Sales Emails: How to Get More Engagement with AI

Sales emails are important to the sales process. They help generate new leads, book meetings, and close deals when done right. Effective emails also enable sales reps to engage prospects at scale, nurture relationships, and drive revenue growth.

However, crafting emails people will open and respond to remains a persistent challenge. This is because most emails don't stand out of a crowded inbox.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to grab attention with compelling subject lines, structure persuasive email body copy, and follow up correctly. We’ll also cover how AI can help scale personalized, high-converting cold email campaigns. With these tips, you’ll be able to write sales emails that inspire action and accelerate your sales cycle.

Benefits of Effective Sales Emails

Increased open and response rates: A compelling sales email subject line and preview text will get more prospects to open and engage with your email. Personalizing it can further improve response rates.
More qualified leads and sales opportunities: Persuasive email copy helps you connect with prospects when they are in the right stage of the buying journey. This leads to more sales meetings booked and opportunities in the pipeline.
Higher conversion rates and closed deals: Following up at the right times and providing the information prospects need helps push more opportunities over the finish line. Effective sales emails directly impact your win rates.
Expanded reach in the market: Email enables you to scale your outreach from existing contacts to new prospects efficiently. This increases your market reach and the number of potential deals.

Anatomy of a High-Converting Sales Email

A high-converting sales email has several important elements that work together to grab attention, engage the reader, and inspire action. Let's break down the key components.

Subject Line

The subject line is one of the most critical parts of your sales email, as it determines whether the email will be opened or ignored. Follow these best practices when crafting sales email subject lines:

Create urgency or curiosity - Subject lines that create a sense of urgency or spark curiosity will drive higher open rates. For example: "Closing tomorrow - act now" or "A quick question about [company]".
Personalize - Personalized subject lines perform much better than generic ones. Include the prospect's name, company, role, or location to show the email is tailored to them.
Keep it short and scannable - Long subject lines often get cut off, especially on mobile, making short subject lines ideal. Keep them under 50 characters so the entire subject line is visible.
Use brackets or emojis - Brackets around a number (e.g. [3 Tips]) or emojis catch attention in the prospect's inbox. But don't overdo it.
Test different options - There's no one-size-fits-all subject line. Test different urgency levels, personalization, and wording to see what resonates most with your audience.
Avoid spam trigger words - Stay away from words like "free", "act now", "sale" etc. as they can trigger spam filters.
Focus on value - Rather than hype, focus the subject line on the value the prospect will get from the email content.

Email Opener

You only have a few seconds to catch your prospect's interest before they move on. So, your opening line is your chance to grab the reader's interest and get them to read the email. Some best practices for opening sales emails include:

Start with a compelling question or statement that relates to their specific pain point. For example, "Do you struggle with decreasing sales conversion rates?"
Reference something unique about their company or role. "As the VP of Sales at Acme Co, I'm sure you're under pressure to hit your targets this quarter."
Provide a specific compliment on their work. "I loved your presentation on optimizing the buyer journey at the Sales Summit."
Highlight a shared connection. "John Smith suggested I reach out as you're the perfect person to discuss improving sales productivity."
Speak to recent news or events about their company. "I saw Acme Co just raised a $20 million Series B funding round. Congratulations!"
Offer an irresistible preview of what's to come. "I have a few proven techniques to double your sales conversion rates this quarter."

Email Body

The body of your sales email needs to clearly articulate the problem, present your solution, and drive the reader to take action with a clear call-to-action. Here are some tips for structuring your email body effectively:

Identify the Prospect's Pain Points

Research your prospect's company, role, and industry to uncover their challenges and pain points. Understanding their struggles will help you empathize and tailor your messaging.
Ask questions to learn more about their specific problems. This shows you care and makes your solution more compelling.
Highlight the negative consequences of not solving their problem to create urgency. Make them realize change is imperative.

Present Your Solution as the Answer

Show how your product or service directly addresses their pain points. Focus on how you can help them.
Use metrics, data, and case studies to back up your claims with social proof and credibility.
Share specific examples of how you've solved this problem for other existing customers.

Craft a Clear, Actionable CTA

Tell them exactly what you want them to do - book a demo, start a free trial, schedule a call, etc.
Make the CTA prominent using buttons, contrasting colors, or bold text.
Reinforce the benefits of taking action - emphasize how your solution will alleviate their pains.
Add urgency with time-bound offers or limited availability to inspire action.

Email Closer

The closing of your sales email is just as important as the opening. You need to end your email in a way that motivates the prospect to take action.

Do this in the following ways:

Summarize the value proposition: Quickly recap the key benefits you outlined and how your solution can help the prospect address their pain point.
Add a sense of urgency: For example, "Let's connect next week to discuss further." This creates urgency and a deadline for the prospect to respond.
Include a clear CTA: Tell them exactly what you want them to do - book a meeting, schedule a quick call, sign up for a free trial, etc. Make sure the CTA stands out visually.
Limit choices: Don't give too many options. Stick to one or two clear CTAs so they don't suffer analysis paralysis.
Be appreciative: Thank them for their time and consideration. People like to feel valued.
Make it personal: Close with your name, company, and contact details so they can easily follow up.
Inspire action: Use action words like "call", "click", "try". Avoid passive language.
Craft a professional email signature: Your email signature is prime real estate for building trust and credibility. Include your full name, title, company name, website (optional), and contact info (phone number, email address). Consider adding social media links (LinkedIn is a safe bet) if appropriate for your industry and company culture.

Crafting a Persuasive Sales Email

To write a sales email, start by thoroughly researching and understanding your target audience. What are their key pain points and challenges? How could your product or service address those needs? By identifying your prospects' top frustrations, you can tailor your sales pitch directly to their situation.

Leverage storytelling techniques in your email to build trust and rapport with prospects. For example, explain how a customer similar to them was struggling with X issue and, after implementing your solution, saw tremendous improvements in Y and Z. Use specific data or testimonials as social proof to back up your claims. This narrative format makes your message more memorable and compelling.

Experiment with different email subject lines, structures, and copy. You can continually refine and optimize your sales emails based on the data-driven insights you get. The key is crafting messages that speak directly to your prospects' needs.

Following Up Effectively

Many times, your lead won't respond to the initial sales email. You need to follow up multiple times to form a mutual connection and get a response. Here's how to do it without annoying prospects:

When to follow up: Typically, you'll want to follow up 3-5 days after your initial outreach if you haven't heard back. This gives them time to review your email without waiting too long.
How often: Avoid following up more than 2-3 times total. If you still don't get a response after a few follow-up emails, it's usually best to move on.

Follow-up Sales Email Template

Subject line: Checking in on [service] proposal

Hi [first name],

I wanted to check in to make sure you received the proposal I sent for [service]. Let me know if you have any other questions! I'm happy to clarify or provide more details.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best, [Your name]

Optimizing for Better Open and Response Rates

Here are some key strategies for optimizing open and response rates:

Email Deliverability

Avoid spam filters by sending from a reputable domain and IP address. Using an email verification service can help.
Ensure your emails are authenticated using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols. This builds trust and improves inbox placement.
Segment your lists and send relevant, personalized content to engage recipients. Mass blasting generic emails leads to your emails landing in the spam folder.
Monitor your sender reputation and make adjustments if your domain or IP gets blacklisted.

Split Testing

A/B test various email components like subject lines, send times, email copy, and call-to-action placement.
Try different subject lines: urgency vs. benefit-focused, short vs. long, using the recipient's name, asking a question, etc.
Test sending at different times of day/week to see when open rates are highest for your audience.
Iterate on email copy to identify messaging that resonates best with your prospects.

Email Tracking and Analytics

Use email tracking software to monitor open rates, clickthroughs, and unsubscribes.
Analyze this data to identify high-performing subject lines, content, and send times.
Continuously refine your emails based on response rate data to optimize results over time.
Track sales pipeline metrics to correlate email performance with downstream revenue impact.

Taking a data-driven approach and continuously testing and optimizing your sales emails will lead to noticeable improvements in open rates, clickthroughs, and, most importantly, sales conversions.

Another way to create emails people open and respond to is by using AI for sales.

Challenges Before AI

Before AI, sales teams struggled to craft effective sales emails at scale.

Personalizing outreach was manual and time-consuming. Reps had to research each prospect individually to find relevant details for customizing their emails. As a result, most outreach emails were generic, with little meaningful personalization beyond adding the prospect's name and company.

This lack of personalization led to low open and response rates. Prospects could easily identify generic outreach emails and were less likely to engage with them.

Since reps could only personalize so many emails manually each day, they were limited in the number of prospects they could reach out to.

There was also no automation in the process. A sales rep had to manually track their outreach campaigns in spreadsheets. Following up required sorting through the spreadsheet to check when initial emails were sent and crafting each follow-up email from scratch. This slowed them down and made effective follow-up difficult.

Overall, sales professionals found it difficult to engage prospects and book meetings at scale due to the time-intensive, manual processes involved with crafting and sending sales emails. The lack of automation and personalization left many opportunities on the table.

That's where Copy.ai Workflows, the first-ever GTM AI platform, comes in.

Leveraging Copy.ai Workflows

By leveraging Copy.ai Workflows, your sales team can:

Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Eliminate time-consuming tasks and focus on high-impact activities that drive revenue.
Improve Sales and Marketing Alignment: Leverage data-driven insights to personalize outreach and tailor marketing messages for optimal lead nurturing.
Increase Lead Conversion Rates: Convert more leads to customers with personalized communication that resonates with their needs.
Optimize Outbound Sales Automation: Free up SDRs from manual outreach tasks and allow them to focus on building relationships and closing deals.
Boost Sales Team Efficiency: Streamline workflows and automate repetitive tasks, allowing reps to spend more time selling.

In essence, Copy.ai workflows help automate tedious tasks so your sales team can ditch the busy work and focus on closing more deals. Here's how.

Prospecting on Autopilot

Automated Research & Data Enrichment: Never waste hours on manual research again. Use Copy.ai to gather intel on prospects from LinkedIn URLs, enriching your CRM with valuable data and identifying potential use cases for your product.
AI-powered lead scoring: Copy.ai workflows can analyze a specific prospect and assign a score based on their fit, saving you time and resources.
Personalized cold outreach at scale: Now, you can craft personalized cold emails at scale. Copy.ai uses the gathered prospect information to craft personalized outreach sequences with unique subject lines, greetings, and talking points for each contact.

Persona Research & Use Case Ideation

Craft Buyer Personas: Use Copy.ai's chat tool to understand your target audience and build detailed buyer personas.
Product-Specific Use Cases: You can also use GTM AI to brainstorm innovative use cases for your product or service based on each persona's needs.

CRM Enrichment & Data Hygiene

Copy.ai keeps your CRM clean and organized. It automatically updates contact information based on call transcripts and public data, ensuring your SDRs have the most up-to-date intel at their fingertips. No more manual data entry, just clean, actionable insights to help with customer acquisition.

Final Thoughts

Writing sales emails that convert is crucial for revenue growth but can be challenging without the right strategies and tools. You can significantly increase open rates, prospects' responses, and sales opportunities by using a compelling subject line, carefully structuring your email body, using persuasive language, and diligently following up.

A GTM tech stack with tools like Copy.ai workflows is invaluable for streamlining the sales email process at scale.

Workflows enable you to personalize outreach at scale and set up automated follow-up sequences, thus improving productivity.

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