By Coreen Menezes
Days have turned into weeks and weeks into months, yet the emails you sent to your prospects haven’t returned with a response. Were they lost in the junk box or have they been dumped into the delete folder? Or maybe they weren’t catchy enough to get a click. After spending your valuable time drafting a sales e-mail, it is depressing to not hear from your prospects, isn’t it? Well, the only solution to get out of this misery is to dig deep to find the reasons of ignored emails. What went wrong? Why weren’t your clients interested in answering? Where did you lack?
Below are five possible reasons for these three W’s:
Bad subject lines
Your focus is just on the clicks; you try to squeeze as much you can in that one line to convince your prospects to open your email. But, in doing so, you forget that a long subject line will be pushed into the spam folder, and even if it is short but not interesting, it will just be ignored. Your subject lines need to be creative and action oriented. You need to appeal to your prospect’s curiosity, like for example ‘eliminate it to automate your operations’; this will evoke an interest in the reader’s mind. He will try to open the mail to know what the sender is trying to say. This is when you can speak about your products or services like for instance if you are trying to sell a CRM you can write about its automation feature that eliminates manual labor and automates the sales processes. You can even personalize the subject line by writing the prospect’s name like for example ‘Karl, you haven’t assigned the task yet?’. Here you use the psychological trigger and evoke the fear of missing something. Through this subject line, you can highlight your CRM’s feature of automatically assigning tasks to the team and further speak about your CRM software.
Wrong timings
After returning from a weekend, people normally tend to scroll through their inbox with a hope to see something positive from their clients. Their sole focus is their customers; they try to get back to them and while doing that they tend to ignore your email lying somewhere in the inbox along with their important client’s email. So, Friday evening or Saturday isn’t the right time to mail your clients; you need to email them in the middle of the week somewhere around 2:00 PM or 3:00 Pm when they return from their break. Their stomachs are full, and their minds are fresh, so this is the best time to appear in their inbox.
Your email isn’t providing a solution
When you are drafting a sales email, you tend to display the sunny side of your company to convince the prospect to work with you. You try to put your best foot forward. You are so engrossed in presenting a positive image of your company that sometimes you tend to forget about your clients. Your email should speak about the clients and their needs rather than bragging about your company’s achievements. You need to provide a solution to their problem; you need to tell them how will your product or service be helpful for their business. Your emails shouldn’t be self-centric instead it should be focused on your client’s requirements. It should give them a strong reason to invest in your product or services.
Too much information
Will you read a long email with too much of information? Put yourself in your client’s shoes and think what will you like to see in an email. No one has time to read lengthy essays. Try keeping your email short, precise and interesting. Add only relevant information; you don’t need to narrate long tales. Identify and include the positive points about your company and products/services that will impress the prospect. Use bullets and numbers to capture reader’s attention. Instead of filling your email with lots of text, you can use images and promotional videos along with a little brief on the vital points. Don’t bore the reader; add funny GIFs (compressed) to make your emails interesting. It is all about presentation; you should be able to present the strengths of your company using minimum words in an appealing way that won’t bore the readers.
Marking many people in copy
In this corporate world, everyone is sinking deep with the load of work, if they get to know someone else can take their little burden they will happily share it. When you are marking a copy to many people of the same company, they might assume someone else will take care of it and they don’t take the pain of reading it. You keep many people in copy to be on a safer side hoping that if not one then at least the other will read and reply, but this puts you in the danger zone and your mail is ignored. So, it is better to concentrate on one person rather than having your fingers in too many pies and getting nothing.
“The harder you work on something the greater you feel when you achieve it” –anonymous
Once you find out the reasons for the unanswered emails, you need to focus on the solution. It’s is all about trying and never giving up. If you don’t hear from your clients, don’t be disappointed instead be optimistic and work dedicatedly to hear a positive response from your clients. Keep a proper track of every email you send, know whether your clients are ignoring your emails or they have some other issues. With tools like email tracking software, CRMs, you can auto track your emails and even receive notifications when a prospect clicks on your email. Keep an eye on every move of your client to never miss an opportunity.
“Coreen Menezes is an avid writer who likes to explore new fields and research about interesting subjects. She is a versatile content developer who plays with words to express her thoughts. Calm, carefree and creative are the words that describe her the best. At present, she is associated with RapidOps,Inc. as an experienced content crafter. Follow her on LinkedIn.
