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Email New Business

New business bites: Thinking outside the inbox

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By Tess Werling, Account manager

May 5, 2016 | 3 min read

The Drum Network’s new business bites series, aims to divulge bite sized pieces of wisdom for agencies in gaining new business. New business is always at the top of the agenda for most of the 30,000 agencies in the UK, but is there enough new business for all of them? New Business Bites is here for small to medium sized agencies to gain some tips in winning new clients and building their pipeline. Bites are provided by new business connoisseurs. This week, Therese Werling, account manager at The Future Factory discusses how sometimes when sending new business emails, it's appropriate to think outside the inbox.

Hello fellow email users. Structuring, formatting and designing an engaging email is tricky, especially when we regularly see them in our day to day communications. We should learn from what we ourselves click through and feel engaged by, however, as it's sometimes hard to see the wood for the trees, here are a few pointers:

The subject line

Your client’s inbox is like a busy highway and if you don’t have a sign clearly shouting why they should read your email, they will just pass by in the high speed traffic. Add a bit of intrigue by asking a question, and be sure to make it clear what the email is about.

The actions

The question is: What do you want? Make sure your target knows exactly what you’re looking to achieve. Clearly mark out what step you want them to take and put it right at the top of your message. Do you want them to... go to your website? Reply to your email? Give you a ring? Arrange a meeting? Make it easy to do that.

The agency

Focus on the value for the person reading your email. This means less content about how you work, the different services you offer, how great you are and more about how you brought value to your clients and how you can bring value to them.

The look

More and more, emails are read on mobile phones and this is where design fails us most. Be wary of fonts, chunky paragraphs; make sure all links are responsive and lead to a mobile responsive site.

Be a person

People are much more likely to engage with an email from a human rather than a newsletter-style company memo. Skip the attachment, animations and impersonal prose as it will be marked as spam or just too big to reach the inbox at all.

If you want to hear more about crafting brand email approaches, The Future Factory will be hosting a workshop on Winning New Business via Email on Tuesday June 14th. Email Kimi.Gilbert@thefuturefactory.co.uk or visit the training section of the website for more details.

Email New Business

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