Sales emails are a crucial part of your marketing efforts. They offer a quick, affordable way to remain in contact with prospects and clients. However, if people are not opening your sales emails, then they’re a waste of time and effort. Most people get a lot of email, and they ignore most of them. If your sales emails don’t stand out from the crowd, then they’re likely to end up in the trash bin or, worse yet, the junk folder. If you’re not getting good returns from your sales emails, it may be time to take a closer look at how you’re presenting them to your prospects. Here are five tips that will help make sure that your sales emails are opened, read, and responded to.

A Trickle, Not a Torrent

Too many sales emails will quickly become a nuisance to your prospects and clients. Once they’re regarded as a nuisance, all of your future emails will likely end up going directly into the junk folder. If that happens, your prospects won’t even see your future emails, they’ll be discarded without ever hitting the inbox. Instead of daily (or more frequent) updates, try using a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter-style email to keep prospects up to date. Embedded links in the newsletter will allow prospects to quickly and easily get more information about any updates that pique their interest.

Don’t be Forgotten

The flip side of too many sales emails is not sending out enough. You want them to remember you and think about your products. If your sales emails are too infrequent, they may completely forget why they started getting your emails in the first place. If they don’t remember who you are or why they did business with you, then your sales emails will likely be regarded as junk. Email frequency requires a careful balancing act. Stick to weekly or bi-weekly emails, and reserve more frequent emails for important product notices, discount advertisements, or other time-sensitive information your prospects might appreciate.

Irrelevant Subjects

People want to know what an email is about before they open it. That’s the entire reason why emails have a subject line. If you’re using generic subjects or, worse yet, not using any subjects, then you’re not giving prospects much cause to open your sales emails. Use subjects that are targeted toward specific buyer personas. Make sure that the subject line is actually reflective of the content of the email. If your subject line doesn’t accurately introduce the content of the email, it may be viewed as an attempt at bait-and-switch. If a prospect feels that your emails are misleading, you can bet that they won’t open any more of them.

Poor Content

Do your emails provide useful information for clients and prospects? Are they formatted properly and free from grammatical and typographical errors? Are they easy to read, with an appropriate font and plenty of white space? If you can’t answer “yes” to all of these questions, then you’re not sending out sales emails that people will want to open. Sales emails are meant to nurture the seller-buyer relationship. If they don’t have value for the prospect, or if they’re difficult to read, then they won’t be successful at nurturing.

Vague Addresses

The address you send emails from should clearly state the name of the company and, preferably, the name of the salesperson or marketing agent who dealt with the recipient. At a glance, the prospect should be able to immediately identify whom the email is coming from. Vague or unrelated addresses can make your sales emails appear suspect. Most email users have learned not to open messages from unknown senders. If your address appears unprofessional, or leaves them guessing about the identity of the sender, then your sales emails probably won’t be opened.