How to Write a Great Sales Email

When contacting customers through email, some companies make the mistake of treating their prospects like robots, and sometimes it shows. While it is impractical to completely write a unique email for every single contact on your email list, there are still ways to grab attention and make the person on the receiving end feel that your communication is more than just another piece of spam.

Here are a few tips for writing a great sales email.

Keep it simple

Your first key to a successful sales email is organizing it to communicate simply, clearly and concisely with your prospect. If you were in someone else’s shoes and reading the email for the first time, would you find the message captivating?

• Bullet points are great
• Avoid too many different fonts, graphics or links
• Use bolded headlines to break up information
• White space is your friend; don’t try to pack an email with too much

Too much of any one thing (such as links) will divert attention from your actual message, and may even send your email to the spam folder.

“What’s in it for me?

Remember that people care mostly about what’s in it for them, so your email should focus on solving a problem for your prospect, even if that problem is boredom from reading the countless other emails in his or her inbox. If your email doesn’t provide some sort of valuable information or offer, then what is the point of sending it?

Consider having some sort of content, such as a story, to hold interest before mentioning your special discount or advertising a specific item in which they might be interested.

Structure

In order to more effectively write a sales email, you’ll want to identify a structure that you can use to quickly and easily construct subsequent emails again and again. First, know what has been proven to work and what doesn’t through the experience of others. This article in Inc. provides some excellent tips.

• The headline must not be too long, as it should immediately steal your customer’s interest.
• The body of the email might provide an initial reason for contact and a hint of what your company can do for the customer, but don’t answer every possible question…give them just enough to make them want to find out more.
• The last section should be a strong call to action.

Call to Action

Once you’ve attracted enough attention from your intended audience and generated interest with strong selling points for your product, close your sales email with a strong call to action. According to Jeff Kear, a lead strategist at a branding and marketing firm, there are several points to keep in mind. Do you want your prospects to make a call, visit in person, or make a purchase from your website?

When you’ve answered that question, send them on their way with specific, concise instructions. These could include web links, phone numbers, maps, or even a quick-response code for your more tech-savvy customers.

Keep the call to action separate and more noticeable than the rest of the email. The first two points of interest a reader should notice are the headline and the call to action, so keep that in mind when designing it.

One last point: writing great sales email is an art, and involves plenty of testing to get the absolute best results. Try splitting up your database in half and sending one half version A and the other version B of your email to gauge which version works best.