Have you ever received an email that looked like it was carefully composed and sent from an individual only to find the reply address was something like “sales@company.com”? Oh, thanks for making me feel special…that’s a company that lacks email credibility.
No matter how sophisticated sales platforms, and email in particular, become, successful sales will always be about human connection. While there’s no way to tell how the sales industry will evolve, I feel pretty confident that we won’t wind up with super-efficient sales robots in 10 years, because people want to buy from people. Human email is the answer. And while platforms like Salesloft make the traditionally difficult and time-consuming aspects of human email (personalization, timeliness, effective messaging) much easier, you can still be shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to email credibility.
So here is a spring cleaning checklist of sorts to make sure that your emails have enough credibility to show that you’re a real person and can help you create a real relationship with your potential customers.
Update Your Signature
Who said email signatures had to be boring? While your signature should still have your name, title, and contact information, it should also include your headshot so that your prospects can associate a face with the name. People want to deal with people, remember?
If you have the resources, you can take it one step further and link that thumbnail image to a polished video of you introducing yourself and why you’re emailing. Salesloft sales reps have been doing this for years and see terrific engagement from email recipients.
Add Your Headshot
Whether your company is using Gmail/G-suite or Outlook, you should have a polished headshot associated with your account. Instead of seeing a colorful circle with your initials or the arguably worse anonymous avatar, they’ll see your smiling face, which is far more engaging and likely to elicit a response. While this may differ based on your version or configuration, you can upload your picture to Gmail under “settings” and can do the same in Outlook under “file.”
Link to Social Accounts
Think you’re the only one using tools that uncover more information about the people you’re emailing? Think again. Tools like Rapportive that display a person’s LinkedIn profile beside their email are becoming commonplace in every industry and job function.
Make sure the email you use to reach out to prospects is associated with your LinkedIn account. Now prospects that use such tools will be able to see your account information and know that you’re not a robot or some other disreputable source.
Use a Real Email Account!
This one may seem obvious, but is often overlooked when companies are using specific tools like marketing automation or sales engagement platforms. When emails and other touchpoints are designed and created by others for you to use, make sure that they are being sent from your own email account.
Platforms like Salesloft allow you to send pre-composed emails, cadences, and even phone calls from your own personal accounts and phone numbers, but not every platform is so flexible. Make sure you’re not sending emails from a generic account that will tank your credibility the moment it arrives in a prospect’s inbox.
Curate Your Web Presence
If a prospect is interested in learning more about what you have to offer, one of their first moves is to look into the messenger: that’s you. In our connected world, it can be hard to keep track of all your profiles, posts, tweets, accounts, and websites, but those are exactly what will come up when your prospects search for you.
Take the time to enable adequate privacy settings on the accounts you want to keep personal and spruce up the accounts you want your prospects to find. Update your LinkedIn page, tweet relevant content, write valuable posts. All of this is categorized, collated, and available to your prospects and can have a big impact on your credibility.
Don’t miss these easy wins when it comes to sales email. Even the most sophisticated email strategies can fail if your prospects don’t trust you. So take a few minutes this week, make these small adjustments, and see what a little bump in credibility can do.
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