The Ultimate Guide to Email-Based Appointment Setting

Appointment setting has become synonymous with B2B sales. Most sales reps don't immediately pitch their products or services during the initial communication with prospects. Rather, they ask prospects to make an appointment for a later date. Known as appointment setting, it allows you to focus your time and energy on prospects who are potentially interested in making a purchase. When using email marketing to secure appointments, though, you should consider the following tips.

Embrace Personalization

Embracing personalization will result in more appointments from email marketing. It will distinguish your emails from spam emails while simultaneously capturing prospects' attention. A study conducted by Experian found that personalized emails drive six times more conversions than generic emails.

How do you personalize an email exactly? If you know the name of the prospect to whom you are sending the email, you can include his or her name in two areas: the subject line and the introduction in the body. Including the prospect's name in these two areas will result in a highly personalized email that increases your chance of securing an appointment.

If you want to go a step further, include something about their company or a statistic that is relevant to their industry. This way they know that you are at least familiar with their industry and what subject matter to them.

Sell the Appointment

The shared goal of all appointment setting tactics is to convince prospects to make an appointment. Email-based appointment setting is no exception. You don't need to sell products or services in these emails. When creating emails for appointment setting, focus on selling the appointment. Why do they need to talk to you? What have you been able to solve for other customers or clients? What were their results? Give them a peek at what your customers experience.

Another great way is to research prospects beforehand will allow you to create a more compelling appointment pitch. You can look into the business or industry for a prospect works while trying to identify a common pain point. You can then explain how you'd like to discuss a solution to the prospect's pain point during an appointment. Just remember to sell the appointment in the email, and avoid your B2B company's products or services.

Include Multiple Appointment Setting Options

When creating emails, include multiple appointment setting options for prospects. You can tell prospects to reply to your emails, for instance, if they are interested in making an appointment. Clicking the "reply" button is a quick and easy way for prospects to make an appointment. You can also tell prospects to give you a call if they are interested in making an appointment. At the bottom of your emails, include your name -- along with the name of your B2B company -- and your direct phone number so that prospects can call you.

Another appointment setting option you can include in your emails is a link to an interactive calendar. Interactive calendars allow prospects to select an available date for their appointment. You can add an interactive calendar to your B2B company's website. You can then link to it in your appointment setting emails. By including multiple appointment setting options, more prospects will make an appointment after receiving your emails.

Watch the Length

Longer emails don't necessarily yield more appointments than shorter emails. B2B prospects consist of executives, such as Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Chief Technical Officers (CTOs) and business owners. Many of these executives are busy running their own business, so they don't have a lot of time to read through lengthy emails. If you create long emails, you may discover that few or no prospects respond to them.

You might be wondering how long an appointment setting email should be. While there's no definitive length that works best, 150 to 200 words should suffice. With this length, you should be able to sell the appointment while also providing the prospect with multiple appointment setting options.

Ask for Referrals

Don't be afraid to ask your B2B company's existing buyers for referrals. According to HubSpot, B2B companies that seek referrals from their buyers have 70% higher conversion rates on average than their counterparts. Loyal buyers who've expressed satisfaction with your B2B company's products or services may provide you with referrals. You can ask them for the names and email addresses of other prospects who may be interested in the same products or services. With this information in hand, you target the referrals with appointment setting emails.

Clean Up Your Lists

Get into the habit of cleaning up your email lists on a regular basis. Email lists can grow stale. Whether you build a list internally -- or if you purchase a list from a lead generation specialist -- it may become outdated. Prospects may change their email addresses, or they may delete their email addresses. In either case, your emails won't reach them. Creating emails for these prospects is a waste of time, which is why it's important to clean up your lists.

List cleaning revolves around validation. There are validation tools and services that you can use to check the accuracy of the email addresses on a given list. Validation tools and services are designed to filter email addresses that are invalid. After running a list through one of these tools or services, you'll be left with valid email addresses for your appointment setting campaign.

Send Once

Sending multiple appointment setting emails to the same prospect won't necessarily increase your chance of securing an appointment. On the contrary, it may push the prospect away by discouraging him or her from responding. Duplicate emails are commonly associated with spam. When a prospect discovers two or more instances of the same email in his or her email client, the prospect may assume that they are spam. To prevent prospects from associating your appointment setting emails with spam, only send them once.

Diversity With Other Channels

While sending emails to the right prospects can help you secure more appointments, you shouldn't rely solely on email marketing to secure appointments. Instead, you should diversify it with other channels such as cold calling and LinkedIn.

To enrich your current sales teams’ efforts, be sure to evaluate SalesLeads’ Prospecting Services. These services will do a lot of the difficult work for you of calling the right prospect. The methodology that we follow will allow you to identify your best customer or customers. Then we take that outline and identify companies that fit that ICP. But don’t forget, we do identify projects within our industry as well. We can be sure those identified projects are called if you don’t get a chance.

Find out more how you can get a fast start to filling your sales funnel.