Sales promotions give customers, subscribers, and prospects a reason to take action. You’re offering deals that nobody wants to miss. However, there’s more to consider than the offer.
You need proper timing, relevancy, and infrastructure to facilitate sales promotions. Poor planning only lands you in the promotions tab.
This article breaks down how to make sales promotions emails that don’t end up in spam. You’ll learn how to craft relevant and personalized emails, sales psychology, and pitfalls to avoid.
What is a Sales Promotions Email?
Brands use sales promotion emails to engage their audience and entice action. These emails are meant to convert. Prospects become customers, and customers become patrons.
As mentioned, sales promotions aren’t just about the offer. Sales psychology plays a significant role in your language, timing, and design. Email infrastructure is also necessary.
You’d need a system for sending thousands of emails with high deliverability. If you run sales promotions campaigns without the proper infrastructure, you’ll likely end up on global blacklists.
Building Sales Promotions Infrastructure
A solid sales promotions infrastructure allows you to safely and sustainably send high-volume emails to your audience. That means setting up SMTP settings for iCloud or Yahoo, learning how to set up business emails, and converting emails into HTML.
You can do all of these manually. However, if you want a more streamlined approach, we recommend using trustworthy email setup services like Instantly DFY. It handles everything from buying alternate domains to technical setups, like DMARC, SPF, DKIM, and Forwarding.
Sales promotion email campaigns to subscribers are simple enough. All you need is an email marketing tool to send bulk emails (but stay within your service provider's sending limits).
Cold sales promotions are a different ballpark. You want to be on the safe side. We recommend sending 30 to 50 emails daily per sending account. To scale, buy more domains and create more sending accounts. Each domain can add up to three.
For example, if you want to send 1,000 emails daily, you’d need seven domains. That’ll give you 21 sending accounts. If each one sends 50 emails daily, you can send 1050 cold emails.
The Psychology Behind Effective Sales Promotions
Sales psychology strategies help reps understand what makes prospects and customers buy. Here’s a rundown of actionable sales psychology strategies you can implement in your subsequent sales promotional emails.
Scarcity and Urgency
People value something more when there’s less of it. Adding a time or quantity limit to your offer nudges prospects to act now. For example, if you are selling SaaS, your cold email can say:
“Only 50 spots available for {{promo}}” or “{{discount}} only lasts until {{date}}.”
Your CTA can also emphasize scarcity and urgency. For example, you can say:
“If you’re interested, click the link to secure your spot now.”
The word “secure” sends it home. You need to reserve a spot before it’s gone. Just saying, “If you’re interested, click the link below,” wouldn’t hold the same weight.
Loss Aversion
Behavioral economics states that people feel the pain of losing something more intensely than the joy of gaining it. In short, people tend to want to avoid a loss rather than make a gain.
This translates well into unique selling propositions. “Brands without {{service}}, on average, lose 30 hours per week on {{manual task}}.” Reps that highlight potential issues transform the sales process into a consultative experience.
Prospects are introduced to potential issues they might not have considered. Reps can use this to better angle their selling propositions.
Anchoring Effect
Anchoring is about showing contrast. Apple is a master at this. They consistently set high price reference points to make other options seem like a better deal in comparison.
This strategy works twofold. First, it establishes Apple’s premium brand image. Second, it also boosts the appeal of more affordable, mid-tier products. It’s always a win-win for them.
Anchoring also works well with discounts. The original price is the anchor.
“Price drop from $100 to $60” looks more appealing than “{{product}} is Now Only $60!”
Social Proof
People trust their peers. When customers see like-minded individuals engaging with or endorsing a product, they’ll be more likely to trust it. Here are some examples:
“Best-seller!” or “Join over 10,000 satisfied customers!”
To make this even more personalized, you can tap into lead data from your CRM tool. For example, you can say, “{{competitor}} used {{service}} and got {{benefit}}.”
Perceived Value
Promotions increase a product's perceived value by offering more than customers expect. This can be exclusivity, unique benefits, premium pricing, or quality.
Perceived value works well with personalization. For example, a cold email is likely to end up in spam. But if content is hyper-personalized, it’ll feel like the email is sent to a specific prospect.
Best Tips For Crafting A Sales Promotions Email That Converts
With the proper infrastructure and understanding of sales psychology, you’re on your way to creating sales promotions campaigns that convert. Here are tips and strategies to help you along the way:
Learn How to Angle Unique Selling Propositions
Promotions should focus on the offer—you have something “promote” after all. However, what’s just as important is how you angle your unique selling propositions.
There are two ways to go about this. You could either go for loss aversion (emphasizing loss) or focus on the benefits. What you don’t want to do is to focus too much on the features.
Remember, every business is different. A/B test whether loss aversion or focusing on benefits is better for your target audience.
Optimize Preheader Texts
Prospects often see three layers of information when skimming through their inboxes: the subject line, the line from the line, and the preheader texts. All three are equally important.
Would you rather receive an email from [email protected] or [email protected]?
Using a role-based email address looks professional. However, it also feels like you’re receiving a mass email from a marketing team.
Preheaders are like introductions. They’re typically 40-130 characters long. These texts appear on the right side of the subject line. Use this as an opportunity to hook prospects in.
Segment and Personalize
Segment email lists before running campaigns. You can segment lists based on demographics, headcount, and industry. Instantly B2B Lead Finder lets you segment while prospecting.
You can find leads based on their technologies, revenue, headcount, and 14 other advanced filters. You can even search for leads based on keywords or similar to clients.
Instantly also automates the personalization of sales promotions for every lead in your email list. You can leverage dynamic custom variables, spintax, and AI prompts.
Leverage Email Closing Lines
Email closing lines are often overlooked and underutilized. Using closing lines helps emphasize your offer and leave lasting impressions. Let’s say you’re sending a cold sales promotion.
Instead of saying, “Does this interest you?” try, “I’d love to hear your thoughts on. . .”
The latter elicits action from your recipient. Try thinking of closing lines in terms of:
- Interest-based closing lines: “What do you think about {{topic}}?
- Direct CTA: “Please let me know the best time to call you.”
- Value-based closing lines: “I’d love to send a case study on {{topic}}.”
A/B Test Email Variations
Sales promotion campaigns are an iterative process. Your next campaign should be better than the last. The best way to iterate is to A/B test different email variations, which often means running multiple campaigns simultaneously.
With Instantly, you can send multiple email variations within the same campaign. You can also A/B test subject lines, email introductions, offers, CTAs, or design layouts. Instantly can auto-optimize A/B testing for you.
Enabling auto-optimization lets you instantly find your best-performing email based on metrics like click and open rates. It’ll then send that email to the rest of the leads in your list.
Examples of Sales Promotions in Email Marketing
Let’s look into some great examples of sales promotions in the wild. With Instantly.ai, you can use Spintax to “steal” these examples and transform them into your templates.
We’ll examine the subject lines, preheaders, and content and dissect what makes these sales promotion examples work.
Semrush: Sales Promotions That Bring Value From the Subject Line
Semrush has always been great with sales promotions. What makes this one great is that it offers immediate value. Let’s break it down starting from the preheader texts.
The from line uses Margarita from Semrush instead of something like Marketing@Semrush. Even though it’s sent in bulk, it feels more personal. Next is the subject line: “Choose an SEO Topic, and I’ll research it.” That’s immediate value.
Although the email content doesn’t explicitly sell, engaging with it in any capacity already puts you in their sales pipeline for further nurturing.
Plugin Boutique: Sales Promotions Leveraging Urgency
“Flash Sales, Holiday Specials, and Can't-Miss Deals” create a sense of urgency and leverage FOMO (fear of missing out). You can see it here in Plugin Boutique’s subject line.
“Flash Sale On . . .” Then, you get preheader text that says, “Final day of our . . .” Even with just this sort of a visible preheader, you already get FOMO.
The CTA emphasizes this further using language like “Last Chance” and “Exclusive.”
The offer also leverages anchoring. The original price is scratched and faded, and the discounted price is bold. Another great thing to note here is how they bundle products for cross-selling.
Cymatics: Exclusivity and Perceived Value
Exclusivity doesn’t always have to mean luxury. Sometimes, exclusivity can be just as effective when emails feel personalized. The subject line greets you with a Happy Anniversary. The company is directly including you in their milestones, building brand loyalty.
Even better is the preheader text, “It’s here, as promised.” If you haven’t checked emails from Cyamtics lately, you’d be enticed to check out what this is.
Cymatics explores the perceived value in the email body more. They’re celebrating nine years and have hand-picked sound design products for their followers.
Cold Sales Promotions Using Instantly
Cold sales promotions land in spam folders because they’re not personalized, don’t provide value, and present offers that aren’t relevant to prospects. Lead data avoids these issues.
Instantly CRM gives you a holistic view of all leads in your sales pipelines. You can see crucial information like competitors, pain points, and detailed customer profiles.
Reps eliminate the guesswork in their cold sales promotion emails by using lead data to create promotional offers that resonate with leads and provide value.
Here’s a template you can use.
Subject Line: {{restaurant name}} could be losing Customers
Hi {{first name}},
Potential customers are walking past {{restaurant name}} and heading to your competition every day. That’s business you could be winning—but it’s slipping away.
We help local restaurants attract more diners by ensuring they’re the first choice customers see online and trending on social media. Imagine more reservations, a packed dining room, and loyal customers even on Tuesdays.
I’d love to talk to you about our personalized plan for {{restaurant name}} to make that possible.
What do you think about getting more leads through SEO and social media?
Thanks in advance,
{{your name}}
This cold email example leverages loss aversion. You see this implemented in the subject line and the introduction. Then, the issue is addressed in the closing lines.
Pro tip: To ensure sales promotional emails land in the primary inbox, check out our article on How to Avoid Gmail’s Promotions Tab.
Key Takeaways
Sales promotions through email marketing provide a direct line to your audience. To ensure campaigns have high deliverability, reply rates, and conversions, remember the following:
- Set up sales promotions infrastructure (alternate domains, warmups, email tool)
- Use sales psychology strategies like scarcity, loss aversion, anchoring, and social proof
- Learn to angle unique selling propositions to unconsidered needs
- Optimize subject lines, from lines, and preheader texts
- Segment leads and personalize emails from the intro to the closing lines
A crucial component of any sales promotions campaign is an email tool that can send emails in bulk, automate personalization, and help iterate on best-performing strategies. Instantly gets you all three. Try it out for free today!
