In today’s world, the feeling most have when they get an email response from someone outside of their usual suspects list is similar to that a tourist (namely me) gets when seeing a baby manatee in the South’s open water in May.
Now, trust me, that is a GREAT feeling.
If you are adopting some form of outreach initiative into your sales and marketing to introduce yourself to people you do not know yet but would like to know better you probably don’t get the number of responses you’re hoping for.
The statistics suggest that this is the norm.
“Phew”. I hear you say. “It’s not just me”.
That’s true. However, what would it mean to you AND your business if the response rate increased?
We have an outreach strategy to continually introduce ourselves to people that can help our businesses grow. Potential referral partners, clients, press mediums and more.
The Common Mistakes
Oftentimes people are guilty of, well, being people that are self absorbed and full of assumption.
They write long winded, non-specific, assumptive garbage that even a person without hundreds of other ‘requests for attention’ would struggle to rationalize a response.
There is a lack of thought and genuine authenticity about the whole thing.
There is a serious case of the ‘Me’s’ that generally creeps in.
I have a few philosophies in life and one I stick by, daily, is ‘treat others like you want to be treated yourself’. Maybe it’s because I’m British. We are generally very apologetic and want others to think good of us. Seriously, I had NO idea about this until I last went back to England. Within 15 minutes of getting off the plane I had at least 5 people apologize before I had even left the terminal. With this national ‘condition’ I am not sure how we “Won two world wars and one World Cup”. (That’s a song by the way.)
So, to put it right and to increase email response rates we need to be aware of what is generally being done ineffectively and make some simple modifications to get the results we desire.
5 Tips For Increasing Email Response Rates
- Have a well thought out introduction of you and your business
- Make it personal and illustrate that you know the person you are reaching out to. (Get rid of the “Me’s”, Doctors orders.)
- Make it relevant. Use points 1 and 2 to show that you have already thought of a reason as to why you are approaching this person
- Illustrate a next step and call to action
- Have different mediums you can touch them through – connect with the person on other social channels or even use snail mail
- Bonus Tip – keep it short, simple and treat others like you would like to be treated yourself
Email will continue to be a useful medium for communication, even with the rise of social. Open rates are increasing because of the increasing use of mobile devices so be thoughtful in your outreach to increase response rates.