Supercharge your sales emails

Ever found yourself refreshing your inbox, waiting for your sales emails to get you some replies?

We've all been there. It's a lonely world in sales when your prospects don't reply.

Staring blankly at a laptop screen, eating biscuits and questioning your life choices. (Maybe that was just me.)

And when your prospects do eventually reply, you find something like this in your inbox:

Well never fear!

We've got some tried and tested email tips to get you back on track.

We analysed over 3,000,000 emails sent from the SalesLoft platform to help you not only increase your email response rates - but also kick start better communication with your prospects.

Here's my take on what the data tells us:

Short and sweet

Keep subject lines short.

There’s an 87% higher reply rate when you use just one word in your subject line.

When I was an SDR, I used the word SalesLoft. (Seemed like the obvious choice.)

I was able to measure the success of my one-word email subject line, and on nearly 500 emails sent I saw a 57% open rate.

Keep the email short.

It's tempting to throw everything you possibly can into an email. You've got a lot to say right?

The sweet spot for increasing replies is 25-50 words (ideal for a mobile screen).

If it takes a long time to read, your prospects probably won't read it.

Plain and simple

Ever sent a sales email, and put some of the text in bold to make it stand out?

Don't do that. When emails have text that is italic, bold or underlined... It looks like a marketing email.

It's the same with hyperlinks. Our research showed that emails without hyperlinks perform highest.

Email in plain text, the same way you would message a friend.

Keep it conversational

It's tempting to try and sound 'professional in a sales email.

I get it, when I started in sales I was terrified that my prospects would 'catch me out' so I used to use big words that I'd googled.

Your prospects will appreciate it if you keep it more casual, and actually focus on how you can help them rather than sounding like your an expert.

Make your email personalised, and try to write it in a way that you would like to be emailed.

The best way to sign off an email is using the word “Best”.

“Best” has proven to be a top performer. More formal sign-offs like “Sincerely” and “Regards” aren’t doing very well anymore.

If "Best" isn't really your cup of tea, use “Cheers” which came in second. (This is the one I use.)