The Ultimate Email Guide For Brands And Prospects In 2020
“87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels.”
Email despite being a part of the traditional methods of engaging with prospects, its popularity is still intact and is bound to grow with the years to come.
“There are 3.9 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.3 billion by 2023.”
Email marketing is one form of marketing measure where brands including yours are expecting a good rate of returns and email has proved to do this.
However despite emails being such a powerful mechanism for a brand like yours and for multiple other brands, still the expected results are not matching the set goals mark.
The reason could be numerous such as failed campaigns, not creating useful content and more, now multiple of you would say we have done our research and on the basis of that we have curated our email strategies, but are you aware that with the change in time, your strategies, plans and more need to be updated as well?
For this reason, we have created the ultimate email guide for brands and prospects, that will help brands like yours grow better by applying and conducting the right email activities that can give you the expected results.
Also, we do have a bonus information to share, which you will find as you continue to read this article, this is a hack that you can use with reference to email actions.
This article has in store some valuable information that can change the way you do emails from a brand perspective and also from a prospect perspective as well:
Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
- What do you mean by ‘Cold Emails’?
- Perks of having email presence in lead generation actions
- Top email strategies that will help you sell better, even in 2021
- 6 top email factors that require your complete focus
- Why email tracking needs to end?
What Do You Mean By ‘Cold Emails’?
Cold emails are the emails you send to your prospects for a purpose. The purpose could be anything from educating them about your brand and the product they sell, informing them how your product can cater to their needs or solve an issue they have and more.
Cold emails are effective because even today multiple brands use this method, ‘’Eight out of 10 prospects want to talk to sales reps via email over any other medium.’’
Cold emails were considered to be looked down upon because first it was a traditional method and secondly the rise in social media was thought to overshadow other communication methods being used to engage with prospects.
This isn’t in the case with cold emails.
Cold emails are used even today for multiple reasons. They haven’t lost their touch because there are reasons why their existence matters even in 2020 and the years to come.
And to prove the reason why they will still continue to exist, our next category explains all the reasons for you.
Perks Of Having Email Presence In Lead Generations Actions
1. Let’s you reach prospects in the platform they use the most
Emails are used at all times. In the business front, emails are used as a great way to schedule meetings, introduce yourself, and multiple other reasons. Emails are a great medium when it comes to communicating professionally. Today emails are checked more because as the reasons stated, brand owners or managers will expect some emails which can interest them.
For example, emails could be for partnerships, to engage and sell together, and more.
2. Reaches a wider audience with one click
If you’re conducting cold calls, you are reaching out to just a minimum number of prospects a day but with cold emails, this isn’t the case. You will have a list of your potential prospects who are the right fit for your business, hence with just one click, you can send all of them your cold email instantly.
It is easy, covers a wider audience, and helps you cater to the right audience on time.
3. Simple communication platform
Cold emails are not sent in huge stories. They are simple and to the point. When the prospect receives the cold email and views it, they understand what the agenda of the email is which helps them conduct their actions. You don’t have to write long statements or crowd your space with multiple information, with cold emails, the communication is relevant and to the point.
4. Creates curiosity that makes prospects revert
As stated earlier, when you send cold emails the content is always simple and to the point, this is a great sales strategy as it creates a curiosity in the minds of your prospects. They will be compelled to know more and that’s how their engagement and yours start to happen back to back.
Cold emails do a great job of capturing the prospect’s attention and making them revert to your brand to learn more.
5. Functions better lead generation practices
When it comes to lead generation, cold emails can be your go-to tool. As stated in the previous point, cold emails work like a charm when it comes to capturing the prospect’s attention and drawing them towards your brand to learn more.
For example:
When you send such cold emails that compel prospects to learn more about what you have to offer, lead generation starts to take an immediate turn towards your route.
As you can see the impact of emails is high and will continue to grow in the same manner. As stated earlier, with the change in market trends, it’s time that you too start applying the strategies that will help you achieve successful email activities that can benefit your brand.
Luckily for you, we have covered the top ones for you.
Top Email Strategies That Will Help You Sell Better Even In 2021
1. Focus on creating your cold emails with a conversational tone
Your cold email needs to sound comfortable and not like a sales pitch. The whole point of sending an email is you are trying to get your prospects to invest in your product, making them understand that your product has what it takes to solve their issues or needs. This can only happen when you try to make your prospects feel the same.
The best way to do this is to speak in a conversational tone. Your conversational tone doesn’t have to be so friendly, it can hold the professional touch as well. Ensure that your prospect reads your cold emails, they should be able to understand the agenda of the cold email.
2. Be straight to the point
As you can see in the image above, you understand that this is a guest post request email and the sender wants to guest post for the brand that the receiver is also writing for. It’s this simple.
Your cold emails are not supposed to have long paragraphs speaking about your brand, your product, your team, and more. Remember the purpose of your cold emails which in this case is capturing leads. Write your cold email in such a manner where you are able to explain why you are contacting them, what benefit they are receiving, and how they should learn more about what you’re offering them.
Keep the language simple with easy to understand statements.
3. Showcase authority
When you’re sending your cold emails, always ensure that your name is on the email address, your photo is shown and conduct more other actions where the prospect is able to understand more about you. This creates a sense of authority and keeps the process more professional.
The example above where the name of the sender is shown, position, and the photo is displayed which adds the personal touch.
4. End your cold emails with a question
Do you know a great trick to get your prospects to revert to your emails? Add a question.
For Example:
If you have sent an email where you’re discussing the issues the prospect faces, you could end the email with, ‘would you like to see a demo of how our product can help solve your issue?’
You can use such statements which will compel your prospects to revert. Doing this will give you the opportunity to engage with them once again and convert their interest more towards your product.
5. Conduct regular follow-ups
Follow-ups are nothing but sending emails to your prospects to seek their action on the emails they have received from you. It is just a reminder to your prospect to make them conduct an action.
For example:
If you have sent an email to your prospect asking them to join a demo session to understand your product and they have not reverted to you, you can send another email.
That email will be a follow-up reminder to conduct the action. There are multiple reasons why a prospect wouldn’t return your emails, it could be because they are busy or they forgot and more.
Follow-ups are a great way to remind them about your email and your brand. But do remember don’t send much follow up emails, it will annoy them, instead just send a maximum of 2 or 3.
You are coming one step closer to learn more about our bonus information but before you head to it, there is a quick cheat sheet we created so that you are aware of the top factors that you need to check up on regularly in order to send the ideal cold email that will earn you positive reverts.
We have covered the top ones for you below:
6 Top Email Factors That Require Your Complete Focus
1. ‘From’ section
Your ‘from’ section is what your prospects will see the minute they receive your email. It will determine whether the email should be opened in the first place or not. If your ‘from’ section is blank or has a strange email address such as @xyz or related things, chances are you can be considered as spam.
As you can see from the image, the from section is clear of who is the sender.
The best way to increase your chances of getting that email to open is by making use of the ‘from’ line in your email. Put your full name, your brand, and if possible your position as well. This will help your prospect to open that email to find out what you have to say. For instance, if you received an email from the VP of Sales, you are bound to open it.
2. Subject line
That’s a subject line anyone would like to click, it is to the point and creates curiosity for the receiver to learn more about it.
Your subject line matters and if you think that you can put anything and that will make your prospects open to cold emails, you need to rethink.
The reason being, multiple brands feel that if they put their subject line, for instance, saying that ‘ get your social media aligned in two steps’ and when the prospect opens that email to find that the email was actually about understanding how they can resolve their solution, not many prospects would like to continue further because they were misled.
Your subject line should give the prospect the understanding of what they should expect about the email they just received, it could be a benefit they are looking for or more. Always remember to keep your subject lines relevant to the email content. Also, ensure that your subject lines have no capital letters as it will look like spam.
3. Introduction
So now your prospect has opened the cold email you sent, now what? You have just a few seconds to make a good impression and you can do that when you come to the point and tell the prospect the value or benefit they will receive from you. If your introduction doesn’t state what the prospect will receive in return, they will not continue to read your email and go on to ignore it as well.
The image above explains it better.
This isn’t great which is why you need to focus on your introduction well. All you need to do is ensure that your introduction is simple to understand, is relevant to what’s being read, is adding value to what your prospects are reading, and is giving your prospect’s the impression that you want to genuinely help them solve their issues and find their needs.
4. Value proposition
As stated earlier, your cold email needs to add value. Adding value can only happen when you highlight more about how you can help your prospect rather than just speaking and praising about your brand. The below chart can help you to understand better.
For your prospect’s what matters the most is how you can help them, how your product can add value in their life, and when you succeed in showing this, the effort of your lead generation activities becomes easier.
5. Call to action
Your call to action can go from anything such as subscribing to your blogs, replying to your emails, and more.
When this happens it is a clear sign that your prospects want to learn from you, they are giving you the opportunity to help them and this can help you manage them better. You can place your CTA’s in the email, for instance, if you’re saying that you can help them solve their issue, you can ask them to see a demo.
6. Signature
The below image is an example of an email signature.
This is at the end of the email where you give your prospects the opportunity to know you better by adding a link to your profile on LinkedIn, sharing your address, contact details, position, and more so that your prospects can understand you better. The more your prospects learn about you it becomes better for them to understand how you can help them and why they reached out to you in the first place.
Now that you are aware of how cold emails need to be conducted, the next step now is to learn about the bonus information that can help you.
Why Email Tracking Needs To End Here?
There are moments where we feel that our emails are not safe, this happens because we feel that as we open an email, the amount of times we have conducted an action with an email is recorded. This goes on to the sender of the email.
While this is a great way to capture the email activities, this isn’t appropriate and comes under an uncomfortable category.
The whole agenda of sending an email to cater to prospects is to tap the leads that are genuinely interested in you but what happens when you start to receive emails from brands or prospects on a regular basis and observe how often you’re tracked?
No one likes to be tracked, and the only way to avoid email tracking is by taking the necessary precautions such as
- Avoid any images being displayed by default
- Download extensions and other solutions that can help you understand if you’re being tracked
- Lastly, make use of a VPN service
Let’s elaborate the last pointer in depth as it is a great solution to use for online security.
VPN stands for virtual private network. It conducts a secure process of ensuring that your IP address is being hidden when you conduct any online actions.
As a business, the need to spend multiple amounts of money isn’t as possible as you expect it to be, does that mean your business should remain behind?
Never.
This is exactly why a VPN service can help you. With a VPN service you can do so much for your business and your employees.
Let’s understand this with an example:
You can serve your prospects better by finding out better information about them. This means surfing from websites and other sources that are restricted and without being caught, thanks to the support of the VPN service you choose.
What a VPN would do is it would let you access any information you want by hiding your IP address and giving you another IP address that will suit the requirements of accessing that information. For instance, maybe the information you want is only allowing those users who are residing in London.
So what the VPN would do is it would give you an IP address which will tell your location as London. That is exactly how you will continue to operate with this service. It will continue to hide your real identity and keep you safe from any online activity you wish to conduct.
Another reason why VPNs are better for your business is because it helps to encrypt your traffic which means no one can see what your actions are. They will only be able to see that you are VPN connected but nothing more. VPNs are very reliable and in a business where you have to conduct multiple confidential information handling, this solution is the perfect one for you.
It is ideal to choose the right VPN service and for that the below pointers are mandatory for you to consider:
1. Invest in a paid VPN
Everybody likes a free service but with a free service comes security checks which are not available. Hence it is important that you invest in a VPN service that is paid and offers a good number of services for you with the pricing stated.
2. Good security
The security matters in any VPN service so you need to ensure that you are investing in a VPN service that offers great security measures. You could opt for 256-bit encryption as that is standard in the VPN industry. Remember security matters and that is exactly what you need to prioritize.
3. Faster speed
You are going to use your VPN service for multiple activities as stated above such as research and more and if your VPN slows down, it will only affect your work. Ensure that the VPN service you invest in is good for any activities you conduct.
4. A good support team
There will be instances where you might experience a problem with your VPN. Immediate assistance can help you get back to work quicker instead of having delays. Invest in a VPN service provider that is going to assist you as and when you need them.
5. No logging policy
VPN service providers do store your internet activity and can do a lot with it. To eliminate this from happening ensure you understand what information is being stored and if you’re not comfortable ask for a no-logging policy. This will keep your internet activities safe from every point.
The Bottom Line…
As promised we have shared with you the information that can help you conduct email actions better as well as prevent you from feeling uncomfortable with suspicious emails.
The online world is growing and with that is also the growth of online risks, thankfully with reliable solutions from a great VPN service, such issues are eliminated and refrained for a longer time.
So tell us, what did you think of this article? What caught your attention the most? Did you find the bonus information useful? We would love to hear your opinion on the same.
Also, to read more such helpful content as this, do stay tuned for LimeVPN more often.
