Accept it or not. Email marketing is not going anywhere but becoming stronger than ever before. As a result, more and more companies are coming up with proactive follow up email networking strategies to make the most out of it.
As per stats, 4.48 billion people currently use email. By 2025, this figure is expected to increase to 4.73 billion. That means the relevance of customer service emails is going to increase in the future. Check out the most common email follow-up errors, so you can refer to what to write in a follow-up email.
Read more: Why is a Call To Action important in Email Marketing?
5 Common Mistakes in a follow-up email for sales
A proper follow-up mail for sales is all about feeling the pulse of your prospects and tailoring the strategy accordingly. Unfortunately, that’s where most businesses fail. Here are the five common follow-up mail mistakes made by companies:
1. Key Elements Hidden in Long Text
It’s quite common to write lengthy texts for the follow-up email after phone call. But customers, especially nowadays, are not interested in reading long messages. Therefore, you must have a proper plan on what to focus on and what to leave with just a mention. Even if these are crucial elements to include in your follow-ups, be careful that the wording doesn’t overshadow the primary point of your communication.
- Highlight crucial information by using bold text.
- Using bullet points or numbers to break up your thoughts
- Make it easy for them to uncover the key points before clicking away.
- Always make sure the content given is pertinent, helpful, and eye-catching
- Keep it short and ignore the long stories during your first engagement
Try drafting the identical sales email many times, editing it for clarity, tone, and verb tensile strength each time. It is always better to refer to the most effective follow up email samples before getting started. Make sure that the mail copy is short and catchy. Understand that they could be busy, but highlight how important your meeting, or idea, is anyway.
2. No Value Is Added to the Email
To be clear, your prospect probably doesn’t bother that they haven’t responded to you. So, create a brief and concise follow-up email subject line that makes it easy for the recipient to understand. Ensure that each email you send delivers real value to prospects for link-building or potential clients to avoid making this typical error.
- Offer them something helpful or educate them on a topic they are unaware of.
- Provide them with advice or a best practice
- Provide a link to a thought-provoking survey or business news article
- Put them in contact with one of your specialists
- Distribute a free utility or source
- Ask them to attend a webinar
In this manner, you’re offering them a cause to reply and a motive to anticipate your future email.
3. Not Enough Personalization in Your Emails
The most common error people make is that they create and send the same follow-up email draft to recipients without customizing it for each recipient. The job title and business name are not considered personalization when generating templates, as everyone who contacts you is already aware of these.
Many studies demonstrate how personalizing your emails affects your open rates. Consider mentioning a fact about the recipient that demonstrates your diligence in your investigation. Here are some suggestions:
- Congratulate the person on a recent success.
- Look for a unique similarity.
- Emphasize your shared relationships.
- Craft allusions to a meeting or occasion that you both went to
- Bring up a parallel in your prior experiences, such as comparable employers, roles, etc.
The receiver must be addressed, catered to, and given value in your email.
4. Be Unique And Creative
Sending out follow-up emails with the same cliched wording as everyone else is another typical error. Be unique, try something new, and make an impression!
If your follow-ups aren’t working, feel free to adjust. Not all professional emails need to be taken so seriously. Bring in some humor and make your recipient giggle. Try experimenting and being unique in your messaging.
For instance, if you’re writing a follow-up email for sales, then include any success story that relates to the client’s needs. And for a follow-up email after a meeting, outline the main ideas and suggest actionable next steps. This helps set you apart from the competitors and will help the receiver remember your pitch and business.
5. Giving Up Too Soon
Yet another common mistake that many sales executives make is that they never follow up at all. Remember, sales is often a gradual process. The customer needs time to think, research, and perhaps even contact a stakeholder for confirmation. When it comes to high-value B2B transactions, the process may take even months to complete.
Always keep in mind that the recipients’ inboxes are jam-packed and they are busy. Giving up too soon is going to cause you to fall behind. If you send out a second follow-up email after no response, your chances of receiving a response increase to a great extent. With every follow-up, keep reiterating what you can do for the prospect.
But don’t be overly aggressive. If the customer does not respond after many emails, it’s time to take a long break. Then, re-target them during an offer sale or webinar.
Conclusion
The next time you write a follow-up mail on proposal, make sure to avoid these above common blunders. Put these strategies into practice, observe what works, and adjust your plan as needed. And that’s exactly why you need to have a granular view of all your sales data on a single platform.
Onstro CRM is an all-in-one software solution that can optimize your follow-up emails using customer data insights. You can get a complete picture of the progress of each customer through the sales pipeline so that you can send follow-up mails at the best time. Plus, it lets you access customer behavioral data to help you tailor your strategy. Contact us now!
