Why your intro sucks, and how to improve the response rate.

I am going to show you how you can improve your response rate to your initial emails.

The vast majority of business people need an online slap to make them realise they are contributing more and more to the wall of drivel and ruining the passage of useful information with their stab in the dark ‘please buy from me, consider us, etc. <yawn>

When Tim Berners-Lee created the super information highway, he probably slept well at night believing his legacy would be to improve the way businesses chat with one another and open up effective communications to marry up business and improve the world as a whole. I often wonder if he gets emails with blind stabs in the dark trying to sell stuff he doesn’t want or need.

Does spam work? Well yes, but only if you have trillions of emails, and like many things if you strip down the agents and the people in between the email and the sender, there will probably be a few top people with the big lists, gleaned from years of experience and they probably make a lot of money from the 0.0000000001% (probably) response rates. Sadly, for everyone else, the rest of the us are labouring under the misapprehension that spamming works. So for that reason, spam isn’t going away any day soon.

How to send an email to a new prospect and get a much better response?

Resist the urge to sell. Yes, I know that sounds counter intuitive; you have a product and service and you are online to sell, but don’t do it!

Selling is just like dating; do you get your ‘real long-term intentions’ on the first date? Well sometimes some of us do, but it is rare and more often than not you don’t create a worthwhile and wholesome long-term relationship from it. It’s just shallow!

The first thing you need is trust and there are volumes written on how to develop trust and, like breaking down a beautiful poem into miters and figures of speech, it comes naturally to people who have something worth selling and truly believe in the quality of their offering. So make sure you believe in what you sell. If you don’t, the buyer will see through you in the first few minutes.

To get to make the first meeting online, you have to become a person of trust and ascend the wall of doom, and then not be stabbed by the sentries when you get there. The best way is to come with an offering! Did you remember to bring an offering?

Better to bang on the door of the castle with a basket of fruit and fine ale for the King. You will have more chance of getting in that way.

Go the extra mile. Read and research about your prospect first, see if you know anyone who could become a customer for them, or can you see a way to improve their business with a great tip or a seminar they may like to go to? Even better, maybe you can get them a good rate on the door with your contacts. Tell them about a great networking event where you could introduce them to your contacts. If they have a charity think of a way you could help them altruistically.

Start with this approach, and you will see a massive improvement in the response rate to your first ‘reach out’ emails that the vast majority of you have been using.

Here is an example you can use where I have told the prospect I know a way of free branding for their business. (Replace with whatever you have to offer them first):

Email Heading: If I knew a free way to brand your business for free would you be interested?

Hi <their name>

Excuse the unusual approach of offering to help your business. There’s nothing in this for me, I just know a way to help you brand your business more effectively starting from a very affordable FREE!

We can add your business to our sales leads directories and once published we can share your business across 500,000 real people on social media just for joining.

You can actually join this online directory FREE and they also provide sales leads within your category of business. The team at leads4biz are prolific Digital Marketers and help thousands of business grow their online presence online each day, and I just thought about you!

I will follow up with you at <time> to see how this has helped you.

What are you waiting for? It’s FREE! 

Best Regards

<your name>

This type of email gives you the power to follow up and always maintain that power. You tell them when you get back to them because you never say, “Please get back to me” as we all know, they rarely do!

Remember give without thinking (or at the very least) appear to be giving and the universe always pays you back.