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This episode of the Unbottleneck Podcast is all about email outreach and copywriting. Who better to join Steve Wiideman than Sujan Patel of Mailshake!  

About Our Guest: Sujan Patel

Sujan Patel is the managing partner at Ramp Ventures and a veteran of SaaS marketing with over 15 years of experience under his belt. He is co-founder of the email outreach platform, Mailshake, helping users successfully conduct email campaigns targeting business growth. 

Patel is passionate about helping people through complex problem solving. He shares with us his data driven approach that can help strengthen any email marketing campaign! 

Sponsored by Ryte

Sujan Patel on LinkedIn
SujanPatel.com

  • Why Implement Email Marketing?
  • Breaking Down Email Outreach
  • Asking for What You Want 
  • A Closer Look at Open Rates for Emails
  • Growing Your Company or Cause

Why Email Marketing? 

Email marketing is a time and cost-efficient way to reach new customers and nurture relationships with existing customers to redirect traffic to your website. This form of marketing is not just for closing sales, but it is an important tool to support retention, build brand loyalty and establish trust. 

Email marketing is not limited to promoting sales, but it can be used to send more personalized messages that can help your audience interact with your business (newsletters, thank you notes, review request, business updates, etc). 

Whenever you send an email, you want to ensure that you are adding value. 

When implementing email marketing into your marketing strategy, you must identify your best customer — Who are they? What are their pain points? What do they need? How do they want to be communicated with? 

Copywriting: The Right Approach 

Before conducting email outreach, you must find the right approach that will get you the responses needed to help grow your business. Your email content will depend on your business model and your conversion goals, but you should have a standard approach to craft an email that will not be glossed over. 

Subject Line

The subject line is the most important component of a good email because it will determine whether the recipient will open it or not. When crafting the perfect subject line, remember that “less is better”. Your subject line should be short, clear and personal – ideally, 5 words or less. 

Pro-tip: Do not try to trick people into opening your emails by using “RE:” or “FWD:” in the subject line. It is not a good idea to start your interaction off with a lie! This is a quick way to lose trust and work against your bottom line.  

Intro / Body 

When you draft your email, it is important to understand that you have less than one second to get the reader’s attention. Once your email pops up in someone’s inbox, they not only read the subject line, but the first preview sentence. This is why your first sentence should be an attention-grabber!  

Don’t use the body paragraph to introduce yourself or talk about your company – this is what your email signature is for. Instead, just start the conversation.

Here are some more best practices when crafting the body of your outreach email: 

  • Keep your email short
  • Speak like a human being 
  • Be Specific 
  • Don’t ask for too much (Ex. Virtual Coffee or Call/Demo) 

Signature 

Your signature is your social proof. This is where you can brag about yourself and your business by including your website, social media profiles, certifications, links to feature articles, etc. 

Ask For It: A Risk Worth Taking 

In email marketing, it can seem invasive to explicitly ask for something out of the recipient especially if you’re emailing them for the first time. This approach often fills messages with passive and vague language that doesn’t get a response. However, just explicitly asking for what you want may get you better results. 

Don’t beat around the bush! You are a business building income and that’s okay – OWN IT! But your interactions should not solely be one-sided. Keep them conversational and focused on providing the value to your recipient that you are also seeking.  

Pro-Tip: One-third (33%) of leads are going to come from your first email!

How Helpful are Open Rates? 

Open rates are a metric that measures the percentage of your emails that are actually opened by recipients within an email campaign. But how effective are these metrics in measuring success? 

According to Patel, open rates are an indicator that the recipient has some interest in the email content, but it is not an indicator of success. Instead of studying open rate for cold email outreach, pay attention to the reply and click-through rates. These metrics will serve as a guide for which leads you should nurture over time in order to reach conversion goals. 

Bonus: Growth Hacking 

Growth starts with not only good ideas, but execution! In order to take your business to the next level, you have to always be thinking about the next big thing that can add value to your customer and also makes sense for your business. 

Once you come up with a great idea, take the time to develop a process for it. Here are some tips that can help you grow your business: 

  • Think outside of the box
  • Write down your new ideas
  • Spend time testing new ideas 
  • Don’t be afraid to fail

Keep up with the best email outreach and digital marketing strategies. Follow Steve on LinkedIn!