You’re Doing Email Outreach All Wrong. Here’s How to Fix It.

So, you’re trying to improve your email reply rates and overall email outreach effectiveness? I don’t blame you—most people suck at responding to emails.

But don’t worry, there are solutions!

Can you imagine getting this as an email in your inbox? It would catch my attention, and I know I would read it purely because of the catchy email opener.

Email is Not Dead; Your Communication Might Be Though

With 4.6 billion email users worldwide by 2025, getting a response from potential customers with your business outreach emails could be a bit challenging. The average email open rate for marketing emails is only 19.8% and cold email outreach is 1%. So, the question is: How do we ensure that your emails are seen and prospects reply to it?

Let’s face it. No one likes to feel like they’re being sold to.

But when you’re trying to get someone to respond to an email, there’s just no way around it. If you don’t have a great offer or a compelling reason for your prospect to say “yes”, they may never open your message.

That’s why we’ve got some advice on how to increase your prospect reply rate—and help them say “yes!”

1. How to Turn Email Response Rates into Dollars: Understanding How Email Response Rates Work and Why They Matter

Even if it may seem like there is no need for an explanation, the email response rate is a particularly complex sales measure. Email responses allow you to offer tailored knowledge to your recipients, which increases the number of demos SDRs book. This might include determining the level of interest in your products or services.

If you don’t measure results and learn from them, email outreach won’t be very effective. Even though each company has its own way of measuring results, most marketers and sales professionals use the same engagement funnel.

As a sales leader, you probably track all sorts of email metrics—from open rates to unsubscribe rates—but what is the top KPI to track when sales prospecting? If you immediately said “response rates”, you’re correct! Response rates measure how often your email campaigns get direct replies from your subscribers. SDRs want the highest possible response rates—more responses mean more relevant conversions.

Even though all of these metrics are important, your email response rate can tell you a lot about how well your campaigns are doing. They also let you interact with the people who are more engaged in your efforts, which could turn some of them into customers.

As we stated, the average email response rate is around 20% depending on the industry—with cold email outreach hovering around 1%. Your email response rate will change based on a number of factors, so don’t stress out too much when comparing each email’s response rate. There are three things that affect your metrics:

1. Audience: An email campaign for a large, varied group of people is more likely to get more responses than one for a small, specialized group.

2. Content: An email campaign that talks about a new product or includes a survey is more likely to get a response than a newsletter with general information.

3. Industry: Email response rates will be different for a campaign from the B2C industry versus a campaign from the B2B industry.

A good rule of thumb is to understand how your open rates compare to others in your field. If more people open your email, it’s likely that more people will respond. 

2. How to Become Irresistibly Charming and Start Connecting with the Right People

Selling to potential customers is all about connecting with the right people at the right time. If you can do that, you’ll be well on your way to success. Email outreach is proven to be one of the most effective ways to build relationships with potential customers and clients. Part of ensuring you find the appropriate points of contact is making sure you’re collecting the right emails and using the right strategy to do so. You’ll also want to make sure you work with clean data. When you have high-quality and accurate contact data, it means you are targeting the right people at the right time—therefore, saving time and money. 

By following these tips, you can start getting in touch with your ideal customers right when you need to. This way you can help your business generate more high-quality leads. 

1. Stay Current. Keep up with industry trends and make sure that you’re always keeping up with what’s happening in your industry. This will help you stay on top of what people are looking for, and they’ll come looking for you if they find out that you’re staying abreast of industry information!

2. Use Survey Tools. Use surveys as a way to get feedback from people who know what they want from their salespeople and how they want it delivered. Online survey software makes it easy for small businesses like yours to create surveys that fit your specific needs without having to hire someone full-time to collect data and information.

3. Offer Free Trials. Send emails containing offers that allow contacts to test your product or service for free. This way, people can get a feel for what kind of experience they’d have with your company before fully committing.

If your business is like most, you’ve probably tried to build a list of email subscribers. But, have you tried using tools like RocketReach to do it?

RocketReach has advanced search features that can help businesses find contact information for potential customers in seconds. With over 700 million verified business professionals in the database, you can get connected with high-potential people who may subscribe to your services. Once you have the contact information for your target audience, you can start building relationships with them through personalized email outreach.

3. How to Make Your Email Prospecting Work so the World’s Worst Sales Person Could Do It

99% of people check their email every day. 19% of people check their emails as soon as it hits their inbox. What is this telling you? Email outreach is the easiest and one of the most effective ways to keep in touch with your prospects.

Let’s dive into why this is true.

Sales professionals must communicate closely with prospective customers to gauge their interest in potential opportunities while nurturing the relationship. Using email outreach as a means of communication is an efficient way to keep in touch with your prospects while simultaneously building relationships with them through other means such as LinkedIn. 

Here are four tips to make ensure your email communication is valuable to the recipient:

1. Don’t make the recipient feel like they’re not worth your time. When emailing your prospects, it is important to be clear and concise in your communication. 

2. Be authentic. Introduce yourself and explain why you are reaching out.

3. Do your research. The right prospect will appreciate you doing your research, and they’ll thank you for it. This way, you can easily connect to them.

4. Don’t send out mass emails. Instead, segment your audience to make it personalized.

Once you have introduced yourself and the opportunity you’re providing, continue the conversation by asking questions about the candidate’s experience or current job situation, creating a personal connection. Show that you are genuinely interested in their background and aren’t just trying to close the deal—even if you are. Finally, end your email by thanking the candidate for their time and letting them know you will be in touch.

Example 1 of a Cold Email Outreach Email:

This email opens up the conversation by recognizing an article that the prospect posted on LinkedIn and making a connection with the mutual interest in increasing sales. The email continues to mention a pain point the prospect commented on in the LinkedIn post, drawing attention to how tools like RocketReach could help with this pain point, and ends with a concise call-to-action. This email is brief, formal, and recognizes a similar pain point/need while offering a solution.

Subject: Are you losing deals to people who are talking to your competitors?

Hi %FIRST_NAME%,

Thanks for posting the article on LinkedIn about lead generation. I’m a big fan of anything that can help increase sales!

You mentioned in your post that you often have trouble finding reliable contact information for potential customers. I wanted to let you know about RocketReach, a tool that can help make this process much more manageable.

With RocketReach, you can find millions of business professionals’ contact information in seconds, making it easy to connect with potential customers. I think this could be helpful for you and your business!

Ready to talk more about RocketReach? I’d love to schedule a follow-up call. 

Looking forward to hearing from you,

%YOUR_NAME%

Example 2 of a Cold Email Outreach Email:

Email example two is a little more fun and witty. This type of email can get a considerable return depending on your brand’s personality.

Everyone likes humor. This email starts with a sarcastic sense of humor, recognizing many people “stalk” people on LinkedIn to find potential customers. Although it begins playfully, this email gets straight to the point by highlighting a solution to the problem, which in this case is “finding customers”.

Subject: Wanted: World’s Worst Sales Team

Hey %FIRST_NAME%,

You’ve got quite a strategy brewing that even the world’s worst sales team could replicate. Ok yea, maybe a little harsh, but I’m sure it caught your attention.  I’m impressed to see that you’re researching potential customers on LinkedIn—just like everyone else. 

What if there was a better way? What if you could find millions of business professionals’ email addresses and phone numbers in seconds? That’s what RocketReach does. We make it easy to find potential customers by providing reliable contact information for millions of business professionals.

With our service, you can connect with more potential customers in less time. Ready to try RocketReach?

Sincerely,

%YOUR_NAME%

4. How Not to Suck at Converting Leads into Revenue Using a Multi-Touch Communication Plan 

Converting leads into deals and revenue streams for your organization is critical to any organization. By converting leads from cold outreach emails, you increase your company’s bottom line and build a foundation for future growth.

You’ve got a great product, but you need to get it in front of the right people. How are you going to do that? 

If you want your prospecting campaign to be successful, it’s not just about lead generation. That’s where a lot of the work happens, but that’s not all it takes. To succeed in today’s landscape, you need to make sure that all of your channels—online and offline—are working together to deliver your message in a way that will engage your prospects and customers.

A multi-touch communication plan integrates all touchpoints of your business and ensures that you’re meeting the customer’s needs at every point along their journey. Take note of these key email facts when drafting a multi-touch communication plan to get your sales emails more eyeballs and more leads:

• An average person owns 4 devices

• People spend an average of 3 hours a day on their mobile device

• 86% of the emails viewed are done on mobile.

5. How to Not Produce Fake Shit: Authentic Communication is the Key to Building Relationships

So here’s the thing: If you want to appear more authentic with your leads, or if you just want to make sure that you’re not sending them the wrong message, then there are three key things you need to remember:

1. It is important to build relationships with your leads. Get to know them and their needs to sell your product or service better. Use best practices when sending emails. Connect with them on LinkedIn to see if there is a common connection or group to make your relationship built on solidified research. 

2. Be persistent when following up. It can take multiple attempts to finally land a deal or even get a prospect to reply. In fact, Outreach suggests a 42-step sequence over 90 days for high value accounts consisting of phone calls, emails, LinkedIn outreach, and even direct mail.

3. Always be prepared to seal the deal, but don’t expect it to happen through one singular email outreach. There are numerous sales methodologies taught. However, one consistent tactic among all of them is that you first need to conduct thorough research on your potential customer, allowing you to know their needs and wants. Touchpoints that are triggered through specific actions ultimately make your outreach personal.  

Email outreach is valuable for sales professionals looking to cultivate relationships with potential customers. The tips we’ve outlined in this article all have one fundamental aspect: communication. Good communication is key to success, whether with prospects or customers. Sales professionals must constantly communicate with their team members, stakeholders, and customers if they want to be successful.

We get it. It’s frustrating to find the right people to communicate with, and we’ve been there too! That’s why we created a powerful search engine that helps businesses find the right leads and customers by matching them with the right people. Through a combination of powerful search features and social media advertising capabilities, we can help your business start connecting with the right customers efficiently.