Did you know that over 90% of sales emails end up getting ignored? Don’t let your outreach end up in the trash with the rest of them. Instead of giving up when the going gets hard, check for simple mistakes in your outreach strategy that might be sabotaging your success. Read on to discover the […]
Did you know that over 90% of sales emails end up getting ignored? Don’t let your outreach end up in the trash with the rest of them.
Instead of giving up when the going gets hard, check for simple mistakes in your outreach strategy that might be sabotaging your success.
Read on to discover the top 10 email cadence mistakes you should avoid.
1. Underestimating subject lines
We all get a ton of emails, so you know how it goes. You just glance at the sender and subject to decide if you’re going to open it or ignore it – a decision that only takes seconds.
An email subject line is your big chance to grab someone’s attention –and quick – before they move on. So if you don’t put the right amount of thought into that subject line, you could be missing out.
It’s a mistake Clinton Patterson, Lusha’s VPo f Global Business Development, has seen many times. “It doesn’t matter how good your content is – if they don’t open your email, it’s all been for nothing.”
Most people, he says, spend a ton of time crafting the most perfect email with a beautiful value proposition and a link to a landing page. But they neglect the subject line and all that work was worth nothing in the end. “The biggest mistake everyone makes is that they don’t think about what is going to get an open on an email.”
2. Using misleading subject lines
Ok, so we’ve established that you need an attention-grabbing subject line. But be sure not to take it too far.
Clinton warns against practicing “unethical tactics, like promising free money or Taylor Swift tickets – trust me, I’ve seen all this.”
“You might have got more opens, but then everyone thinks you’re unethical because you got people to open your email under false pretenses with bait and switch. It’s not about open rates, it’s about whether they read your email and responded to you. The point of a good subject line is that you don’t get read if you don’t get opened, so it all has to work. But you don’t get paid on open rates.”
Nimrod Shaked, SMB Sales Manager at Lusha, agrees. And it’s not just a turn-off for potential customers. It can also keep them from seeing what you send in the first place. “Try to minimize as much as you can the use of certain marketing wording that comes up against blockers. Some words might be blocked by the company security settings or even Google.”
3. Not having a CTA
After using the wrong subject lines, Clinton says the next biggest mistake is not having a call to action in your email.
“It doesn’t have to mean something like, ‘You should call me now,’ but you need to tell them what to do next.”
And “reach out to me if I can help you,” isn’t good enough, Clinton says. “They never reach out to you, by the way. There has to be some more direct instruction. A call to action would be like ‘I’ll reach out to you next week and see if we can find a time to meet’ or ‘click here to schedule some time with me.’ If you send an email, tell them what they’re supposed to do next and control that process.”
For an earlier email in the cadence when you’re still warming up a prospect, that CTA could even be as simple as providing a link that you suggest they read. Just make sure you’re clear on what you want them to do next.
4. Sounding too salesy
Don’t overwhelm your prospects with pitching.
“Everybody loves to buy, but nobody likes to be sold to,” says Clinton. “If an email is pitchy, you’ve created your first objection, which is this is just another sales email.”
Instead of overworking the email to produce something that sounds slick, take a more honest, direct approach. Introduce yourself and why you’re reaching out, and offer helpful information and a connection.
“The opportunity is to differentiate yourself from all those other sales-pitchy, marketing, creative emails, and do something a little more honest and direct.”
5. Limiting outreach to email only
Any sales cadence has to include multiple touches. Especially for pure outbound, “which is brutal,” says Nimrod. “You need a lot of touchpoints to get a decision-maker’s attention. That’s including emails, phone calls, LinkedIn connections – every touchpoint you can think of.”
Your email should only be 4-5 of those touchpoints, according to Nimrod. Then build up the rest with other methods. “If they don’t pay attention to your email the first four or five times, they’re just not going to.”
George Nammour, Director of Sales at Lusha, is a also big fan of making calls. “Don’t just rely on your emails,” he says. “You should balance it off and make calls too.”
6. Letting your messaging get stale
It’s tempting to write those emails once and wash your hands of them forever. But that’s a big mistake.
Clinton’s seen it before: “People create these beautiful messages but never revisit them. People too often set it and forget it. It all becomes out of date.”
But things change quickly in sales, whether it’s new offerings that shift your value proposition or a fresh go-to-market strategy you’re supposed to employ. When changes happen in your sales process, don’t forget to update the emails in your outbound cadences.
And don’t just wait for major changes to update those emails, either. Ideally, you should be monitoring and testing: are there certain subject lines that perform better? Links that prospects click more? Instead of sending out your emails with hope and a prayer and then never peeking under the hood again, keep your cadences fresh by testing and tweaking your content.
7. Sending from an impersonal email address
Your prospects want to read emails from real people, not some mysterious, unnamed figurehead.
As George explains: “Reps will send out emails from a company email like [email protected] instead of [email protected]. But you want to make that personal connection with prospects. People want to be sold to by people, not the company.”
So make sure to set up your cadences so that even with automation, prospects will receive an email from you. They’ll be more inclined to respond if they know exactly who they’re talking to.
8. Pulling people out of a cadence too soon
While you want to act fast when testing and changing your cadence, you want to take a slower approach to nurturing prospects.
One of George’s key pieces of advice: “Don’t pull people out of a cadence too soon.”
Say you’ve sent an email or two and you’re not getting a nibble. That doesn’t necessarily mean those prospects are a bad fit or even that they’re not interested.
It takes an average of 8 touches to get a meeting with a prospect, so don’t pull them out of cadences early if you’re not getting the results you hoped for. Instead, let them go through the whole cadence and build up a good data set before you decide whether it’s productive or not.
9. Making your emails too long
We live in an attention economy: getting a prospect’s attention is tough, and you’re competing with everything else on their phones and computers.
“People are getting 200 emails a day,” says Nimrod, and “an email from someone who’s trying to sell to you is not always going to be top priority.”
If the emails in your sales cadence take more than a few seconds to read, your prospects are going to ignore them. Instead, aim for something as short and as simple as possible. A good rule of thumb? Something your prospect can read from a notification on their phone without scrolling.
10. Sending wrongly targeted emails
You’ve spent so much time creating the perfect cadence. You’re testing it and refining it. But if it lands in the wrong person’s inbox, then all the fine-tuning in the world can’t save that email cadence.
That’s why you need to use Lusha. Use our filters to find prospects that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP). Our database focuses on getting you direct contact information for decision-makers you won’t find anywhere else.
And now your prospecting is even easier and more efficient with Lusha Engage, our new, free email sequencing tool. Build your prospecting lists in the Lusha platform and loop them into an email cadence– all in the same place.
