and I’ll create a customized list of tips for FREE!

Just send me a message on LinkedIn!