6 Salesforce Email Templates to Boost Sales

When you use email effectively, your sales prospects are more likely to respond than when you reach out by any other form of communication.

A July 2014 XANT study ranked email as the preferred communication method of business professionals, with 96 percent saying they use it every day. That even beats office phones, selected by 80 percent.

If you use Salesforce, it’s pretty easy to load custom email templates that will save you a ton of time. Just copy and paste the text right into Salesforce, or use this handy cheat sheet.

Use these six Salesforce email templates to connect with busy decision-makers and close more deals:

1. Quick inbound lead follow-up

While data continues to prove that following up with an inbound lead is critical to conversion, most organizations and reps are still too slow on the draw. A Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads,” reports that the average response time of companies that responded to inbound web-generated leads within a month was 42 hours.

Imagine the missed opportunities, especially considering that our research suggests that if you follow up with an inbound lead within five minutes, you are 9 times more likely to convert them.

The following template is a quick, general follow-up email that still has the ability to feel personal to the recipients, making them more likely to set an appointment.

Best Practices

• Carefully consider your subject line. You want to aim for something inviting that doesn’t scream “spam” or “pitch.”
•  The links provided to your helpful resources should utilize pre-populated fields to make it even easier for your prospect to register in your system in order to access this additional content. 

2. Leverage the thought leaders in your organization

Jeff Ernst, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, has said, “Business buyers don’t ‘buy’ your product or service, they ‘buy into’ your perspective and approach to solving their problems.”

Ernst’s point is at the heart of what makes this second sales email template so effective. Occasional messages that leverage the influence of the thought leaders in your organization build brand exposure for your organization and ultimately drive more revenue.

This email template might invite recipients to read your CEO’s latest ebook, published research, or offer a personal invitation to attend a live event.

Best Practices

• Don’t rely on this template too often. You do not want to overuse the personal brand of your leaders. Save this email template for timely industry events and leads that share a direct connection to the thought leaders in your organization or the subject matter of your thought leader’s expertise.  

3. Text-based drip

While most Salesforce emails work best as HTML emails for tracking purposes, research indicates that drip email campaigns are more effective when they are executed in a text-only format. This format allows the email to appear as a one-to-one communication between a sales rep and a prospect.

Best Practices

• Emails should be kept short, conversational and include a personalized signature attributed directly to the sales rep responsible for the lead.
• Conversation should be informal while still including a value proposition.
• Track opens, link clicks, downloads, etc. Pairing Salesforce with XANT’s patented Vision technology allows you to track buying signals in real time.   

4. Outreach through an internal connection

When it comes to sales, it is a universal truth that you should always put your network to work for you.

It can be useful to have a ready-made email template for reaching out to an internal connection to request a referral to the right person within the company.

Best Practices

• Keep the referral email short.
• “Chunk” paragraphs together in two or three sentences so they are more manageable to read.
• When asking a colleague to introduce you to a prospect, it may be a good idea to prewrite the email introduction. This way, all your connection has to do is copy and paste or forward your message. 

5. Share a helpful resource

Every decision-maker wants to make the most informed decisions. Emails that educate or entertain your sales prospects with information relevant to their industry are more likely to be valued and, therefore, opened.

Emails that share helpful resources provide a proven method to stay in contact with prospects as you nurture leads through the sales funnel.

Best Practices

• Content is king when it comes to email. Make sure the body content of your message provides value.
• Research reports, case studies, helpful articles, informational videos, webinars and podcasts are all compelling forms of content. 

6. Pitch and miss

Too often reps write off sales prospects that they have lost contact with. These may be people you have had one or more conversations with, but you haven’t been able to connect with them for a while.

They may have even said “no” or “not right now,” but your gut (and better yet, your data) tells you that there might still be a chance to win their business. Email can provide the perfect Hail Mary to spark renewed interest for these prospects.

You may be surprised how frequently these emails re-engage your prospects. Very often your prospects raise their hands and say, “Wait! We are still interested! We just haven’t had time to review your offerings!”

Best Practices

• These types of emails are an excellent opportunity to incentivize with an offer.
• This template should be the perfect balance of aggressive and concise.

Email can be one of your most valuable selling tools, and having solid email templates will help you identify your most engaged prospects and close deals faster. Add some of these templates to your Salesforce account to improve your sales team’s productivity.