Sales Email: Are your salespeople copywriters? Chances are, they’re not. Although sales jobs require a fair amount of copywriting, most sales reps are hired for their ability to persuade people verbally. Yet times have changed.

With online marketplaces booming, digital marketing and sales have become the norm. And while Internet shopping is more convenient for consumers, your salespeople are forced into acting as copywriters, even if they haven’t developed the skill. Nowhere is copywriting more important than in sales emails.

How Important is Sales Email?

It’s vital for businesses today to send out sales emails. Even when a shop has a brick-and-mortar location, consumers subscribe to email lists to learn about new products, keep up with changes, and receive discounts from their favorite businesses.

Email is equally beneficial for retailers. Consumers who make a purchase through email spend an average of 138 percent more than consumers who received no email. According to a Worldwide Business Research study, 80 percent of retailers report email as their top method of customer retention. Sales emails are effective, both for selling and retention.

Why Aren’t My Emails Getting Results?

Simply sending an email isn’t enough to increase sales. Your leads and customers’ inboxes look just like yours – cluttered and always growing. It’s difficult to stand out in a crowded inbox, but well-targeted emails grab a user’s attention.

Your emails must be relevant, timely, and tailored to the user’s place the buyer’s journey. This requires your salespeople to send emails quickly, with an understanding of each user’s interest in your company and where they are in your sales funnel. How well does your sales team keep up with these demands?

Is It Time to Reevaluate?

If your sales emails aren’t getting the results you need, reevaluate your process, beginning with your sales team’s activities.

  • How many emails do your salespeople send each day?
  • Are they writing one email at a time?
  • Do these emails have similar content?
  • Are you confident in what your team is sending to your customers?
  • Is this the best use of their time?

Your employees are most efficient when they can exercise their core competencies. Since we don’t hire salespeople for their copywriting skills, it’s unlikely that your salespeople would consider copywriting one of their core strengths.

So stop expecting the best copy from the employees who haven’t learned the skill or had enough opportunities to exercise it. Instead, find ways to make it easier for salespeople to manage their copywriting workload.

Email Marketing Automation

Effective sales email copy is difficult to write. But the good news is that these emails are often repetitive. Although your salespeople should customize their communications with each customer, they repeatedly need to send the same core information.

Instead of crafting each email one-by-one, email marketing automation lets you craft pre-built emails or email templates. A repository of four to five emails is often enough to cover common scenarios that your salespeople encounter frequently. An email automation system can include an integrated CRM, so even adding customer information to an email happens automatically.

The result is a streamlined, sales email process that only requires your team to point and click to schedule dozens of emails at once. Your salespeople are then free to spend the bulk of their time selling to customers, instead of struggling over email copy. With consistent, pre-built emails sent right when users want to see them, you’ll also see an improvement in response rates, along with more opportunities to sell.

Stop asking your salespeople to waste their time on repetitive tasks. Instead, let them focus on their strengths and leave the rest to email marketing automation.