Email Prospecting: Identifying Your Ideal Customers

‍Tired of not hearing back from your prospects? 

It’s time to assess the content you send for email prospecting. Raise your hand if the below sentences sound like you. 

• Hi, my name is David Rose
• Can I have your 5 minutes?
• You missed my last email
• Did you read the last email I sent you?
• I hope you’re doing well
• Up for a quick call?
• I am Don Draper from Sterling Cooper
• We provide services that make cold emailing easy. 
• I am the sales rep for Smartlead

All the above sentences are randomly compiled, yet they all have one thing in common. Can you guess?

THEY DIDN’T PROVIDE ANY VALUE. On top of that, we have sentences like “Can I have your 5 minutes?” or “Up for a quick call?” asking for favors from the recipient. Hundreds of emails in their inbox ask the same, and why would the consumer pick you?

This is why it’s important to learn how to write a prospecting email. Read ahead to get informed!  

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Email Prospecting | What is it

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Email prospecting is a cold-calling-like process that involves a salesperson reaching out to a stranger who may or may not be a potential customer. The goal is to find out if they are interested or not. 

Many email marketers refer to this process as cold email prospecting, as in most cases, they email someone they don’t know about. 

Here’s an example to check out. 

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Sample Email

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SUBJECT LINE: You need to see this

Hey Pam,

Quick question: Who is in charge of the sales team at the Scranton branch? Before the upcoming holiday sales, they need to check out this cold emailing software–Smartlead. It can make your company 50X ROI within a month. 

I understand you’re busy, so I am not getting into details now. These are the highlights of using Smartlead (as our customers report):

• High deliverability for dynamic ID addresses 
• Increased response rate because of AI personalization
• Easy workflow in the centralized master inbox
• Easily trackable analytics

Our clientele includes Staples, Catalyst Paper, and many more. I want Dunder Mifflin (Scranton branch) to join the Smart family too.

Let me know who’s the right person to talk to about this. If it’s you, let’s connect for a quick chat. 

Please find attached what Nashua Porter from Staples thinks about us. 

Thanks, 

Anya

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Why does this email work?

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It will be lengthy if I explain why the above content is perfect for email prospecting. So, here’s a quick image dissecting the same.  

^{Looking for Prospecting Email Templates? Go here.} 

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Step-by-Step Tutorial To Write the Best Prospecting Email

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A Conversational Subject Line

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Email prospecting is, at the end of the day, nothing but a sales email. In simpler words, you are trying to sell something. 

Many email senders make the mistake of luring the prospect using terms like 20% off, Best deal, Discount, Winner, etc. 

While this type of lingo works in cold-calling, especially in direct-to-consumer sales, it doesn’t work in B2B conversations. Such subject lines either lead the email directly to the spam folder, or the recipient dumps them in the trash without even opening the email. 

So, while writing a sales prospecting email, always go with a subject line that sounds conversational. 

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✔️You need to see this

✔️Adam suggests we talk

✔️Let’s get to know each other

✔️Any time to chat about {pain point}?

✔️Want to get rid of {pain point}?

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Sometimes, you can try a catchy, emoji-bearing subject line too. Recent statistics show that emails with subject lines containing emojis have open rates 56% higher than regular subject lines. Some examples are:

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✔️Your competitors don’t want you to see this ❌

✔️Could this be you? 🏄

✔️You need to see this 😯                            

✔️You can be there 🏖️

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Additional tip: Judge beforehand if your prospect is an emoji person or not. 

Check out 60 Follow-Up email subject lines cause all the big sales take place after following-up for five times or more. 

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A “Hit-The-Bull’s Eye” Opening Line

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A perfect opening line is 

👉Short

👉Intriguing

👉Personalized

👉Conversational

👉Makes the reader curious

👉Doesn’t intimidate the reader

👉 Target the recipient’s pain point

👉Relevant to the recipient’s business

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The best opening line in cold prospecting emails is those that include a question about the (particular) industry’s general pain point. For example:

Is resolving the {pain point} a priority for your company? 

Or

What is your process of {dealing with the pain point}? Do you have any plans to address it in the near future? 

If you don’t want to jump with the “pain point” reference in the first line, you can start your email as if it’s a random inquiry for the right person.

Quick question: Who is in charge of the sales team at the Scranton branch?

After the opening-line-disguised-as-an-enquiry, you can follow it with sentences like:

They may want to take a look at this {your product/service} before the holiday sales.

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Give Them a Reason

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A prospect may fit in your target audience, but that’s not enough reason for them to purchase the product or service from you. There are hundreds of replicas of your product in the market, and why should they pick you exactly? 

This is why providing a “reason” why they should buy from you is crucial for prospecting emails. Here’s how successful email marketers do it. 

It can help your team overcome {pain point}.

Or 

You can hit those lead KPIs within a month with the help of this tool. 

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Attach Substantial Proof

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Your claim that you helped 100s of companies is as unimportant to your prospect as what you had for breakfast if you don’t provide solid proof. The best process to do this is by attaching client testimonials or data on how your product or service helped companies grow.

But that happens in the last when you write:

Please find attached what our happy clients/customers have to say about us. 

An effective way of providing social proof while email prospecting is by mentioning in the second or third line:

We helped {competitor company} achieve {target} by solving {so-and-so issues}. 

Or

{Competitor company} has begun to use {your product/service} and gained {results}

Remember, such lines are highly effective but only if you attach testimonials or statistics at the end. 

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Highlight Benefits

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While you’re already mentioning a benefit of using your service when providing a reason at the beginning of the email, it is also effective if you point them down in the middle. Just list the other benefits down pointwise. 

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Keep the Word Count Below 300 Words

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According to a study by Overloop, emails with 1400 to 1500 characters or 300 words show the highest response rate. Please note that this data is on sales cold emails. 

So, keep the first email to potential prospects below 300 words. Say the necessary things in a systematic yet interesting order. 

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CTA

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CTA, or call-to-action, is the last (on this list) but the central motto of the initial emails. Before starting the email, ask yourself what the CTA of your email body is. 

Are you adding a “Book a meeting” CTA or asking the client to write back? Is your goal to make the recipient subscribe to a service?

Whatever action you want the recipient to take, make sure you write the whole email convincing the reader towards it. 

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Find 100s of Sales Email Templates for Outreach Email Campaigns here. 

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Final Thought➡➡Try Automation

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Are you, sometimes, tired of writing prospecting emails? 

It’s okay if you’re nodding your head to this question cause you’re not alone. The majority of email marketers hear you, and they go through the same. Manually writing emails to each prospect can lead to 3 scenarios.

Scenario 1: You write to a maximum of 5 prospects a day. 

Scenario 2: You fail to follow-up

Scenario 3: You’re failing to keep track of the prospects you have already written to and ending up writing the same email thrice.

You may have experienced any of the above scenarios but the result remains the same.

• Low response rate
• Low conversion rates
• Only a handful of clients
• As a result, low revenue

My advice: Shift to email marketing automation tools immediately. Keep the above points in mind while editing the email template and send it to hundreds of prospects in one click.  

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FAQs

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How do you introduce yourself in an email to a prospect

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You don’t have to introduce yourself directly using sentences like “I am David Rose from The Right Fit” or “My name is David Rose.” The trick to writing the best email to your prospect is to not introduce yourself directly. Talk about how your product can make their life easier and provide social proof of how you did that in the past. 

If the recipient reads the email till the end, they will see your name and your designation and this is how they should learn about you. 

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How do you use prospecting in email?

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Prospecting via email is the same as sending cold emails to potential customers. Just keep the email content relevant for the client by discussing stuff the recipient might be interested in. 

The goal of prospecting via email is to introduce your company to the prospect and make them curious enough to work on the CTA. So, be subtle and ask relevant questions only. 

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