Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Sales Emails

If you think email marketing is dead, think again! With the right strategy that ensures your emails grab attention and promote action, email marketing is still one of the most productive and cost-effective forms of selling. The key here is to do them right!

There are two main email marketing strategies: cold emailing and sales driven emails. The former can be explained as the equivalent to a cold call. This is when you email a recipient who you haven’t had prior contact with or from whom you have not requested information from previously. Sales driven emails are emails designed to get the attention of previously captured leads to encourage them to click through to products or services you’re selling or promoting.

Both forms of marketing emails can be highly effective when crafted correctly and tailored to the recipient (or group of recipients) you’re corresponding with. Communicating with your target customer the right way is how you get them to execute your call-to-action. In this article, we’ll break down sales emails and the mistakes to avoid when writing them.

Types of Sales Emails

Here’s a list of the top types of sales emails you could be sending to new and potential customers:

The Offer or Promotion Email

These are sales emails where you outline an offer or a promotion to existing or potential leads or customers.

New Content Announcement Email

These are emails where you alert your recipient about new content on your site. They are typically used to push potential customers through your sales funnel by way of high-value content.

The Service Renew Email

These are sales emails crafted to use promotions to get expiring customers to renew your services.

The New Product Email

These are emails where you introduce your database, client, or customer to a new service or product you’re offering.

The Cold Email Introduction

When sending these emails, you contact possible leads or potential customers with an introduction to the services or products you offer and explain how you can help relieve a certain pain point the potential customer may have.

Regardless of which type of sales email you’re sending, you want to ensure that your email includes:

• An attention-grabbing header
• A well crafted, mistake-free email
• What pain point your product, service, or content solves
• Your “ask” or in other words, a call-to-action

How to Write the Perfect Sales Email

According to HubSpot, there are five must-have email components of a successful sales email. The perfect email should include a clear, enticing subject line that you keep as short as possible. Your opening line should be about the reader of the email, such as this popular introduction: “I loved your post on…” The body copy, which should include content that aligns with the pain point of the market segment you’re communicating with, could start off with a question such as: “Is [benefit of your service] a priority for you right now?” The closing copy refers to your call-to-action, the copy that tells the reader what action they should take next.

Now that we know what our sales emails should include, what about what they shouldn’t include?

Let’s jump in!

Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Sales Emails

Whether you’re using automated tools or crafting emails one-on-one, you want to be sure you don’t make the following mistakes to ensure you always leave a professional impression.

Sales Emails Subject Mistakes

The biggest and most detrimental mistake you can make is in your sales email subject line. This is because if your subject doesn’t jump out, you lessen the chances of your email even being opened by the recipient. Therefore, it’s important that your subject is clear and grabs their attention. You will want to ensure that you use things like urgency, curiosity, offers, personalization, and interesting stories to get a potential client to click on your email to open it.

The trick is to balance getting a potential customer’s attention while being clear about what your email is about. Otherwise, this can affect your customers’ impressions once they have clicked open your email. Therefore, you will want to avoid making the mistake of over-promising or using fake clickbait titles that don’t line up well with the content of your email.

Some “spammy” words you will want to exclude from your subject lines if you want to stand out and get attention:

• Final
• Reminder
• Sale
• Sales
• Discount
• Unique
• State of the Art

Sales Emails Spelling and Grammar Mistakes

For a sales email to be successful, you need to elicit a feeling of trust. Nothing can break potential clients’ or customers’ confidence in you than a badly crafted email full of typos, spelling, and grammar mistakes.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in a sales email is misspelling the client’s name or business, your own name, the services you offer, or not spell-checking your pitch. Another big no-no is mixing up things like “you’re” and “your”. To ensure you don’t make these fatal mistakes, it’s important that you use online tools or browser extensions (such as Grammarly) to double-check every email you send out.

Sales Emails Formatting Mistakes

Bad formatting will not only make it hard for your recipient to follow your pitch or your offer, but it can make you look unprofessional and therefore, untrustworthy. Here are the top sales email formatting mistakes to avoid:

• Including links as URLs and not hyperlinked text or including broken links that do not work
• Not using paragraphs to break down text for easy reading
• Not bulleting options for easy reading

Conclusion

You’re well on your way to better sales emails. Remember to follow up with customers in a friendly way, to thank them for their response or business, and to always leave the lines of communication open to them.