Many sales and marketing people believe that prospects’ eyes are most immediately drawn to the subject line, or possibly the preview of the first sentence in the body of an email. But that isn’t the case.
Think about your own behavior. What’s the first thing that typically catches your eye?
If you’re like most people, it’s actually the sender of an email — and that’s particularly true for business owners and top-level executives.
It makes sense when you consider that their time is precious. They must be very selective in how they spend it. When executives get a new email, they immediately look to see if they know the sender. Do they recognize the name? The company? If not, they might move to the subject line. But even then, the most creative ones are often still ignored.
Ultimately, what these decision makers are really looking for is whether you — the sender — are someone they know, like, and trust. They’re looking to see if they recognize you.
If they do, they’re likely to open the email. If you’re not, then it’s highly unlikely that your message will be viewed as a top priority. And in an executive’s world, that means your email is as good as deleted.
This leads me to a critical insight to improve email open rates:
Name recognition matters.You must build recognition for yourself or your company in your top target markets with the key contacts you want to sell to. When you send an email, even a flicker of recognition is enough to encourage prospects to open your message.
Now, think about the emails you’ve been sending, or the one you may have been preparing to send when you stopped to read this article.
How likely is it that your name, or your company’s name, will immediately capture the attention of busy decision makers?
Where do they know you from?
What do they know about you that will drive them to click “open” and read your email?
Business owners and executives don’t have the time to read everything that lands in their inbox. For an email to catch their attention, you want Recognition ROI.
Do your prospecting emails fit that description? If not, it may be time to stop sending them and reconsider your lead generation strategy.