If you’re sending emails to sales prospects that aren’t personalized, you might as well write ‘send straight to trash’ in the subject line. Sending generic emails to multiple prospects (aka the ‘spray and pray’ approach) won’t get you far when it comes to landing clients, but is very effective in wasting your precious time. The proof is in the stats: Personalized emails can deliver nearly 50% higher open rates and nearly 22% higher reply rates! Crafting and delivering personalized emails to sales prospects is easy. Follow these six steps to get going, and in no time you’ll be increasing your productivity and sales. Personally, we think that sounds pretty great.

1. It’s all about connections

Who you know can take you far in life, especially when it comes to sales. Trust and interest levels rise rapidly when we have contacts in common, so if you share one with a prospect, be sure to use it. Ideally, have your mutual connection send the email for you. This is your surest bet to getting your foot through their inbox door. There’s even tools available that analyze your contact lists to determine mutual acquaintances for you.

2. Look for Uncommon Commonalities

People tend to flock towards those who are similar to them in some way. We find comfort in engaging with others that share the same interests, background, or worldview as us, and we tend to trust them more. Seeking out commonalities is a way of filtering through the complexities of the social world and our place in it. This psychological principle is even more effective when there is something unusual that’s shared in common, called an ‘Uncommon Commonality’. Sharing the same favorite color is common, but discovering that someone has the same passion for sailing as you, or went to the same University, now that’s much more uncommon, and pretty special. All of a sudden it feels like you’re both in the same club, and there’s instantly a higher level of trust that forms. That Uncommon Commonality might just be the advantage needed to access someone who you might otherwise not have been able to. Crafting personalized emails from Uncommon Commonalities To find Uncommon Commonalities you have to go looking for them. But don’t worry, there are plenty of places to look. Your prospect’s Twitter, LinkedIn, and public Facebook profiles are a great place to start and a rich source for discovering shared interests, hobbies, and backgrounds or other connections. If you find one (or more) of those uncommon commonalities and mention it in your email, congratulate yourself because you’ve just significantly increased your chances of landing a sale.

3. Feel their pain

Sales 101 says, “Discover your prospect’s problem, or pain point, and then offer a solution to alleviate it”. Pain motivates action even more than pleasure, but it’s not always so easy to zero in on the particular challenge a prospect may be having, especially if there’s been no previous contact with them. This is where you put on your sales investigative hat and dive deep into information you can readily access. This includes the job openings page of your prospect’s business. Scanning the positions they’re looking to fill will give you a good idea of the issues keeping your prospect up at night, and let you see if they would benefit from your product. Referencing specific pain points, and solutions to solve them, in your personalized email creates a powerful message that gets replies.

4. Praise does an email good

Receiving a compliment, in person or via email, instantly provides most people with a big dose of the warm and fuzzies. As it should, since praise lights up those feel good parts of your brains. When using compliments to warm up your personalized emails, the key is to be as sincere as possible and to be ‘praise specific’. Don’t just say “You’re impressed” with someone, rather explain why you’re impressed. Did your prospect recently receive a promotion? Did the company win an award? Did they launch a new product? Check LinkedIn or Google news about the individual or their company for information that you can use. Mentioning specific examples will get you opening prospect’s hearts, and them your emails.

5. Timing is everything

When it comes to work, are you an early riser or a devoted night owl? We all have unique habits in regards to productivity and how we schedule our workday. That means there’s also a right time to send your prospect a personalized email so that it’s most likely to be opened.

6. Say my name, say my name

If we’re honest, we all like seeing our own name in print or on the screen. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re vain; it’s just human nature to enjoy getting some recognition. Repeating your prospect’s name in the subject line and in the body of your personalized email, is sure to fire up their endorphins, and increase the likelihood that they’ll engage with you.   Pro Tip: With UpMail you can send up to 200 personalized emails at once. As we’ve shown, crafting custom tailored messages to prospects is essential to increasing sales, but the fact is that it can be very time consuming. That’s why UpMail created a tool that allows you to send personalized emails to 200 prospects at once. You can analyze who opened your email, when they opened it, and how far they engaged with it. With UpMail, you’ll be saving time and enhancing productivity while increasing your sales potential.