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Sales prospecting emails help you get in front of your prospects and start one-to-one conversations.
In this guide, we’re going to show what sales prospecting emails are, the benefits of email as a prospecting channel, and best practices for writing and sending sales prospecting emails that get replies.
Let’s dive straight in.
What are Sales Prospecting Emails?
Sales prospecting emails are emails you send to see if prospects are interested in your product or service.
Sending sales prospecting emails is an effective strategy for any business with a high average contract value, such as agencies, B2B software, or service businesses. You get to have one-to-one conversations with decision-makers and show them why you’re uniquely positioned to solve their problems.
3 Benefits of Using Sales Prospecting Emails to Connect with Leads
1. Lets You Have Real Conversations with Prospects
Sales prospecting emails are one of the few sales channels that give you direct, one-to-one access to your prospect’s inbox and attention.
You can write out a fully personalized cold email, and your prospect will know that you’ve specifically chosen to reach out to them.
This will help you stand out in their inbox and differentiate your company and offering from the competition using ads that can’t offer the same level of personalization as your sales prospecting emails can.
2. Every Part of the Process is Under Your Control
One of the most powerful parts of email as a sales prospecting channel is that it gives you full control of the process.
You get to choose who is on your prospect list
You write out the individual email templates
You control the call-to-action (CTA), which will guide the conversation forwards
When you start a campaign, you know you won’t be wasting any resources or energy on promoting your company to the wrong audience.
3. Easy to Scale Once Your Formula Works
Your sales prospecting emails are scalable. Once you’ve run a couple of campaigns you’ll start to understand what kind of person responds well to your outreach, what templates get the most replies, and what value propositions your prospects care about most.
You can then repeat the process and continue to reach out to as many prospects as you need to in order to get the results you’re looking for.
7 Best Practices for Sending Sales Prospecting Emails That Get Replies
1. Create a Cold Email Domain and Warm Up Your Inbox
The first step to a successful sales prospecting email campaign is to have your technical foundations in place.
Sound technical foundations for your campaigns mean your outreach always has the highest chance of landing in the primary inbox and being seen by your sales prospects.
There are a few things to review at this stage, including:
Creating a fresh cold email domain to protect your main company domain in case of problems
Adding your DKIM and SPF records to your inbox to improve deliverability
Warming up your inbox with MailFlow, which is a email warm-up tool that integrates natively with QuickMail and is free for its users. Do this for 2-3 weeks to show ESPs you’re a trustworthy sender
To warm up your inbox, go to your MailFlow settings, and choose the inbox you want to warm up. Then, join the Auto Warmer group and set the number of emails you want to send per day.
When you see mostly green on the reports, you know your inbox is safe to send sales prospecting emails from.
Preparing your inbox and putting email deliverability best practices in place will pay dividends in the long run, as you know your sales prospecting emails will consistently be landing in your recipient’s primary inbox.
2. Create a Highly Focused Prospect List
One of the most important parts of a successful outreach campaign is your prospect list.
If your prospect list is qualified, you’ll have a much higher chance of starting a conversation. For example, even if your email templates aren’t perfectly worded, a prospect that closely matches your ideal customer profile will still be able to see through it and understand the value you can offer them.
On the other hand, a poorly qualified sales prospect will be unlikely to respond even if you send them the best email template you’ve ever written.
There are a few popular prospecting methods to identify the right people to reach out to, such as:
Using B2B data providers like BuiltWith, UpLead, or ZoomInfo to identify leads based on firmographic, demographic, and technographic data
Find people matching your ideal customer profile with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Spend time in networking groups and communities that your customers are members of
Source: UpLead on G2
Over time, you’ll be able to continue to improve your process and ensure you’re always reaching out to the most qualified prospects for your business.
This part of the sales prospecting process is key, because the better your list, the more replies you’ll get.
3. Find Ways to Personalize Your Emails That Go Beyond Surface Level
You’re not the only person sending sales prospecting emails to your future customers. They’re receiving multiple cold outreach emails per day and you need to find an angle to make your emails stand out and be the one that catches your prospect’s attention.
The best way to stand out is to use deep personalization that shows you’ve done your research before reaching out.
You don’t have much space in your sales prospecting email templates, so the best way to add this personalization is with a unique opening line.
This is a sentence at the start of your email template that’s completely personalized and unique to each recipient.
For example:
Congrats on your announcement about the new funding last month - excited to see what you do with it!
I enjoyed your recent podcast with [name of podcast], especially the part on [specific topic they mentioned].
Just read your latest industry report, amazing how [unique statistic] is still going up every month.
Whatever your opening line is, it needs to be something that you could only send to that person.
This will instantly show someone that you care about their time and attention and ensure your emails stand out in their busy inbox.
As well as that, make sure to include basic personalization like their first name, company name, and other things that show the email is meant for them.
The easiest way to add this personalization to your sales prospecting emails is with attributes in QuickMail.
As you write your sales prospecting email template, choose the attributes that you want to include.
For example:
When you send your email campaign, the attributes will automatically fill with your custom details on each sales prospect. No matter how many prospects you’re reaching out to simultaneously, each email will be fully personalized to each person.
You can also import your own unique attributes and personalize emails as much as you need to.
Every email you send will be completely unique, stand out in your recipients’ inboxes, and have the best chance of getting a positive response.
4. Show That You Value Their Time
Your prospects are busy people and have their own priorities. You need to respect that by keeping your email templates succinct and by immediately showing them why you’re reaching out.
A common cold email structure to follow is:
Your unique opening line
One to two sentences highlighting the problem you can solve
A reference to social proof or case study to prove that you can get results
A call-to-action to start a conversation
This structure works because you include all of the key details a decision-maker needs to decide if it’s worth having a conversation with you. They’ll instantly see that you value their time and aren’t trying to overwhelm them with unnecessary details.
Once they reply, you can schedule a meeting or call and discuss the details of your offer and the problems you can help them solve.
5. Leverage Social Proof to Build Trust
We covered this briefly in the previous section, but one of the most important parts of your sales prospecting process is to build trust from the start.
If someone trusts you, they’ll be more willing to have a conversation, and more likely to buy from you.
To make your emails stand out and make your prospects feel like you’re someone worth replying to, build trust with social proof.
This could mean:
Mentioning a previous result you’ve had for a client
Highlighting a statistic from a case study
These things will show you know how to get results for clients and establish your credibility in your outreach.
Examples this in a prospecting email could be:
“Our agency recently helped [similar client] generate 20 sales qualified leads per month with our lead generation campaigns.”
“Our software helped reduce [similar client]’s time to hire by 20% and build their team faster.”
The social proof should relate to the benefit you can add to their business.
6. Have a Call-To-Action That’s Simple to Reply To
Your call-to-action (CTA) is a critical element of your sales prospecting email templates to consider. It guides how your prospects will reply to your email and the next steps of the conversation.
The best CTAs are open-ended but in a way that guides a prospect to a response. If you just aim for a yes or no answer, it’ll be harder to naturally move the conversation forwards over email.
Here are some examples of effective CTAs:
Do you have a quick 15 minutes to chat this week?
Does solving [pain point] sound interesting?
What’s the best way to schedule 5 minutes to discuss [pain point]?
You can even keep it as simple as a one-word question, like what AppSumo did in their example below:
The key is to find the type of CTA that gets responses from the type of prospect you’re targeting.
As well as that, you can use different CTAs at different stages of your campaign.
For example, in your first prospecting email, you can use a high commitment CTA like “Do you have 15 minutes to talk this week?”. If someone doesn’t reply, you can then use a lower commitment CTA in your next email, like “Is solving [pain point] a priority for Q4?”.
Over time you’ll learn which CTAs work best and can then double down on the ones that get the best reply rates.
7. Send a Follow-Up Email if They Don’t Reply
No matter how good your sales prospecting email template is, you generally won’t see a higher than 20% reply rate to your first cold email.
In fact, 55% of replies to outreach campaigns come from a follow-up. The main reason for that is that your prospects are busy and your cold email is unlikely to be their priority that day. By following up, you prove you care about their attention and show that you’re convinced you can help their business.
The easiest way to send follow-up emails is to use a cold email platform like QuickMail and add them to your campaign as you build it.
All you have to do is add another email step after a short delay (3-4 days is enough) and then add your follow-up email.
If someone doesn’t reply to your first email, QuickMail will automatically send the second one, bumping your emails to the top of their inbox.
Most campaigns will only need 4-5 follow-ups. If someone still hasn’t replied after you’ve sent multiple follow-ups, you can assume it’s not the right time for them.
In your follow-up email, you can reiterate what you said in the first email, but with a twist.
For example, you can:
Reposition the value proposition to something that will resonate with your prospect more
Bring up a new case study or past result
Switch your CTA to a new one that requires less commitment
Sending follow-ups is an essential step in any outreach process, as they ensure your sales prospecting emails have the highest chances of being seen by your recipients and getting a reply.
How to Send Sales Prospecting Emails on Autopilot with QuickMail
The best way to send your sales prospecting emails is with QuickMail.
QuickMail lets you send personalized sales email campaigns with automatic follow-ups if your prospects don’t reply to the first email.
Thanks to attributes, each email you send – even if you’re emailing multiple prospects at once – will be fully personalized to each prospect in your email list and you can include details like their name, company name, or even a fully customized opening line in your email.
On top of that, QuickMail is made to work seamlessly for teams.
You can add as many team members to your account as you need to help you manage campaigns at no extra cost – you only pay for new sending inboxes.
To spread out your sending volume and improve deliverability, you can use QuickMail’s unique inbox rotation feature. Inbox rotation lets you send one campaign from multiple different inboxes to control volume and ensure every email gets delivered.
As well as that, QuickMail has a native integration with MailFlow, which is a free email warm-up tool. MailFlow Auto Warmer sends emails to other inboxes in their Auto Warmer network and generates replies and engagement on your emails.
Email service providers like Gmail and Outlook will start to trust your email and consistently send your prospecting emails to your prospects’ primary inboxes.
It’s the ideal platform for sending sales prospecting emails if getting replies is a priority.
Start a free 14-day trial to see how QuickMail can help you start more conversations today.
