Lots of business development folks send sales emails to try to nurture prospects and increase sales.

After a while, though, if people aren’t replying to their sales emails, the whole idea of using them to keep leads warm goes cold.

They may not realize that 35-50% of buyers will choose the seller who responds first to their sales inquiry—so a quick response from them can act like the early bird that catches the worm.

Even though 47% of marketers believe email marketing is the most effective lead nurturing tool out there, 65% of marketers are not nurturing leads.

How to nurture prospects—and how to send interesting sales emails that people respond to—are skills that take some thought work and some practice (i.e., testing). In this article, we’ll share three sales email ideas you can use to help get prospects to reply to your sales-related emails.

1. Lose that “salesy” feeling

Your sales emails shouldn't sound or feel “salesy”—sounding pushy and one-dimensional or using the hard sell to make a sale. Your sales emails should nurture your leads.

A nurture email campaign does a lot for your sales bottom line, especially because it avoids “salesy.” Nurture emails can:

• Provide timely and consistent relevant communication to prospects.
• Generate more sales leads from those same prospects.
• Encourage referrals from existing prospects to create new lead generation.
• Help you learn more about your prospects and the things that interest them.
• Shorten your sales cycle.
• Build your credibility and trust as an expert in your field.
• Strengthen the marketing and sales relationship by increasing the quality of leads

Lose the salesy approach, and focus on your prospects. Find out what’s important to them. Solve their pain points. Keep it personal and relatable with writing that matches the voice of your branding.

2. Use the HubSpot Meetings link

According to HubSpot, leads only convert into paying customers after they have moved through at least 10 different lead-nurturing steps. But when it comes to effective calls to action, most sales folk want their prospect to contact them for more product information or a meeting as a result of reading their email.

To move your sales process forward, get meetings booked quickly and easily with Meetings, part of HubSpot’s all-in-one sales software. Through Meetings, you can create a team meetings link and share it with your prospects, embedding a nifty and convenient widget right into your email. Almost immediately, a prospect can choose a date and time that works best for everyone.

3. Record a personal message for your email

More than 50% of consumers today want to see videos from brands—more than any other type of content. Why not use video in your nurture email campaigns? Recording a custom video can super-personalize your sales message, and it’s not as difficult or expensive as you think.

Soapbox is a software program that lets you record, edit and share videos all by yourself. All you need is the Soapbox Chrome extension and a webcam to be on your way to solid video production. The company also offers the Soapbox Station, a plug-and-play studio with a camera, lights and a microphone to enhance the quality of your video recordings.

Including video thumbnails in your email marketing can dramatically increase your click-through rates, according to Wistia, the company that makes Soapbox. They even tested it. In one test, 40.83% more people engaged with the email that included a video thumbnail than without.

Once you have the technology, though, you still need to develop a great nurture message to record!

11outof11 for Email Marketing

When you want to get quality leads and increase sales with email nurture campaigns, connect with 11outof11. Request a complimentary call with an 11outof11 expert. Contact us to learn more.