Following up on emails is tedious. The email pros at Yesware have discovered that over 70% of their users’ sales conversations stop after a single unanswered message. Although, only 30% of people who would eventually respond actually responded after the first message.
As rude as it might feel, polite badgering is the single best way to improve your sales numbers. In a world with this many distractions, one email won’t close the deal. That’s why companies using automated follow-up emails see their email marketing ROI balloon compared to companies that do not use email automation.
Rules for Effective Follow-up Emails
Sending a good follow-up email is all about persistence. First of all, keep sending your message to the client, and it will eventually get through. Don’t forget that it takes multiple emails for most prospects to reply.
Simplicity: An automated follow-up email shouldn’t be the same as a generic newsletter or marketing email. You’ll have the best results with a message that doesn’t look or read like an automated message. Plain text and single-paragraph emails have great results. There’s no need for HTML or images to over-complicate your purpose. Remember, the ideal length of a sales email is between 50 and 125 words.
Writing: Above all else, write your messages with correct grammar and spelling. Anyone with an email address knows how many spam messages you receive with horrific punctuation and ghastly spelling. Take care, or find yourself in the Spam folder.
Sender: The emails should come from the same salesperson that made the initial touch, encouraging a rapport between the lead and the salesperson that contacted them. Also, make sure not to use an obviously automated sender like donotreply@bademails.biz.
Personalization: Personalize the body of your email using your email provider’s variables. At a minimum, use variables to add the recipient’s name and swap in relevant details or information. If you have an Enterprise account with Zoho CRM, you can build personalized email templates quickly and easily.
Subject: Research shows that emails with personalized subjects are opened less frequently than emails with no personalization at all. While message-only personalization yields the highest open rates. Folks might consider personalized subject lines to be manipulative. However, words like “account,” “campaign,” and “next” in the subject have been shown to increase open rates. Keep in mind that subject length has virtually no effect.
Setting Up Automated Follow-up Emails with Zoho CRM
Enterprise users can use Zoho CRM’s autoresponder feature to set up automated follow-up emails. You can send an automated follow-up email with any email template you’ve created, but you’ll likely want to create one specifically for nurturing leads.
- Open the Leads or Contacts tab.
- Click More Actions > Autoresponders.
- Click Create Autoresponder.
- Fill out the autoresponder form, including name, assignment, custom view, folder, and type.
- Name: the name of the autoresponder form.
- Assignment: by default, this will be the creator of the autoresponder, and can be set to any owner of the records.
- Custom View: set up the recipient list for the autoresponder.
- Select Folder: choose where the autoresponder template will be stored.
- Type: static autoresponders send on a fixed date. Dynamic autoresponders send after a time interval set by the creator based on previous activities with the lead or contact.
- Select the email template to use, then enter the From and Reply to email addresses.
- Click Save to finalize.
Dynamic vs Static Emails
In almost every case you’ll want to create a dynamic autoresponder, rather than a static one. With a dynamic autoresponder, you can set the email to send a few days after your initial prospecting email. Static emails are better for sales and event announcements, where the specific date is integral to the message.
To learn more about how email scheduling options with Zoho CRM, check out their autoresponder scenarios for real-world examples.
