This guide will help you craft compelling sales emails, starting conversations that generate positive responses and lead to more successful demos.
Step 1: Research your target audience –>
Step 2: Use effective personalization methods –>
Step 3: Add key ingredients of a powerful email –>
Step 4: Personalize your emails in bulk –>
Once you’ve collected your targeted lead list, it’s time to craft a value-driven and personalized email.
A sales email has clear goals: to start a conversation with your leads, get a response, and pave the way to close the deal.
Rest assured, we’ll provide you with valuable tips and insights to help you achieve these goals.
Understand your target audience
An effective sales email begins with an understanding of who it is addressed to.
To make your offer relevant, you should be aware of the challenges and metrics important to the people or companies you’ll be contacting.
For example, in SaaS companies, primary metrics include monthly revenue and customer churn rate.
For sales reps in software companies, the main metric is sales revenue, with the primary struggle being setting up an effective sales pipeline and facing strong competition.
Key points for targeting:
- Research the pain points, problems, and goals of your leads.
- Offer them a solution that addresses these aspects.
Use effective personalization methods
Email personalization is a must-have for good engagement and reply rates.
Remember: If you focus more on targeting and personalization, instead of just emailing more prospects, it will bring you more positive results long term.
Personalization method #1: Targeted value
The best personalization is offering your leads targeted value.
This means adjusting the value you offer to the needs or pain points of the people you contact. To provide more value, understand the issues they have and what metrics are important to them.
Here’s how to create a targeted value:
1. Identify your value proposition, or how you help prospects solve their problems.
2. Identify common problems or pain points within a particular lead group.
3. When making an offer, connect the dots – ensure that your value proposition aligns with the needs of the leads.
This way, even if you send the same offer to 100 leads, your email will still be targeted.
For example, CEOs and Sales reps will respond better to different offers.
Offer example for the CEO:
CEO will resonate better with increased revenue and market expansion offer:
“Our lead generation service will help your software company reach new markets and acquire high-quality leads, leading to increased sales and revenue.”
Offer example for the Sales Rep:
Sales rep will resonate better with time-saving automation offer:
“We’ll automate the lead prospecting and nurturing process for you. This means more time for you to focus on selling and building relationships with potential clients.”
Personalization method #2: Unique personalized lines
Here’s another good method to create even more personal emails: begin your emails with a unique lead-focused sentence. Even a brief research can bring significant results.
Research the prospect:
Visit their LinkedIn or website and try to find anything personal, relevant, and unique to them.
Write a compliment or comment on their recent activities, achievements, or experience. Open your email with lines such as, “Heard about your recent promotion …” or “ Your company’s latest launch is a success…”
Research the company:
Visit the company’s website and try to find useful information, such as recent major features they’ve launched or big clients they’ve aquired.
Quick tip: You can access a prospect’s LinkedIn page or their company website directly from their profile on Snov.io. Click on a prospect in your list to see their profile details.
Key points for personalization:
1. The minimum you should always do is personalize your emails with {{first_name}} or {{company_name}} variables.
2. Make your offer appealing to the specific people you’re reaching out to with a targeted value.
3. The more value your offer provides to the specific person, the higher the chance of closing the deal.
Add key ingredients of a sales email
The key to a powerful email is keeping it short, focused on your lead, and clearly conveying your value offer.
Short, engaging emails written in a conversational tone receive double the response compared to lengthy messages.
Optimal email length is around 80-100 words. If you need a longer, more detailed email, limit it to no more than 300 words.
Now, let’s look at how to add each ingredient that makes an email sell your offer.
Ingredient 1: Subject line
A subject line is what helps your email be noticed and opened. Don’t make it long or sound like a sales pitch; it will push people away.
It should be short and clear, ensuring it doesn’t get cut off in email previews, especially on mobile devices.
Key points:
1. Highlight the email’s purpose in it, so your subject line immediately draws interest.
2. Make it stand out with {{first_name}} or {{company_name}} variables – people are more likely to notice emails that are addressed to them.
Examples:
–> “Hi {{first_name}}, quick question?”
–> “A special offer for {{company name}}.”
–> “Hey there, {{first_name}}! Let’s chat.”
–> “Quick tip, {{first_name}}: Boost your sales.”
–> “Hello {{first_name}}, here’s your solution.”
Ingredient 2: Intro
Begin with a warm greeting: Hi/Hey/Hello followed by a {{first_name}} variable.
Make sure this intro focuses on your lead to draw them into reading the rest of the email. Recipients see the opening line in the email preview right after the subject line.
This is where you add unique lead-focused lines with relevant details.
Show that you care about them and have done your research; this is not just another bulk message.
Key point: Begin your emails with a unique lead-focused intro of 1-2 short sentences.
Intro examples:
–> “Hi {{first_name}}, I noticed your impressive track record in sales.”
–> “Hey there, {{first_name}}! Your expertise in sales strategies caught my attention.”
–> “Hello {{first_name}}, I see you’re interested in expanding your sales pipeline.”
Ingredient 3: Offer/Value proposition
In this part, highlight your strengths and tell your lead what you do best, but avoid writing too much about yourself.
Keep the focus on the value your lead gets and describe the solution you have to help them with their needs or goals.
They will be more interested to hear about what you can do for them, not just what you can do in general.
Key points:
1. Make your offer as relevant as possible using a “targeted value” approach.
2. Emphasize how your solution is what they need to overcome their challenges.
Examples of a value offer:
–> “We specialize in skyrocketing your sales with data-driven marketing strategies tailored to your needs.”
–> “Our solution turbocharges your sales efficiency, ensuring you close deals faster.”
–> “Achieve your sales goals with our personalized approach, made to boost your revenue.”
Ingredient 4: Call to action (CTA)
A CTA is a part of the email at the very end that motivates your lead to take the action you want them to take.
Here’s how to use it effectively:
Don’t anticipate prospects clicking links (such as a calendar invite or website link) as the next step; you can add links in follow-up emails.
A more effective strategy is to end your emails with a question that encourages a response.
A question that intrigues a recipient by suggesting there’s more value to come, making them curious about it.
Key point:
1. Don’t add links as your primary call-to-action in your first email.
2. Ask open-ended questions at the end of your email to start a conversation and confirm their interest.
Example questions for a CTA:
–> Can I provide additional information?
–> Would you like me to share a Loom video for more details?
–> Please reply with “Yes” for more info or “No” if it’s not the right time.
–> Can I share a link that explains how it all works?
–> Let me know if this sounds like something you’re interested in?
–> {{first_name}}, is it a priority for you right now or not really? Let me know.
Personalize emails in bulk
In Snov.io’s email editor, you can personalize any part of your copy by adding custom variables.
Here’s how you can enrich your lead list:
Step 1: Prepare a file with leads
Export your prospect list from Snov.io in Google Sheets or CSV file.
Open the file and add a new column for personalized details.
For example, you can add unique information about your leads in bulk using custom variables like {{personalization}}, {{icebreaker}}, or {{common_ground}}.
Step 2: Enrich file with personalization data
Manual way:
Research your leads and insert the relevant information to the appropriate columns manually.
If you’re able to determine common pain points for the leads in your list, you can even use the same personalization to save time.
Bulk way:
You can leverage the power of AI by using ChatGPT to generate personalized lines for specific lead groups.
Here’s how:
Ask ChatGPT: “What are the primary pain points of sales reps looking to find more lucrative clients?”
Provide it with some context about your ideal customer profile.
Next, use a prompt like this: ‘Write X amount of short, personalized intros for an email to a sales rep, incorporating these pain points.
Review the generated text, make edits if necessary, and then add it to the personalization column in your file.
Step 3: Import enriched list
Upload your enriched file to the same prospect list in Snov.io using the import option.
The system will automatically detect the new data column from your file.
On the import screen, find the new column and activate it using the menu on top.
Click Add custom field in the drop down menu to create a new prospect field.
After the import, this new field will be created for every prospect on the list.
If the column name is “Personalization,” the variable associated with it will also be named {{personalization}}.
Step 4: Add variable to email content
Finally, insert the {{Personalization}} variable into your email text where you want to include custom personalized sentences.
To add a variable in email editor:
Click on Variable in the toolbar, then select the specific variable you need from the dropdown menu. Each variable corresponds to default and custom prospect fields.
These variables get automatically replaced with your prospect’s data when the email is sent.
Additional email elements
There are also some other things that you should remember to add to your email content:
# 1 Add a sign-off
At the end of the email, add your name/company to introduce yourself.
#2 Add a signature
Add a signature with your contact info, like your business phone number or social media links. It helps your recipients see who’s emailing them and builds trust.
#3 Add the unsubscribe link
Always provide recipients with the option to opt out if they’re not interested.
You can add an unsubscribe link to your email content or to a signature so it is included automatically with every email sent.
If there’s no option to stop emails, people are more likely to mark your email as spam, which is bad for your sender reputation.
What’s next:
To find what resonates best with your target audience, be flexible with the emails you send:
- Continuously refine your email copies
- Create email copy variations where you change one email component.
- Test different variants using A/B tests to see what makes a difference.
- Try different personalization and value offers to determine what works best for your audience.
With Snov.io’s A/B test feature, you can systematically test email variants to determine which ones generate the most engagement.
Learn more on how to run A/B tests →
Get ready for the final and exciting step – launch your automated email campaign!
Continue to:
How to launch a converting campaign →
Elevate your cold email writing skills to the next level with these additional resources:
Join Cold emailing course on Udemy →
If you encounter any uncertainties or questions not covered in this article, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at help@snov.io. We are committed to supporting you at every stage of your journey.
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