“Length is strength” works as an effective slogan for hair-product advertisements, but when it comes to sale emails, the exact opposite is true.
Our work lives are filled with ways to do sales and marketing, whether that’s through social networks, emails, on-the-go conference calls and even text messages. Thanks to that, people no longer have time or patience to sift through a wall of text in order to get to the main idea of your message. Even a slightly long email can annoy a potential buyer and put any possible deal in jeopardy.
Super-lengthy emails don’t normally happen at random, though. Usually, the person writing the email is guilty of making one or more common mistakes that will add useless text to a message and make it confusing, off-putting or just plain boring.
Keep an eye out for these five mistakes in your sales emails, and avoid them at all costs:
1. You’re giving away all your selling points at once.
Intrigue and curiosity are almost vital to the success of a sales email, particularly in the early stages of a campaign, when the potential customer doesn’t know you.
But it’s tough to create a sense of mystery if you drop every single detail about your company into your initial email. Instead, you’re just creating a wall of text that blocks any incentive the recipient might have had for responding to you.
Pick one aspect of your product or service for each email. If you’re doing an eight-touch email campaign (recommended), you will have plenty of opportunity to cover all the important aspects of your business.
2. You’re packing in too many features and benefits.
Not long ago, I received an email with a long, bullet-point list stuck in the middle, outlining about twelve different features for this particular product. I didn’t even try to pick out one or two of those that would be relevant to my business.
Feature lists like these, whether you’re writing them out or formatting them in a list, are overwhelming and off-putting for most. While benefits are always better to include, you can go overboard with these, too.
To avoid that, set a sentence limit for your emails. Three to five works in most sales scenarios. Imposing this limit on yourself will keep you from going overboard with features and benefits. In other words, it will force you to make a choice about what’s worthy of inclusion. That can only lead to good, for both you and your potential customer.
3. You’re way too nice.
I value manners and politeness as much as the next person. Unfortunately, in this day and age, we’ve lost patience with pleasantries over email. Opening an email with the classic “I hope this email finds you well” line adds nothing to your overall point and wastes valuable words.
Think about it. If you’ve set a three- to five-sentence limit for your email, and two of those are given to a warm introduction and sign-off, you only have a few lines of text to explain the value of your business.
Instead, use your opening line to ask a heated question or quote a statistic the recipient will find useful. When ending an email, a focused call to action will flatter a person far better than any pleasantry ever could.
4. You’re a narcissist.
Nobody wants to admit they’re full of themselves, but I encourage you to read through the last email you sent and see how much of it is focused on you or your company. Most of us are guilty of narcissistic sales emails at some point.
The thing is, they’re one of the easiest ways to turn a sales request into a long-winded ramble. Think of the guy at the party who stands there talking about himself for 30 straight minutes without giving anyone else a chance to join in. Don’t get caught doing the sales email equivalent with your prospective customers.
Focus on the other person’s pain points, and make your message all about solving those problems. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to send short, thoughtful messages when you’re not thinking about yourself.
5. You can’t quote.
Quotes can be powerful social proof in sales emails, especially if they come from a celebrity endorser or “expert” in an industry.
That said, choose wisely. More often than not, quotes add nothing to an email, and you find yourself with more unnecessary text on your hands. Does a quote add information not available anywhere else? Can it illustrate a specific benefit? If you’re answer to these or similar questions is “no,” cut the quotes. Long block quotes should be avoided at all times.
One final way to avoid all of these mistakes is to be careful about falling in love with your own words. Even world-class authors will tell you that getting too attached to a sentence can ultimately hurt the end product if it doesn’t fit. Of course, sales emails are a lot less personal than a work of art, which should make it easier to trim away words that are excess or don’t serve the main purpose of the email. That’s one of the most important lessons you can get when it comes to learning how to write a truly persuasive sales email.
