Consistency: the (not so) secret to crushing your email campaigns in 2020

Guest post by Patricia McLaren, Co-Founder and Head of Customer Operations at RevShoppe

No matter what good intentions or New Year’s resolutions you set earlier this year, you've probably already broken most of them. Are you eating healthy? Not after that 2 am pizza on Friday. What about completing to-do lists at work before heading home? I bet you’ll just input those CRM notes after dinner... or not.

Here’s a resolution to keep if you didn’t make any for yourself this year:

Revisit the messaging in your sales campaigns.

What worked last year, unfortunately, won’t carry through until the end of time. If your campaigns generated solid results three months ago, they might not even trigger a response today.

Messaging needs to constantly evolve faster than sales processes. We have to keep refreshing our approach to stay relevant. But one (not so) secret ingredient that remains in the recipe for cold email success?

Consistency.

Consistency helps us hold our sales story together from beginning to end. When you hear an inconsistent story, do you believe it? Do you trust the person or people who told it to you? Nope.

Not only does consistency build trust, it is the proof that you’ve put in effort over a period of time; improvement as a result of consistency is the best motivation out there. Especially in the world of email copy, staying consistent is the difference between a response and the trash folder.

The next time you revisit your messaging (no time like the present!), use these tips to add consistency to your sales campaigns for maximum success.

Build a Consistent Message That Is Easy to Follow

Especially if you have a large suite of products, or solve multiple challenges for your customers, building a consistent, easy-to-follow message can be tough.

You have so much to offer your prospect, yet one email to communicate it all?! Wrong. It’s a common mistake to throw all your eggs in one basket, or dump all of your features into one email. It clouds your offering and doesn’t leave you much else to follow up with if they don’t respond.

Instead, build your brand message strategically over the course of your email campaign. It paints a stronger picture for your prospects and allows you to be more targeted with each touchpoint. Especially in cross-channel campaigns, consistency builds a seamless experience and supports the big picture you’re painting.

Follow these steps:

1. Map out your value props and list out all the challenges you solve.
2. Build a strong message around each one, and focus one campaign around each message. Or, you can do the same thing in the emails of your campaign, building up a story one touch at a time.
3. Target the persona your message would resonate with most, and send the appropriate campaign their way.
4. Enjoy the engagement.

Keep a Consistent Tone That Fits Your Style and Prospect

Perception is reality, folks. So the tone of your message is just as important as the story you tell. Your style shows prospects a glimpse of what it’s like to interact and work with you.

Set the tone of your campaign ahead of time and stay consistent throughout. If you’re a disruptor in a static space, maybe you take risks with a more aggressive style. If your company’s brand voice is witty and playful, perhaps you incorporate humor into your messaging. If you’re selling into strict, regulated markets, the tone should reflect a more traditional audience.

Not everyone likes the same genre of music, and your style of writing won’t resonate with every individual either. It’s most important to stay consistent with your tonality to strengthen your brand image.

PLEASE Check for Grammar and Custom Field Outputs

I shouldn’t have to say this one, but I must.

You’ve spent hours, probably weeks, coming up with a new sales engagement strategy. You’ve written a compelling story in a tone that speaks to your ideal prospects and clearly illustrates your brand. Don’t blow it on an email that starts with, “Hey {{first%name}}” when it should say “Hey Patricia.”

Sales engagement solutions like Outreach have changed the sales game forever. These platforms are the most powerful pieces of technology a sales team can leverage. However, you still need to be consistently testing your emails.

Send yourself a copy of every email step before launching a campaign. Notice the format, color, font size, custom field outputs, and grammar in each one - sometimes these look different in your inbox than in the platform. If you can’t send yourself test emails, partner with someone on your team that will be a second set of eyes to look over your campaigns.

Put yourself in your recipient’s shoes. Would you respond to your own email? I know I wouldn’t respond if it used the wrong “their”, “there,” or “they’re.” Be consistently thorough and s l o w d o w n. There aren’t any shortcuts here, so do the work and enjoy the rewards of your efforts.

Consistency breeds trust. It exemplifies discipline. Like the tortoise and hare saying, slow and steady always wins the race. Writing and implementing a cold email campaign can feel like the longest race because it takes time, effort, and expertise, but follow the tips above, stick to your guns, and you will be rewarded. If you’re consistent in your strategy and action, you’ll achieve sales success, consistently, one email at a time.

Patricia McLaren is the co-founder and Head of Customer Operations at RevShoppe, the leader in SaaS email copy and optimization, helping companies create and refine a messaging approach that delivers results.