At Sales Hacker, we continue to see that our audience wants more tactical training around cold emails. Hopefully this post and the Free amoCRM Sales Hacker Training Bundle will give you the knowledge that you seek.
Building a cold emails sales machine can be broken down into the following components:
In the world of outbound sales email the subject line has a tendency to be overlooked. Think of your subject line as the gatekeeper. If you don’t have a good tested optimized subject line you are not getting to speak to the boss.
Here are 5 tips we recommend when designing your cold emails subject lines:
Here are our key points for the body of your cold outbound email:
In my opinion, graphic heavy signatures are outdated. As a sales professional sending 1000s of cold emails per week your fancy signature is just going to get in the way. Go with a text based signature including your name, company name, link to your company website, your cell, and your skype. I frequently have prospects not respond to my cold emails but instead opt to add me on skype.
If you are going to make outbound cold email successful you need to define a certain level of activity metrics.
First let’s talk about positive response rates. Your goal is to get the number of absolute positive responses rates as high as possible. If can be done through scaling of cold outbound email or via targeted custom written emails. A mixture of templated emails with custom emails tends to be the best as you are using both your machine gun and your sniper rifle. Below is an example of both approaches:
What you see above is the power of sales automation and sales technology. With a similar time investment we were able to 3X our results. While I received a substantially higher response rate from the custom targeted campaign the automated campaign which was less customized produced the greatest number of actual positive responses.
Below is a breakdown of my sales funnel from email to signed contract:
Doing a bottoms up analysis focused purely on sales emails I can map out on a quantitative basis what my monthly new biz revenue should look like. This is why cold email activity metrics are so important. If I can send 4K solid cold emails per month and the other variables hold constant I have a sales machine that can do $300K in topline revenue per month!
I won’t get into the myriad of sales tools for email automation in this post. That said I personally use ToutApp, MixMax, and Outreach.
You should leverage your email apps not just for TOFU (top-of-funnel) but MOFO and BOFU (middle and bottom of funnel) as well. Most sales reps using these apps have a “core prospecting drip” they use to generate opportunities but then miss out on the efficiencies of email automation for in-funnel oppty’s. Make sure to have all your email templates for the entire sales process in your email automation app.
I really love TextExpander for repetitive email copy as well. If you use Gmail you can use the Gmail Labs “Canned Response” feature for templates. That said ToutApp and MixMax have solid quick in-funnel in-gmail templating so no excuse for typing the same response over and over.
When using these tools make sure to select the proper email delivery channel. You want to send from your Gmail servers not ToutApp’s servers etc.
All your emails need to be logged in the CRM. You shouldn’t have have to dig through your email to find the latest correspondence. Either through API integration or BCC make sure you have your Gmail connected with your CRM and email automation app.
You also need to track the types of emails you are sending per month. There are several email types you may be using. Here are a few I track:
You need to understand the total number of emails per month but also which type of emails are being sent. Log these emails as activities to track this data.
Here are my inbox major keys:
Your ideal customer profile impacts your cold email machine immensely. So does the product you are selling. Find ways to add value and reduce risk. Email may not be your problem. Your challenges may be around a poorly defined ICP or lack of knowledge. If you are selling marketing services but know little about marketing that is going to be a problem. That said, implementing just a few of these tips should substantially help your email sales game.
P.S. In coordination with amoCRM we are stoked to offer you the “Free amoCRM Sales Hacker Training Bundle.” This bundle includes 10 sales training products to help you build your sales machine and improve your cold email prospecting efforts. Cheers!