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What is a Sales Email Sequence, and Why Do You Need It?

The best sellers spend their time selling, not hitting send on dozens of follow up emails each week.

How do they do it?

They automate their sales email sequences so they can focus on activities that close deals, not manual prospecting tasks.

Without any follow up, your perfect sales email won’t get the attention it deserves. That’s because the more you follow up with prospects, the higher your reply rate. Sales campaigns that send between four and seven emails have a 3x response rate compared to campaigns with one to three emails.

To get you started, here’s the basics of how to write your own sales sequences, how to measure your success, and some bonus best practice tips.

What is a sales email sequence?

Sales email sequences are designed to help sellers reach the right buyers, at the right time, and at scale. An email sequence can be time-based or trigger-based. Email sequences work well for outbound sales reps who are continuously reaching out to new leads.

Time-based sales sequences are designed to keep your outreach top of mind for your prospect. Since it can take three, four, or more attempts to elicit a response, these sequences are like reminders with value add. If you typically have a one month sales cycle with new leads, your sequence can schedule two emails a week for four weeks. If you have a three month sales cycle, one email a week for three months may do the trick.

Trigger-based email sequences jump into action when a lead fills out a website form, registers for an event, or downloads content. While your busy closing deals, your sequence will get you in touch with your leads immediately.

How do you write a sales email sequence?

Every email you send should follow email best practices. Just because you’re setting up a series of communication, doesn’t mean that you can skimp on quality. Your emails should all follow the same structure:

Subject line: Keep it simple and direct

Hook: Make it clear why you’re emailing this person. Use a short and catchy opening line.

Value proposition: Include one of your value propositions and connect it back to your prospect’s industry, company, and role. How is your tool a solution for their challenges?

Call to Action (CTA): Tell the prospect exactly what you want them to do next whether that’s responding to a question, agreeing to a phone call, downloading content, or registering for a webinar.

You can organize your emails based on their purpose. The top three types of sequence are nurturing, follow up, and engagement. As prospects move from the top of the funnel down to the bottom of the funnel, they can graduate to your next sequence.

Nurture email sequence: These sequences aren’t salesy. Maybe your prospect downloaded an ebook, filled out a marketing opt-in form, or registered for a top of the funnel marketing event. They’re looking to learn more about your product and company.

Follow up sequence: Once your prospect responds to a CTA, like attending a webinar, enter them into a follow up sequence which sends a series of nudges and reminders to move on to the next step. These emails are proactive and keep you top of mind during an active evaluation.

Engagement email sequence: Own the long game and build rapport by sharing relevant content that’ll pique your prospect’s interest. Invite them to take a look at a new industry report, read a case study, or attend an event.

How do you measure the success of your sales sequences?

The ultimate success metric is how many leads are converted into sales. With automated sales tools, you can improve your conversion rate by collecting a dozen supporting metrics.

These help you refine your outbound strategy and get the most out of each sequence. Here are the most useful sales email sequence metrics to track:

Number of emails sent – Track your weekly output. The more you follow up, the better your chance of getting a reply.

Email open rate – Track how many emails are opened. Which email templates are the most effective? Which messaging resonates with your decision makers?

Email reply rate – Track which emails get a response, including the ones that say they aren’t interested right now.

Unsubscribe rate – Track the number of unsubscribes. Get rid of or improve email templates that have a higher rate of disengagement.

Click through rate – Track how many prospects react to your call to action and click on links you include in your email body.

Conversion rate – Track which leads turn into sales opportunities and see if certain email sequences play a part in this success.

Forwards rate – Track how many times your email is forwarded.

Reasons why prospects say no – track why your prospects are declining next steps. Is now not a good time? Do they already have a vendor in place? Are they waiting for more budget to open up in the new fiscal year?

Using automation for better sales email sequences

Sales automation software takes the manual workload off of sales reps’ shoulders so they can focus on closing deals and making money. Your tool can help you find the right email templates, trigger follow up on sequences, and increase your outbound communication substantially.

Start with your buyer personas. Each persona can have tailored email sequences ready to go. Just drop leads into a new engagement sequence with just a few clicks. If they respond to any of the emails, your software will remove them from the sequence automatically.

Automation tools help reps set up sequences based on:

Choosing a persona type: Each buyer persona will want to see something different from your content. The CEO may want to see customer stories while the VP of Engineering wants to understand integration options.

Choosing email templates: Preset templates with personalization features will capture your prospect’s name, role, and company and attach relevant content.

Choose your duration and time intervals: Standardized sequences are ready to go but your automation software should let reps remove and add emails or modify their outreach.

Sales email sequence best practices

Sales automation tools usually have built in best practices to make sure that you’ll get the most out of your outbound communications. Here are a few top best practices to make sure your emails get through the noise:

Don’t pitch your product in every email. Sometimes all you’re looking for is a confirmation of interest, or a chance to schedule a phone call.

Match your sequence duration to your buyer journey and sales cycle length.

Test your new email sequences before you add prospects. This quick step can save you that awkward moment when you realize your personalization was off.

No matter what type of engagement you’re asking for, always include a clear and direct CTA. Make it as easy as possible for your prospect to agree to your next steps.

Get rid of manual emails

Sales people spend hours in their inboxes each day. Automating your follow up and engagement sequences gives you more time to respond to detailed product questions, schedule face to face time with your prospects, and close more business.

Check out our 11 sales email templates for guidance on building your next automated sequence.