Three Easy Ways to Make Sure People Read Your Email

Far too many sales professionals simply accept the fact that a significant percentage of the emails they send to prospective clients will go unread. Compounding the problem is the most common response to this fact, which focuses on expanding the total number of prospects emailed in the hope that a broader approach will yield a greater number of positive responses. This is unbelievably ineffective for a number of reasons, but it also insults the intelligence of the prospective client. After all, it is not all that difficult to recognize a generic email designed for a wide target audience.

This leaves sales professionals with something of a dilemma: How can they draft emails that they know will be read without devoting far more time and effort to drafting those emails? The following three methods are designed to solve this conundrum while also ensuring that the emails are not just read but also generate consistently positive responses.

Adopt a Personal Approach

The two most common mistakes made by sales professionals as they draft an email for a prospect have to do with the language used in addressing the potential client. Since many emails are drafted with the goal of reaching the widest possible audience, the language tends to be overly generic and is not at all targeted to any individual prospect. Exacerbating the issue is the fact that formal language is most commonly used, making the email seem even more impersonal when read by the prospect -- if it is read at all.

Sales professionals who wish to have all of their emails read by prospective clients have to personalize their approach by favoring informal -- but not unprofessional -- language that directly addresses a specific prospect. This does not have to be a time-consuming endeavor, as a sales proposal template can be utilized in order to save time while still ensuring each and every email sent is highly personalized and tailored to the specific prospect. It's worth noting that personalizing the email goes beyond simply including the recipient's name, so utilizing the ideal template is of exceptional importance.

Value the Recipient’s Time

Sales professionals can demonstrate their ability to recognize the value of a prospect’s time by crafting an email that focuses only on the most relevant and necessary information for yielding the desired outcome from the client. A concise email will always be better received by potential clients and will ensure the client takes the time to read the information contained in the message, while a longer email will either be immediately discarded or quickly scanned over.

In order to ensure concision in drafting an email, sales professionals must first identify the specific outcome they are seeking in sending the email. Once identified, the email should be crafted in a manner that focuses only on that specific outcome and nothing else. This will increase the likelihood that the email is read while also greatly improving the client response rate.

Demonstrate Clear Value to the Prospect

When an email is sent to a prospective client, there is an exchange that should always occur but is not always recognized. Reading an email requires a tacit investment of time, and no one is going to make any kind of an investment unless they expect to receive a worthwhile return in exchange for their time. Every email sent from a sales professional to a prospect should include an offer of something that is of clear value to the potential client. The offer may be for an informational resource, a sample product or something else relevant to both the client and the sales professional, as this will go a long way to ensuring prospective client emails are read and are successful in eliciting the positive response being sought.