How to succeed in your prospecting email? 10 tips to follow with 2 examples

To succeed in your B2B marketing strategy, email prospecting is essential . 48% of B2B sales reps think email is the most effective way to generate new leads!

But how to make a successful prospecting email ? We have chosen for you the 10 best practices to adopt. You will also find mistakes to avoid .

10 tips for a successful prospecting email

In marketing, we speak of outbound when it is the salesperson who goes to the prospect.

B2B emailing is part of outbound marketing .

We also talk about cold emailing : the prospect is cold and has never shown interest in your offer.

Clearly define the persona

The persona represents your ideal typical customer . To properly define it, you need to research its characteristics.

In B2B , you must go beyond the basic criteria: the age group or its function for example. You should also determine the business sector of the company , its probable problems, etc.

Clearly defining your persona allows you to personalize your contact email with the prospect , from the subject to the content. A personalized subject line increases the open rate of your email by 22% !

Provide maximum added value in your cold email

Your prospecting email must bring the maximum added value to the contact. It can be:

• Free advice (“ Our free advice for choosing the right CRM ”)

• A PDF document (“What to consider when choosing your suppliers”)

Here is an example of email to avoid, since without any added value:

At the end of the email, what makes you different? How do you correctly address the prospect’s problem? This email does none of that: its results will be bad.

For example, the email could have been accompanied by free advice on choosing the right CRM and setting it up correctly .

Find a real common point with the contact

You must have a real reason for writing to your prospect. For example, he liked a LinkedIn post on the difficulties of integrating a CRM : you can contact him because you can help him with this problem.

What you have in common: you also liked this post.

Be short and concise to prospect

37% of professionals receive more than 50 emails per day . An email that is too long then discourages the contact from reading it.

You must opt for a clear, simple and short email. Avoid phrases that only add volume to your text.

Let’s take the example of an equipment manufacturer selling windshield wipers. She wants to get the market for a taxi company.

In the email, we find the sentence: “The windshield wipers are used to have better visibility in rainy weather.” It’s obvious , everyone knows it! So it has to be removed .

On the other hand, you can indicate striking figures:

In 4 sentences, we pose the problem of the prospect, we provide him with a simple and effective solution and with measurable results!

Succeed in its object and its intro

As we have seen, a personalized subject increases the chances of opening your B2B prospecting email.

You need to make it more human so that the contact feels that the email is addressed specifically to them. It should also be short to work best.

Let’s take an example: “ Christian, say goodbye to stress at work! ”

The introduction of your prospecting email must also be well done: this is what the contact reads before the content of the email (in the preview of his mailbox). We will develop this point below.

Choose the right timing to send your prospecting email

Even with well-written content, a neat subject line, and intro, your cold email is unlikely to be opened if it’s sent at the wrong time .

For B2B in particular, the best days to send your prospecting emails are Monday and Tuesday . The rest of the week, the open rate only decreases.

For schedules, 75% of open B2B emails are sent during business hours . The peaks are located:

• Around 9 a.m.

• Early afternoon (2 p.m.)

Go for quality, not quantity

It ‘s hard to get quality emails if you write a lot of them.

It is better to write 5 quality prospecting emails that reach their goal , rather than 20 bad emails that will not convert.

Provide social proof

Social proof brings even more credibility to your offer. It could be :

• Positive feedback from your customers

• The very large number of people who have used/using your offer

• Your company’s rating on a major customer review site like Trustpilot

Let’s take some concrete examples:

At LeadIn , we have an excellent average rating on Trustpilot, we can highlight it.

Our customers are very satisfied with our services. We highlight some of their reviews on our front page. We can also do this in our solicitation emails:

Another example: Hubspot highlights their number of customers. 135,000 companies work with their tool! This is great social proof.

Make two versions of your cold email and perform an A/B test

In emailing, an A/B test consists of randomly sending at least two versions of the same email to part of your contact list. You will then see if it is version A or B which is the most open, and therefore the most effective .

For example, for the same email, make two versions of the subject :

• Version A: “Christian, say goodbye to stress at work!”

• Version B: “Christian, manage stress at work with our advice”

Relaunch at the right time

After your first contact with the prospect, he may not respond to you right away. But the prospect may have already shown his interest in another way :

• He visited your website.

• He took the time to fill out the contact form to subscribe to your newsletters.

Also, give him time to respond to you.

On the other hand, if the prospect does not show up after a week , you can make a first follow-up.

The raise can take this form:

Don’t neglect the reminders! The first raise multiplies by 3 your opening rate .

Above all, you can send several: some prospects will only respond after a certain number of emails (beyond 5 or 6 emails, you will have much fewer responses).

The 3 mistakes to avoid for a successful prospecting email

To be successful with your prospecting email, there are also mistakes to avoid :

• Use generic content

• Try absolutely to sell from the first contact

• Do not put a CTA (“Call-to-action”)

Use generic content in your email

Using generic content greatly reduces the chances of your contact reacting to your email.

People appreciate that you use their first or last name. The email is addressed to them personally . Otherwise, they’ll think it’s a bulk email.

The content must also be personalized.

For example, if you sell a design service as a freelancer, you can take the design elements from the prospect’s website and give some advice on how to improve them.

It certainly takes more time, but you will get a lot more responses.

To personalize your messages in an industrial way, you can also integrate an automatically personalized image :

It’s fun, and it grabs the prospect’s attention !

To use this type of content, you need a dedicated tool (we have chosen the 3 best at the end of this article!).

Try absolutely to sell from the first contact

Trying to sell your solution from the first contact means forgetting that you can work on your B2B relationship step by step.

Selling should not be the objective of your first contact with the prospect. Otherwise, it would be an advertising email. And with any luck, you’ll be flagged as spam!

The objective of the 1st email is to obtain a response from the prospect to initiate discussions. To do this, write an email:

• Custom

• Bringing added value (as in our example of web design advice)

• With a valid reason to contact your prospect

Do not put a CTA (Call-to-action)

If your offer interests the prospect , he must know very precisely the next step to follow.

This is where the call to action comes in. This is placed at the end of the email and can take this form:

2 examples and 2 prospecting email templates

To help you succeed with your cold emails , let’s take a look at 2 examples of prospecting emails: one bad and one good.

To bring you the best examples , we searched our mailboxes to find concrete and real examples. We have selected 2 of them, in the sector of services to e-merchants.

A bad prospecting email example

This sample prospecting email is bad on several counts.

• Already, it brings no added value .

• The introduction is clumsy : we don’t exactly understand its value proposition. This would be clearer with the help of social proof (an example of a service performed with a client).

• The layout is horrible : we don’t want to read this huge block of text!

• The content is too generic .
  The greeting includes the prospect’s first name. But there is no personalization in the content of the email: the name of the target company is not mentioned, its specific problem is not correctly stated. This would be for example: “Like X% of the brands we surveyed,[nom de la marque] want to produce responsibly? But you can’t find the right suppliers and the necessary guarantees?”

The valid reason for contacting the prospect is not very clear: “your brand caught my attention”.

There is an awkward repetition in the email : “ produce the production ”.

Finally, the CTA can be improved : there is no link to their website, and telephone appointments are made in response to the email.

A good example of cold email

Now let’s give a better (but not perfect) example. It meets the criteria for a successful prospecting email, increasing your chances of getting a response from the prospect.

✅ What is good:

• Content is clear and concise (can be read in seconds)

• The CTA is super clear

• The value proposition is very well explained

❌ What can be improved:

• She tries to sell from the first email

• It doesn’t address the issue well.

• Content is not fully optimized

To be very honest, even after searching for hours, we didn’t find many good examples of emails.

Is it good news for you ! It means that you can do much better than your competitors!

2 B2B prospecting email templates

Prospecting email templates can help you get started the easy way . Here are 2 suitable for:

• A real estate agent

• A freelancer

Cold email template for a real estate agent

To be more precise, let’s take the example of a real estate agent who approaches to find properties for sale.

Prospecting email template for a freelancer

Here, let’s take the example of a web developer who redesigns sites and who is looking for clients.

In these 2 templates, we go straight to the point by offering our services: don’t forget that you can separate your message into several emails . In this case, in the first email, only talk about the contact’s problem (example: outdated website) and provide it with added value (example: guide to good practices for maintaining a website).

3 tools for a successful prospecting email

To make your prospecting email more successful, you can use specially dedicated tools .

LeadIn

LeadIn is an all-in-one prospecting tool . Among other things, it allows you to:

• Launch your email campaigns

• Pair them with automated prospecting on Linkedin

• Check the email addresses of your contacts in real time (to improve deliverability)

LeadIn allows you to multiply your response rate by 2.7 and is offered to you at €97 per month.

Click here to try it for free for 14 days.

Lemlist

Lemlist is a tool specially dedicated to B2B emailing .

Its main features are:

• Personalization of your emails (adding personalized images and videos)

• Automation of the follow-up of sent emails

• Monitoring the effectiveness of emails sent

The full subscription is offered at €99 per month. The main downside of Lemlist is that they don’t offer anything for LinkedIn.

So you have no way to combine outreach and LinkedIn and do multichannel!

Mailjet

Created in 2010, Mailjet is an email prospecting tool with more than 130,000 users.

In addition to sending emails, Mailjet also lets you send SMS .

Other features include:

• Automating the sending of your emails

• A/B testing

• Emailing templates

The Premium version costs €23 per month (for 15,000 emails per month). Mailjet is also a nice tool but it is above all an autoresponder .

It was not designed for B2B prospecting and it quickly becomes apparent in use.

The best advice for successful cold emails: multichannel + automation

The marketing strategy cannot do without prospecting emailing. B2B salespeople are convinced of this.

But also know that 840,000 French companies are on Linkedin.

It is therefore in your best interest to combine prospecting on Linkedin and by email .

You can automate everything to save valuable time.

All this is possible using a single tool: LeadIn.

Ask now for a demo of the features of this all-in-one prospecting tool!

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