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Would you send out 400 emails daily to prospects?

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Would you send out 400 emails daily to your prospects?

That’s exactly what an IT consulting firm in India has been doing. However, results have been mixed. First, the firm has been receiving a 40% bounce back rate. And second, the sales team has been complaining that the prospects who have responded to their emails have been weak. As a result of these problems, the firm posted an inquiry on a LinkedIn sales discussion board seeking advice.

Here is my advice –

Stop sending out 400 emails daily:

It’s one thing to send out emails if you are offering trial subscriptions to niche publications, or selling design services to marketing directors – provided that you include an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of your email. But when you are dealing with prospects who need complex services and products, such as IT or telecommunications employees, you are only hurting your company’s reputation by sending so many unsolicited emails.

The more complex the sale, the more consultative you have to be with your clients. Prospects in the IT, telecommunications or similar industries are turned off by salespeople – they are seeking peers and consultants, not someone who is only interested in doing product dumps.

Personalize and Customize: 

If you must feel the need to send out so many emails, try to personalize and customize each one. Sending out an email with a salutation of “Dear Sir or Madam:” isn’t going to cut it. And sending out an email with the person’s first name highlighted in a different color than the rest of your text screams “merge spam” – i.e., you are so concerned about sending out tons of emails that you don’t take the time to ensure a person’s name is the same color and font as the rest of your text.

Don’t just send out emails:

Sending out a bunch of emails isn’t like throwing mud to the wall and hoping that some of it will stick. You have to be more creative. That means making cold calls, leaving voice mail messages and maybe direct marketing pieces to larger prospects. In advertising, there is an old saying that goes like this “advertise multiple ways on multiple days.” When it comes to generating new business, you should be “contacting prospects in multiple ways on different days.”

For example, I know of one Northern Virginia software company that sends out at least 6 emails to the same prospects over a period of time. That’s ridiculous. You need to mix up your attempts. While studies have shown that you need to make at least 6 to 8 attempts per prospect, that doesn’t mean spamming them to death. As I mentioned above, use a different variety of contact methods. For example, some prospects may not respond well to emails but may respond better to a phone call, or a direct marketing piece. Test. See what works and doesn’t work.

Selling isn’t sending out a bunch of emails. Selling is engagement. You have to be more proactive if you want to be successful.

5 Roadblocks preventing clients from receiving your emails

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One of the biggest challenges of sending B2B (Business to Business) emails is ensuring that the prospect on the other end will actually receive it. With so many companies (and individuals for that matter) being flooded by emails on a daily basis, safeguards have been placed to prevent unsolicited emails from coming through.

As a marketing or salesperson who wants to increase your bottom line, what are you supposed to do? Sure, you can make cold calls. Nothing wrong with that. But with voicemails, caller IDs, and receptionists (gatekeepers) blocking your way, cold calling just isn’t your only option these days.

Yes, you could send direct marketing pieces. Maybe a nice card with a handwritten message enclosing your business card. Or, you could send swag like a mouse pad or magnet with your company’s contact information and logo. But there is no guarantee that your prospect will read your information much less open up the envelope.

So what to do? You must use a combination of tactics. Cold calls, Check. Leaving voicemail messages, Check. Sending direct marketing pieces, Check. And….also sending emails. Check.

Real Magnet, a marketing automation company, outlines several challenges that you face when sending emails to your prospects. In the video below, the Bethesda based company mentioned 4 hurdles we all have to overcome –

1). Too many domains – while B2C  (Business to Customers) clients only have a few major domains, e.g., aol.com or gmail.com, B2B clients have thousands of different domains. Making sure you have the right domain is a major task in itself.

2). Spam filters – even if you have the right email address with the correct domain, you still must break through spam filters. There are many spam filters on the market, including Microsoft Exchange, Barracuda, and McAfee, to name just a few.

3). Capacity varies – While most B2C clients will accept emails quickly, B2B clients may have strict limitations on how many emails they will accept at a given time. This is especially true for large and popular companies that you are trying to target.

4). Message Placement – even if your email reaches the prospect, there is no guarantee that it will reach the inbox. In some cases, your email may end up in a spam or quarantine folder. I dealt with this situation firsthand; for example, even if both the prospect and I know each other, and have been speaking to one another, I would still find my emails ending up in his spam folder. After a few phone calls, the prospect would eventually adjust his server to accept my future emails.

And I will add one more problem below –

5). Using the wrong email address – It happens. We think we wrote down the correct email, but then we receive a bounce back. No worries. Just review your notes and resend the email again.

While Red Magnet is obviously promoting its own tool, I believe the video below does a great job discussing in more detail the problems we all face when sending emails.

Please watch the video below –