Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Sales Email Needs Critiquing

Posted by Anonymous on 6/24/2009 at 10:06 AM ET 250 Points
Hello All,

I work at a Security Consulting firm and my target market consists of IT reps, IT managers, and company executives. I have been using the below template to email my targets, and I always follow up with a call. But out of 30 people I've only received 3 return emails. Could you all critique my email and possibly tell me what I can do better. Thanks in advance.

Peter Tran
--------

Good Afternoon Name,

This is Peter Tran from _ _ Consultants. You spoke with one of our representatives at the Sapphire Conference and I would like to follow up with you.

WHO WE ARE

Our company specializes in securing critical business data within the SAP system. Our security design strategy and products reduces security administration costs, improves Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, simplifies approvals, and prevents internal frauds. I would like to schedule a brief conference call so I can identify your challenges and see if I can add value by solving those challenges.

INDUSTRY COST SAVINGS

According to the Certified Fraud Examiners study (provided in attachment), US companies lost an average of 7% of their revenue in 2008 due to fraud. From 2002-2007, several employees of one of Mexico’s largest utility companies embezzled approximately $60M by creating fraudulent vendors, circumventing processes, approving payments, and issued checks directly from the SAP system. Not only were they able to easily access the system, they were to complete this task without being tracked in any way shape or form. Our APM and BioLock technology has the capability of indentifying, stopping, and preventing such incidents from happening.

That company now relies on _ _ CONSULTANTS to protect their SAP system for less than .5% of their $60M loss.

MORE INFORMATION

Please share the attached documents with your teams and send us your preferred time slots for a brief call. In the meantime please check out our website: www._________.com.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me at _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ . Just in case this email does not find its way to you, I will call you on Tomorrow (June 18th) to discuss your goals. If tomorrow is inconvenient for you, please specify a better time in which we can speak. Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind Regards,
Peter Tran

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by mlang on 6/24/2009 at 10:30 AM Accepted
    Hi Peter - The first thing that really jumps out at me is that your email is too "I" centric.

    Readers are typically most interested in reading about themselves. You need to answer right away "what's in it for me" from your reader's perspective in order for him to read further.

    If you do not have a particular pain to address for this specific reader, perhaps an opening such as "Thank you for your interest in securing your critical business data with -- Consultants". As you learned at the Saphire Conference; our security design strategy and products can help you reduce security administration costs, improve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, simplify approvals, and prevent internal frauds. I would like to schedule a brief conference call so I can identify your challenges and see if I can add value by solving those challenges."

    You may also want to look into the way your leads were collected and qualified at the conference. If leads were poorly qualified, that will affect your response rate as well.

    Hope this helps
  • Posted by Harry Hallman on 6/24/2009 at 10:44 AM Accepted
    I agree with Milang. I would put the benefits up front and I would shorten the email. Make the bennie more hard hitting.

    I would give them a better reason to call you. A free evaluation might work and so on.

    A lot of information you have in the email is probably the same as they received at the show and on your web site. Give them something new.

    Hope it works for you.
  • Posted by michael on 6/24/2009 at 11:19 AM Accepted
    Peter,
    Good points already made, but just a few things:

    If they spoke with one of your reps at the Sapphire conference and didn't uncover a need...you have a bigger problem.

    If they DID, then your email should be very specific with the call to action being an appointment. By the way, 10% isn't too bad.

    Your email is very long. If it can't fit in the preview pane of Outlook....it's too long. You're not selling anything but the next contact. You don't need that much space.

    Most of what you told them is on your website which they would rather visit anyway.

    Hope that helps.

    Michael

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 6/24/2009 at 11:34 AM Accepted
    I think your email is too long. It looks too salesy. It's not as customer-focused or benefits-focused as it should be.

    As your list is small, these emails can and should be very personal.

    I'd turn your success story into a stand-alone case study and offer that up.

    Email #1: Hi, may I send you a case study?
    Email #2: Case study (link to PDF)
    Email #3: What did you think of the case study?

    Also, if your prospect list is only 30 people long, you should probably be relying less on email and more on the phone. Of course, there's no reason you can't use both.
  • Posted on 6/24/2009 at 11:40 AM Author
    Thank you all very much for your input. I will work hard to incorporate your tips into my email and will post a new updated version soon. Once again I greatly appreciate the advice.

    Sincerely,
    Peter Tran
  • Posted on 6/24/2009 at 11:46 AM Author
    In response to your advice I've listed my answers below:

    mlang: I received this list of prospects from my manager who gathered them from all of the associates that were at the conference and also from business cards that were dropped in our box. I'm pretty sure at least half of them were very poorly qualified so I decided to call them right after I sent the email to ensure I wasn't wasting time on dead leads.

    Everyone else: I see how my email is pretty long winded. I've opted to take out the Industry cost savings and put the benefits up top.

    Thanks again to everyone for the input.

    Peter
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