Decision-makers are bombarded by email marketing to the point that hundreds of messages stay in their inboxes, unread for weeks until they are deleted. If you want their attention, follow these three cardinal rules and apply them to every email you send.

Video Transcription

Today we’re starting a series on sales and marketing emails. And I still believe emailing is a super effective way, an efficient way, to reach a prospect. But there are some stats that you should be aware of. For example, according to Statista, in the US alone, we sent nearly 10 billion emails every day in 2024. That breaks down to 115,740 emails per second, with the average email user receiving about 81 emails a day. (A lot of it is suspected to be spam.) So email marketing is no joke, and it’s going to be super difficult to cut through all that noise and get some of your prospects’ attention.

So I want to offer you three overarching principles that you can apply to your emails to give you an edge.

Keep it short and simple

Gone are the days when people read two paragraphs in an email. In fact, I barely want to read a couple sentences. I tell my sales guys a good benchmark is ten lines or fewer. Keep your email super short. Not only do you want it to be short, you want to look at what you’re presenting to that prospect and ask, “Is what I’ve written simple to understand?” Write your email as if you’re writing it to an eighth-grader. You’re going to have only a few seconds of attention from that prospect. Are they going to understand what you’re pitching to them in those few seconds? Keep your email short, but also keep them simple.

Focus on your subject line

I’m going to use the 80/20 rule here, that overused business rule, but I think it’s a good point to make. Eighty percent of your time should be focused on crafting a great subject line and a great first sentence. You’ll have one out of three people determine whether they’ll open your email based on the subject line alone. Now I’m going to link in the description below to an article I wrote on crafting a great subject line, so you have that. But a tip I’ll give you is wherever you can, personalize the subject line and the first sentence. According to one source, a personalized subject line can boost your open rate by an incredible 26%!

Forget opening your emails with a generic first sentence, like “Hi my name is Luke Acree, President of ReminderMedia.” No one cares. Focus on who you’re writing to and make your first sentence about them. Maybe you’re sending an email to me and you noticed I just wrote a blog about cold calling. Instead of writing, hi, my name is whatever, try “Hey Luke, I just checked out your blog on cold calling, and I thought the points you made in X, Y, and Z we’re great.” I like to hear about myself, I don’t want to hear about you. So focus on crafting a personalized subject line and first sentence wherever you can.

Include one call to action

I think this is where salespeople get the most tripped up. We get overly anxious and put everything into our emails that we can fit in, and we end up confusing our prospects. You want to make it super simple for your prospect to know what the next step is. If you want them to call you back, make sure that’s the sole call to action. Maybe it’s checking out a landing page. Whatever it is, make sure you have just one call to action in every email that you send.

The takeaway

So there you have it. Look at the emails you’re sending today. Make sure they’re short, easy to understand, have a compelling, personalized subject line and first sentence, and include one call to action. Take action on this today.