Prospecting is introducing your brand, product, or service to your leads. But many businesses get prospecting wrong. It’s an intro, but you can’t always talk about “you.”
The best prospecting emails focus on benefits, no-brainer CTAs, and irresistible offers. Stick around if you want to make the best prospecting emails for your next outreach.
In this guide, we’ll be talking about:
- What a prospecting email is
- How to structure your prospecting emails
- Prospecting email templates
- Tips for making the best prospecting emails yourselves
What is a Prospecting Email?
To kick things off, we shouldn’t mistake prospecting for lead generation. Lead generation intends to gather lead information to build an email list. Once you have a validated list, you can start prospecting or outreach.
Prospecting is when sales representatives reach out to leads. The goal is to find leads with high-buying intent that can eventually lead to a meeting. But you can’t schedule a meeting after just one email. That’s where sales cadence comes in.
With great sequencing, high-value follow-ups, and personalization in each email, you’ve got a recipe for a high-converting campaign. The only thing left is to understand how to structure prospecting emails.
How to Structure Prospecting Emails
Since prospecting emails are essentially cold emails, you need them to be focused on the recipients—not your pitch, to have them stand out from the previews and provide immediate value. To do so, you can structure our prospecting emails as such:
Intro: Observations that Caused You to Reach Out
Many cold emails don’t work because there’s no trust built between you and your prospect just yet. Just the fact that you got their email is a red flag. You address this by being specific on why we’re reaching out straight from the intro. Here’s an example:
“I saw you’re looking to outsource recruiters to fill critical roles in your startup, I’ve been in a similar position, so I assumed you need help hitting quotas.”
Main Body: Insight on Problems Based on Observations
After hooking prospects in with your intro and establishing that you’re not just a spam bot from your observations, you can start explaining our insights. These are the problems we can solve based on what we observed. Let’s take this as an example:
“Outsourcing can save on costs, but finding a service provider that fits your company dynamic costs more in the long run."
Establishing Authority
Now, you've set up your email to show the observations and problems you can solve. However, offering a solution immediately won’t be as effective if you haven’t established authority. Show why prospects can trust you first.
“We’ve helped {{Prospect’s Competitor or Your Clients}} hit their recruitment quotas by automating their in-house staff’s repetitive tasks—all without costly overhead.”
How You Can Offer Solutions
After establishing authority, you can offer our solution. Remember to focus on the benefits, not the features. Doing so helps you create an irresistible offer.
“Our tool enables your recruitment team to be more productive, spend less time in unnecessary tasks, and focus on what they do best—finding high-value recruits for {{Company Name}}.”
Interest-Based Low-Effort CTAs
Trying to schedule a meeting or book a demo on the first email is a big ask. Instead, use interest-based low-effort CTAs. The goal here is to get your prospects to reply. That alone can be a gateway for more positive follow-ups. Try something simple like:
“Worth a Chat?”
Prospecting Email Templates Worth Stealing
Before sending out prospecting emails using templates, ensure you’ve set up your sending domains for maximum deliverability. Here’s our step-by-step guide on how to send cold emails.
After warming up your sending accounts and building a solid email list from lead generation, try out the following templates in your next prospecting campaigns:
Pattern Disruption
We’re all used to ignoring sales emails. It’s almost second nature to us. That’s because most sales emails have that same generic feel to them. Creating pattern disruptions helps with this.
Try out something new in your emails. Think of language, tone, adding humor, or sending a sales video letter. Here’s an example template:
“Hey, {{First Name}},
We’re loving the memes on LinkedIn. Sucks that a lot of it goes over people’s heads. Just like how easy it is to solve {{common painpoint}}.
We found that the best way to do so is to use {{solution}}. But doing it manually takes a lot of time and resources. That’s where {{your product}} comes in.
{{Competitor or Customer}} cut expenses by X percent just after {{X amount of time}} using {{your product}}. Here’s a link to our case study if you want to see how they did it step-by-step.
Let me know what you think about it. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Kind regards,
{{Your Name}}”
Value-Focused Prospecting Email
As always, we never want our prospecting emails to be about our business. Instead, focus on providing value to your prospects. Try using this template:
“Hey, {{First Name}},
We’ve been working with companies like {{Competitor or Customer}} to help eliminate {{common issue}}. Our strategies provide {{Competitor or Customer}} with {{benefit 1}}, {{benefit 2}}, {{benefit 3}}.
Here’s a link to an overview of how we did it.
If you want to go in-depth, we’re happy to schedule a meeting. {{insert calendar link}}.
Kind regards,
{{Your Name}}”
Shifting From Salesperson to Advisor
Shifting your perspective from a salesperson to an advisor positions you as someone prospects’ can trust. This type of prospecting email aims to give advice and immediate solutions to pain points. Here’s an example you can use:
“Hey, {{First Name}},
Congratulations on making it to {{new job position}}. I’m sure you’re going to kill it! But if you’re ever struggling with {{relevant issue 1}}, {{relevant issue 2}}, {{relevant issue 3}}, you’re not alone.
Many people in {{new job position}} face these issues earlier in their careers. In our {{x number of years}} in industry, we’ve found the solution to be as simple as
{{solution 1}}
{{solution 2}}
{{solution 3}}
If you ever want to discuss how to solve more specific issues you’re facing, feel free to send us an email! Good luck with your new role!
Best regards,
{{Your Name}}”
Prospect’s Company Announcement Reference
One of the best ways to get responses from your prospecting emails is to include personalization. A great way to personalize emails is by referencing a prospect’s company announcements, milestones, and relevant updates.
“Hey, {{First Name}},
Congratulations on hitting {{milestone}}! I know you want to celebrate and all, but at this stage, {{pain point}} starts to creep in. So, I thought you’d be interested in learning how we solved that problem for {{competitor or customer}}. (insert a link to your case study)
We'd happily schedule a meeting if you want to get into specifics! {{Insert calendar link}}.
Thanks in advance,
{{Your Name}}
Complementing Your Prospects
A little compliment can go a long way! But this only works if you’ve done your research. You don’t want to give a compliment and end up confusing your prospect. Make sure the complement is relevant and timely.
“Hey, {{First Name}},
We loved your recent LinkedIn post on {{topic}}. That resonated with our team, we tried it out and got amazing results out of it! I thought we’d return the favor. We made an in-depth guide article on {{similar topic}} that we think could prove useful to your team.
Let us know what you think!
Thanks in advance,
{{Your Name}}
Quick Tips for Making Your Own Prospecting Email Templates
The fastest way to make quality prospecting email templates is to use Spintax. These are variations of the same email that’s automatically generated for you. It’s dynamic and can be personalized at scale.
Tools like Instantly have this feature built-in. You can even try out Spintax templates from members of the community. But if you want to create your own Spintax for creating email templates, ChatGPT is a great place to start. Here’s a prompt you can try out:
“Add spintax to this cold email. Use the spintax structure {{RANDOM | main word | synonym 1 | synonym 2}}. "
Then, give ChatGPT an example of a cold email you want to make a Spintax of. Remember to review the output and correct any mistakes, errors, or grammatical lapses.
Key Takeaways
Prospecting is essential to any sales process. It is where we start to nudge leads further down sales pipelines and slowly convert them into paying customers through nurturing.
This entire process starts with sending high-value prospecting emails. Consider these best practices to make the most of your emails:
- Tell your prospect what caused you to send an email. This shows personalization.
- Offer insights on common pain points or specific problems prospects might have.
- Establish authority first before offering solutions to these problems.
- When offering solutions, make sure it focuses on benefits, not features.
- To get replies, try using interest-based, low-effort CTAs.
When sending out prospecting emails, you will need the right tool to support your growth. For that, Instantly has you covered! Try it out for free today!
