Why No One Is Responding to Your Sales Emails

Over your career as a sales professional, you’ve probably sent thousands of sales emails—certainly more than you can count. Even with so many other ways to communicate, like selling over the phone, using social media, and even having a Skype session, email continues to be a top way for sales people to connect with their prospects and clients.

However, even though sales emails are quite common in the industry, they’re not always very effective. More often than not, your emails are being ignored by their recipients. In fact, over 75% of these types of emails are never opened. Think about that: three out of every four emails you write, agonize over, edit, proofread, and send in the hopes of a response weren’t worth the time it took to write them. They went straight to the trash.

You might be wondering why no one is responding to them. Is it something you’re doing wrong? Is there something you could change to get a better response rate? Consider these factors behind why some emails are opened and some go straight to trash, so you can get smarter about the messages you send.

Neutral and Overly Emotional Messages

Data has shown that neutral messages do not evoke as many responses as those that express moderate positivity or negativity. The key word here is “moderate,” because research has also discovered that being overly emotional on either side of the spectrum resulted in a similar response rate as neutral emails. Moderately positive or negative emails evoked 10 to 15 percent more responses than their counterparts. Consider the tone and emotions conveyed in your sales emails—they might be the reason why no one’s responding.

Too Many Words

Do you have a tendency to blather on and on in your sales emails? Do your messages look like you’ve written essays? If so, you might have figured out why your messages are being ignored. When it comes to prospecting emails, you have to be short and to the point. Emails with 50 to 125 words have the best response rate—just over 50 percent. There’s a fine line to consider, too, though: using 10 words or less drops this response rate to 36 percent.

Complex Writing

Perhaps the products or services you’re trying to send are complex and require some technical details. Perhaps you just have a large vocabulary. But the thing is if you’re writing in complex language, even just at the college level, you’re going to have a low response rate. Even a high school reading level is too high. If you want your emails to perform better, write at a third-grade reading level. It has a 36 percent higher open rate than the college level and a 17 percent higher open rate than the high school level. So to elicit a response from your recipients, find the middle ground between dumbing it down and the higher level of writing.

No Questions

Maybe you’re just sending an introductory email to prospects and detailing your products or services. And maybe the point of the email you’re sending isn’t to learn more about the prospects, but you should still ask sales questions. It’s a best practice for sales emails to include at least one “ask” in order to probe prospects for information. But don’t go overboard—all you need is one to three questions to be 50 percent more likely to get a response.

Oftentimes being successful with prospecting isn’t about doing more, it’s about knowing the do’s and don’ts in order to be more efficient and effective. Knowing what to write in your emails and how to write them can elicit a better response rate, so you can start building your customer base and closing more deals.

Since your email strategy is such as critical weapon in your sales arsenal, it pays to sharpen your skills so you can become a sales pro.