Which of the following two emails would you respond to?
Here's the first:
Hi [first-name],
I was really hoping we could just get on the phone or maybe have a meeting about my product, BestThingEver and how it could do great stuff at [company-name] because goals are met every day thanks to BestThingEver, for instance BestThingEver does a lot of really super cool stuff like separate loaves of bread into individual portions and deliver your offspring from their place of learning to your residence. Just a very few minutes of your time is all I'm after, let me know when works for you.
And here's the second:
Hi Maria,
Your recent post on LinkedIn made it clear that you're having problems with your technology. I've felt that pain, and know it's not fun.
My company has a product called BestThingEver that helped another small business owner decrease her technology blips by 50%. It has a couple features that would be particularly beneficial to you:
- It slices bread
- It picks up your kids from school
I'm curious -- what's causing the most pain in your specific situation?
The second is clearly the better email. Why? It makes use of several of the tenets of good business writing, as listed in the following infographic from Henneke at Enchanting Marketing. Use these rules of thumb the next time you're crafting a personalized prospecting email or typing up a template to take your powers of persuasion to a whole new level.
