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Discover the data, tactics and trends shaping successful prospecting in 2023 - based on 49.5 million emails.
Posted on: August 15, 2019
Reading Time: 7 minutes
Category: Prospecting
If you’re just about to fire off another prospecting mail – hang loose for five or ten minutes.
I’m about to share with you a fantastic tool to gain insight into whether or not your carefully-crafted mail is likely to float like a butterfly or sink like a stone.
Whether it will succeed or just suck.
Whether it will fly or die.
Our lovely team at Sopro have been studying the alchemy of prospecting day in and day out.
And they’ve distilled its essence into a free tool that will automatically check just how awesome your B2B prospecting mail is likely to be.
It couldn’t be simpler to use: just load your copy into the aptly-named email awesomeness checker – and we’ll show you exactly where it falls flat.
What’s the mystic science that lies behind our awesomeness checker?
Well, that would be telling, but I can reveal that it’s based on
Let me break each of these down for you right now.
Spam is the first hurdle of email prospecting.
If you’re not even getting delivered, or slipping into the Junk box, then you’ve just fallen at it.
Our awesomeness checker looks for any spam terms in your mail and highlights them for you. And, believe me, many words you are likely to be using can trigger spam and shoot off your chance of success.
A prospecting mail aims to excite interest, create curiosity and produce a response: it’s not the place for chapter and verse.
Keep it short and to the point.
We’ve found 100-250 words to be the perfect wordcount.
Your mail is not a tech spec sheet or a ponderous dissertation.
It’s a highly readable, introductory mail.
Unless absolutely necessary steer clear of too much jargon and too many long words.
If you can’t sell your proposal succinctly and clearly, you probably haven’t really worked out exactly what your proposition is.
And if you’re using big words to impress – just stop it! You’re losing your audience rather than wowing them.
We’ve found 4.7 letters per word to be about the maximum you should have on average.
Long paragraphs are incredibly off-putting. These bricks of copy will knock out many potential prospects.
Each paragraph in your prospecting mail should be saying just one thing: there’s rarely the need for it to be more than one sentence or two at the most.
In terms of word count, we’ve found that 16-40 words make the perfectly-sized paragraphs.
Similarly, your prospecting mail should contain just one call to action backed up by one succinctly described proposition.
You won’t be needing more than four, perfectly-formed paragraphs to do this in.
We’ve found that 2-4 paragraphs place you in the golden range.
In many ways your prospecting mail should read as if it is fired off quickly, rather than as a part of a polished marketing campaign. It should feel conversational and immediate and personal.
But, it should not contain spelling mistakes: that just looks as if you do not care.
If in doubt, spellcheck it!
If you want to go a step further here are the nuggets that will get you there.
And start those positive responses rolling in.
Be polite, but not too polite.
This is a conversational person-to-person mail.
Your mail should read as if it has been hastily typed – rather than laboriously constructed.
Try and write as if this is a quick note you’re pinging over to a friend-of-a-friend (and you’ve just found a five-minute window to do it in).
Never come across as desperate or over-eager, but also don’t try to do too much in one teeny-weeny mail.
Remember – you only have one goal.
Cling to the top of the top-level – and never dip any further.
Generalities have no place here: everything is about your prospect or its edited out.
If it’s not until the second or third paragraph that you clearly state the reason for your mail you will most likely be talking to a Delete bin.
If the purpose of the mail is to secure a call, suggest a date.
Never suggest you need to know more. Far too often, in the interests of revealing their approachability, prospectors will say things like ‘I’d love to explore further how I can help you’ or ‘maybe we can discuss your specific challenges’.
As you are only going to be pitching one thing it makes absolute sense to ensure this is not really going to be focussed on a product or service that your prospect has not heard of.
Why?
Because that would just be hard work for them.
Make it easier by focusing on the problem your product or service solves for your prospect and suggest you have something that has helped others solve this.
No need for too much detail here.
Just suggest you can help and see if they fancy chatting.
Press send – and wait for the responses to come back.
Nice work!
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