How to Write Personalized Sales Emails That Get Replies

Personalized emails are a hot topic among B2B and even B2C marketers. 

Why? 

Well, think about it. How many spam emails do you get in a day? 10? Maybe more… Do you read those emails? Or just delete them?

Personalized emails cut through the noise. They make you stop and think “Wait a minute, this is just for me…” It creates curiosity and DOUBLES your reply rate.

But how do you personalize emails the right way? By using the C-C-Q formula, you will be able to write thousands of personalized sales emails that get results. 

But does personalization REALLY work? What do the stats say?

Salesloft and Hubspot have data reports.  Salesloft found after analyzing thousands of emails sent, that if you add personalization you will get about 112% lift. 

Hubspot has also published many articles on the data around email personalization and the stats speak for themselves, see below.

• More than 20% of marketers say personalization can improve email engagement. (HubSpot)

• 99% of marketers say personalization helps advance customer relationships, with 78% claiming it has a“strong” or “extremely strong” impact. (Evergage)

• 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. (Epsilon)

• 90% of U.S. consumers find personalized marketing content somewhat too appealing. (Statista)

• 78% of marketers say email is the most personalized channel, followed by websites, which 56% of marketers noted. (Evergage)

• 70% of millennials are frustrated with brands sending irrelevant emails. – SmarterHQ

• 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement. –eConsultancy

• Only 39% of online retailers send personalized product recommendations via email. 

• Emails with personalized subject lines are 22% more likely to be opened

• Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. – Experian

Why is personalization important?

“The Global Email Marketing Software Market Size is projected to reach USD 2,275.5 million by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 10.5% during the forecast period…” 

What does this mean? It means that if you are an email marketer, you have A LOT of competition. This is why personalization is so important. It makes you stand out from everyone. If you want to win your prospect’s intention, personalized emails are essential.

Besides this, personalized email has some other side benefits. For example, it’s great for deliverability. If you are using the same cookie-cutter cold email templates, it’s not going to help your deliverability rates. Instead, you will see that your open rates are going to drop, but if you use personalization and mix things up a bit, you will see the opposite. Higher email open rates.

REMEMBER: Personalization is good for getting replies and good for inbox deliverability.

It’s also important to note that your best-performing email will do well, but if you keep sending the same best-performing email out, it eventually just doesn’t perform well anymore. You will see a downward trajectory. 

Are there any instances where you shouldn’t use email personalization?

The only time personalization might not work for you as a sales rep, or email marketer is if you send out risky or unverified emails. The reason being is that if that email ends up bouncing, you have wasted a lot of time personalizing your messages. 

It’s easy to buy data and have these huge lists of prospects, but if these emails aren’t verified, then you could be wasting a ton of time. There is no point in spending time personalizing emails, just to have them bounce because the email addresses aren’t verified…

Salesbread is a big believer in sending emails to only verified prospects. We don’t want to waste time, because time = money. 

Where should you start?

First and foremost, personalize your intro sentence in your email. The reason is that it’s easy to add a merge tag at the beginning of your email. You don’t have to change the rest of the body of the template.

Studies are also finding that the preview text is a better indication of your open rate, than the actual subject line. 

Why? 

Well, some people are saying that we have an “email subject line” blindness because of how so many of us have been burned by spammers and cold emailers with misleading subject lines. 

Some readers have also gotten the same “Quick Question” subject line time and time again, so they quickly scan to the first sentence to see if the email is actually relevant to them. 

Therefore, if you have a personalized sentence right after their name, that no other salesperson or cold emailer is mentioning to them during email campaigns, it’s MUCH more effective to get their attention and earn that open. 

Also, from a psychological perspective, if you start off with something in the email that shows you have done the leg work, there’s a bit of reciprocity going on; (especially if it’s a compliment being used.)

There are quite a few psychological tactics going on behind the scenes to earn that reply from prospects. 

Remember to just keep it simple, and if you are new to personalization, start with a custom intro. 

The trick is to keep it simple and not overdo it. 

This is good news for those who do cold email outreach because you don’t have to do a crazy amount of work. The study showed that the “personalization sweet spot” lies between 20 and 50 % of the cold email.

Example: If your email is about 4 or 5 sentences, dropping in 1 custom personalized sentence will hit that sweet spot.

The C-C-Q Formula

When it comes to prospecting emails or even Linkedin sales outreach, Salesbread has an acronym that we always keep in mind, and that’s C-C-Q. 

It stands for:

• COMMONALITIES
• COMPLIMENTS
• QUESTIONS

Let’s review each one quick

Commonalities

The most important custom intro that you can add in any cold email is a commonality. It’s harder to get these facts, in order to show your prospect that you share some things in common. 

But if you can, then you have separated yourself from the pack of SDRs who are trying to capture your prospect’s attention. 

What are commonalities:

• You live in the same city
• You both have a passion for mountain biking
• You both worked for the same company at some point
• You know the same people

The last one, “knowing the same people,” is an important one. At Salesbread we encourage using Linkedin Sales Navigator because it will pull up all mutual connections that you and the prospect might share. 

This is also a side benefit of expanding your network because you will be able to use more and more people to help form mutual connections.

Even if you just say in your email: “Hey I see that we both know XYZ.”

That’s a commonality that actually goes a long way. 

But what if you have a large network on Linkedin? 

You can take it a set further by logging into Sales Navigator and then filtering through the degree of connections.

So for example, are you in the same Linkedin groups, or do you share the same work experience. If you find something in common, mention that in your sales email templates. 

But if you don’t have this benefit of commonalities go ahead and look for…

Compliments

Search for compliments by first checking through the prospect’s “about me” section on their Linkedin profile. About a third of prospects will have a nicely written out “About” page, and if there is anything like this:

• “ I’m passionate about…”
• “At my company, we believe in…”
• “I started here and now I am the founder of XYZ”

You’re basically looking for something that the prospect is proud of to compliment them on. Whether it’s a new product that they just released or a promotion that they got at work; Use that in your copy. 

Example: “ Well done on your promotion at (company name). What’s your secret to success?”

Compliments are the firepower that cold emailers can use to get the conversation going. 

Questions

Asking specific questions is also a great way to get engagement going during sales prospecting. 

For example:

“Hey (prospect’s name). Is getting your (company name) featured on a podcast on your radar?”

If you use the above tips you will double your response rates. Have a look at one recent campaign that we completed for Regalytics. 

Salesbread generated over 118 leads in 8 weeks. We used Linkedin outreach but applied the same CCQ method. 

(When we say leads, we mean 118 qualified prospects who booked meetings.)

How did we get these results? By using the C-C-Q method. 

The Takeaway

By using the CCQ formula, you will be able to write 1000’s of personalized sales emails that get replies. 

If you would like to learn more, please feel free to contact us for a free 15 min call, or a consultation that will help you develop an outreach strategy that gets results.