Best Email Prospecting Tactics: Leveraging the Prospect’s Content

Last week I discussed the important role crafting engaging subject lines plays in improving your email prospecting efforts. The second tip in my series on the best email prospecting tactics is to leverage the prospect’s content in the email.

Most sales and marketing professionals know that people like hearing about themselves. It is also common knowledge that most people like having their egos stroked a little. The question then becomes how do you use this fact in an email without coming off disingenuous or annoying? In fact, the best way to do this is to reference your prospect’s content in the email, and to tie it back to the reason you are reaching out. Not all prospects have their own blog, so a quote from their website, an article about them, an article that they are featured in, or an article that they have shared could be equally compelling.

This requires a bit of research prior to writing your email, but you will definitely get better email prospecting results using this tactic. Here’s what to do:

1 ) Find a relevant piece of content related to your prospect that you can mention.

1. See if the prospect has a blog.
2. Google the prospect to see if his or her name comes up in any recent news or publications.
3. Search for the prospect on Twitter to see if there are any relevant recent tweets.
4. Search for the prospect on LinkedIn to see whether they’ve shared anything recently.
5. If you do all that and don’t find anything interesting, do the same for the company.
6. If all else fails, go the corporate website and find a quote about the company that is compelling and relevant to what you are selling.

2) Use an actual quote from the article/blog post/ website, and literally paste it into the body of your email.

The quote should not be more than a sentence or two at the most. The first part of your email should explain that the quote grabbed your attention, how you’re interested in what they are accomplishing, or how you can empathize with their challenge/goal.

Here is an example:

Subject: Your blog post: The Best Email Prospecting Tactics

Hi Ori,

I came across your recent blog post on the best email prospecting tactics where you mentioned that “email prospecting can be an extremely powerful tool when done right.” I really enjoyed the post and actually shared it with a few of my clients.

I currently work with a number of venture capital firms to help them and their portfolio companies such as… to help them optimize their email marketing and lead qualification.

Do you have few minutes later this week to briefly discuss a partnership?

Thanks,

-Amanda

Here is another example from a blog highlighting this tactic of leveraging a prospect’s content in a slightly different way.

Remember, the goal of email prospecting is to get a response. Using the prospect’s content in your email subject lines and bodies is a tactic that will immediately help you increase your response rate.