Sales email personalization is no longer optional for sales managers and their teams when communicating with incoming leads and promising prospects.
With about 333 billion emails being sent and received daily, your emails face stiff competition. According to the Harvard Business Review, the average full-time employee spends 28% of their workday reading and replying to emails. That works out to 2.6 hours per day and roughly 120 emails received daily.
Ready to position your team for success? Let's dive into the benefits and challenges of sales email personalization, and then explore six proven steps to make your emails stand out. We'll also provide five customizable templates to help you implement these practices effectively.
By personalizing each part of sales emails, you can expect to:
Ultimately, the best sales email personalization often follows core principles of adaptive selling.
Adaptive selling is a client-focused approach, where sales teams modify their techniques to fit the prospect's needs, industry, and role within the company. This strategy allows reps to connect with potential buyers on a deeper level, foster trust, and increase the odds of a successful sale.
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Pro Tip: Sales email personalization is a proven strategy for enhancing your outreach efforts–and it begins with your subject line. As the first impression in a crowded inbox, a well-crafted, targeted subject line can entice the recipient to open your message. |
For sales reps, the challenge is emailing their prospects at scale while ensuring their emails are personal enough to stand out. A common pain point we hear from Sales Development Reps and Account Executives is the constant need to switch between their email platform and Salesforce CRM. This back-and-forth disrupts their workflow, reducing productivity and potentially leading to data inconsistencies.
The best email personalization not only combines automation efficiency with tailored personalization, but it should also seamlessly integrate email and CRM functionalities, allowing reps to personalize communications without leaving their primary workspace. This integration eliminates constant platform switching, boosting productivity and ensuring consistent data across systems.
To create an effective segmentation strategy for sales email personalization, start by analyzing your customer base and developing core templates. This foundational step sets the stage for more targeted and effective outreach.
Your emails risk sounding generic if you don’t have a true awareness of your customer base. Audience segmentation can help here.
Begin by diving deep into your customer data to identify and build a list of different prospect groups, otherwise known as segments.
During this process, consider distinguishing factors and characteristics, such as:
Once you’ve segmented your audience, the next step is identifying how your product or service addresses their specific needs. The success of sales email personalization hinges on your ability to convey the right value propositions to each group.
Ask yourself these questions and reflect on how to best align your messaging by segment:
Next, it’s time to develop a library of customizable templates that your sales team can leverage to engage prospects and drive conversions.
If your company uses Salesforce CRM, make the most of Salesforce Lightning Email Templates functionality. With a simple drag-and-drop builder, you can create fully responsive emails—no coding required. Add images, CTA buttons, and merge fields to automatically pull in prospect data, which we’ll explore in Step 5.
Need inspiration on what to write? Scroll down for five customizable email templates to help shape your sales outreach.
Build a set of templates that highlight the use cases and benefits relevant to each major industry served by your company.
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Subject: Streamlining compliance in finance: [Product name] can help Hi [Prospect first name], As a leader in the financial industry, you understand the critical importance of maintaining compliance while nurturing client relationships. At [Your company], we specialize in helping [financial organizations] like yours streamline processes and enhance operational efficiency. Our solution, [solution name], is designed to meet the unique challenges of the financial sector. For example:
These features can help you stay ahead in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape while improving client satisfaction and advisor productivity. Let's schedule a call to discuss how [solution name] can support your compliance and operational goals. You can book a meeting directly using the calendar link in my email signature. Simply click the link and choose a time that works best for you. Looking forward to our conversation! Kind regards, [Your name] Here is a link to my availability |
Craft email templates that speak directly to the concerns of different stakeholders, based on their role such as the C-suite and director-level decision makers.
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Subject: [Prospect's company name] can boost efficiency with [Product name] Hi [Prospect first name], As the CTO of [Prospect's company name], you’re probably looking for new ways to enhance technical efficiency and drive innovation. That’s where [Your product name] comes in. Our solution integrates seamlessly with your existing systems, providing real-time data insights and automating key processes, saving your team time. I’d love to show you how [Your product name] can support your technical strategy. If you’re interested, please book a date and time using the link below where I’ll walk you through a quick demo and discuss the best options for your business. Kind regards, [Your name] [Your job title] Here is a link to my availability |
Adjust your email messaging to focus on unique challenges faced by large enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
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Subject: Scalable solutions for growing startups: [Product name] Hi [Prospect first name], Scaling a thriving startup like [Prospect's company name] presents its own challenges. At [Your company], we’ve designed [Product name] to address these issues with scalable solutions that grow alongside your business. We’ve got you covered, whether you’re automating complex workflows or calculating analytics to monitor your expanding clientbase. Let’s schedule a call to discuss how [Product name] can support your growth. Choose an appointment date and time in my calendar and we’ll chat soon. Kind regards, [Your name] [Your title] Here is a link to my availability |
Develop email templates that show awareness of common obstacles faced by prospects and indicate how your company could help resolve them.
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Subject: Lowering operational costs for [industry] leaders Hi [Prospect first name], In the [Sector name] industry, reducing operational costs while maintaining service quality is a constant challenge. [Product name] supports businesses like [Prospect's company name] streamline workflows and cut costs without compromising service. Let’s discuss how [Product name] can make a difference for your business. Select a meeting date and time in my calendar and we’ll chat soon. Kind regards, [Your name] [Your title] Here is a link to my availability |
Address every stage of the sales funnel–from awareness and consideration to decision–with corresponding email templates.
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Subject: Ready to boost ROI? Let’s talk [Product name] Hi [Prospect name], You’ve seen how [Product name] can solve key challenges for [Prospect's company name]. Now, I’d like to show you the numbers behind it. Our clients have reported significant ROI after implementing [Product name], from increased efficiency to cost savings. Let’s connect for a half-hour to discuss potential solutions. Please select a meeting time in my calendar that best suits your schedule. Kind regards, [Your name] [Your title] Here is a link to my availability |
Building out trigger emails can help you send the right emails—at the right time.
Trigger emails are deployed in response to certain behaviors, events, or changes in the prospect’s status. The messaging used is tailored to reflect the prospect’s exact spot in the sales funnel, making the received email feel more timely and relevant.
Possible trigger moments could include:
Creating templates for your company’s most frequently encountered triggers can help save time and keep messaging relevant when engaging with leads.
When creating your core email templates, always leave room for easy personalization. Taking this approach ensures your messages feel tailored to its recipient — even when you are sending email blasts to larger audiences.
Salesforce email templates offer merge field capabilities. Using automation, sales reps can pull data directly from the Salesforce CRM to insert it into their email templates, saving time and boosting efficiency.
Fields you can personalize through Salesforce include:
Design your templates with modular content blocks for quick and streamlined personalization. These blocks can be swapped in and out based on your prospect’s segment, role, or interests, making the email appear highly customized while being easy to automate.
Here are examples of email blocks you can personalize:
Once you’ve created your customizable templates in Salesforce, the next step is deploying them to your segmented audiences. But how do you do that effectively at scale?
One solution is Cirrus Insight’s Email Blast feature, a powerful tools for sales teams looking to scale their personalized outreach. Without ever leaving your Gmail or Outlook inbox, you are able to deploy personalized Salesforce email templates to their intended recipients.
Using CRM data, Email Blast supports segmentation by automatically pulling in custom fields from Salesforce, making it possible to keep a personal touch while building and sending emails to large groups.
Standing out in your prospects’ crowded inboxes starts with enhancing your sales email personalization.
By building an email template library, curated to your audience segments and their needs, you can empower your team to craft messages that resonate. Take these outreach efforts further by timing your emails with trigger-based actions, leveraging Salesforce’s fields merging and modular content blocks for better personalization, and using tools like Cirrus Insight’s Email Blast to send from your Gmail or Outlook inbox at scale.
Cirrus Insight can help you strike the ideal balance between automation and personalization to drive real impact from your sales efforts. Book a demo today and start transforming your approach.