3 Seemingly Trivial Mistakes That Hamper Your Sales Email Conversion Rate

3 Seemingly Trivial Mistakes That Hamper Your Sales Email Conversion Rate



Talking to a lot of customers over the past year has made, one thing clear - nearly all businesses out there - small, medium, or large have had to make a drastic change in their conventional sales approaches due to the covid outbreak. 
 
 The adoption of inside sales has gained momentum and businesses have started utilising technologies and applications on a dime. Businesses state that their email engagement rate went up to 48% higher during the pandemic. Now, as emails hold the power in turning your leads into premium customers, care must be taken to ensure that you avoid these three insignificant mistakes that might decline your sales email deliverability. They are,
  • Lacking a catchy headline
  • Information stuffing
  • No proper call-to-action.

Lacking a catchy headline



47% of the recipients open your emails solely based on your subject line. The first 60 characters of your headline line determine your open rate. So it is important to draft a compelling headline that draws your audience's eyeballs and intrigues them to open the email. The words "free", "limited time offer", "alert" have been overexploited which has lowered the chances of clicking your emails. Moreover, using these buzz words has a greater chance of your emails getting marked as spam. Here is a list of words when used in the subject line can land youremail in a spam folder:
  • Exclusive deal
  • Only today
  • Free 100%
  • Apply now
  • Limited time offer
  • Grab the deal
  • Reminder
  • Alert
  • Now or Never
  • Offer expires today
  • Once in a lifetime
  • Get it now
  • Free Membership
  • Guaranteed Return on Investment
  • Congratulations! You won
  • 100% cashback... are some of the blacklisted headlines that are filtered by the email providers before sending it to your customer's inbox.
 Leveraging the headline formula will help you  come up with catchy subject lines for your emails. However, you need to try a lot of variations to spot that sweet one. Here is the formula:



Without using a headline formula: Alert - Don't miss this chance to have a free call to discuss your requirements with our CRM experts
 
Using a headline formula: Schedule a call in less than a minute to discuss your requirements with our CRM experts

Information stuffing:













Opening your email is just crossing a chasm. Now convincing your audience for a sales pitch or enticing them to do your desired action is the beginning part of your acquisition journey. This particularly resides in the content. 
 
As there is a lot of emphasis on delivering value and contextual content, salespeople tend to stuff abundant information in their emails. An optimal email should be crisp, concise, to the point, and not exceed more than 4-5 lines. 
 
To frame the body of the email, consider greeting the recipient first, followed by an acknowledgement. Then, directly state the purpose of the email. And finally, direct them on what to do after reading the email.  
 
Information stuffed email body: 

Hello Sid!
 
Hope you are doing well! Thanks for showing  interest in evaluating XYZ CRM solution for your business. XYZ CRM is used by more than 60,000+ users around the globe. ABC, DEF, use our CRM for seamless integration and increased productivity. We are featured in major publications rewarding XYZ CRM as the best CRM solution for the year. We strive to deliver a remarkable experience to you. So, we would like to invite you to schedule a quick call to discuss your requirements with our CRM experts and see how we can help you further.
 
Without stuffing information:

Hello Sid!
 
Hope you are doing well! Thanks for showing interest in evaluating XYZ CRM solution for your business. We are here to assist you! Quickly schedule a call to discuss your requirements with our CRM expert and see if XYZ CRM fits your business.

No proper call to action



Adding a call to action button instead of a text hyperlink can increase your click-through rate by 2 folds. A prominent call to action button with its bold color automatically captures your audience's attention to click or at least to check what it is. 
 
However, an email's goal is to direct your audience to schedule a call or upgrade the product for which you must get them to click the call to action. Text hyperlinks may go unnoticed but a call to action button stands out. 
 
Text hyperlinked CTA - Schedule/Book your call 

Call to action button -    

Let's now group the above three simple strategies to see how effective it is in increasing your email performance.

Without using the three simple strategies: 


Using the three simple strategies:


Making these small changes in the subject, body, and CTA yields  incredible results. For a salesperson, time is money. Automating the email process with email marketing tools such as Zoho Campaigns helps you understand the user's requirements so you can draft an email that is more meaningful and relevant to potential prospects. 

    • Sticky Posts

    • As Sales Person, Here are my New Year Resolutions. What are Yours?

      Being a salesperson, I keep learning from my mistakes and have noted a few changes that I need to make in my approach. I take these resolutions going into 2021, hoping to keep it going for as long as possible :) 1. I will not say "Yes, our product has
    • Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

      It was an awkward silence in the meeting room "Uproar." John Kowalski, the new sales manager, was not happy with the team's performance. After scribbling something in the notepad, he decided to break the silence, John: I cannot believe you guys have been working like this. No reports, delusional forecasting, random targets, and no eye on the ball. Kevin: We followed Richard's orders. John: Well, Richard is not here anymore, is he? John walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote in big bold letters: "TARGET
      • Recent Topics

      • Passing the CRM

        Hi, I am hoping someone can help. I have a zoho form that has a CRM lookup field. I was hoping to send this to my publicly to clients via a text message and the form then attaches the signed form back to the custom module. This work absolutely fine when
      • Is there a way to associate an email in ZOHO Main to a Vendor record in ZOHO CRM

        My situation is as below, I have a vendor in ZOHO CRM lets say "Vend A" and an associated contact, "Cont A" If Cont A sends me an email using the email I've registered in the contact record the standard OOTB email sync will work. But the vendor has some
      • Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account.

        Hello, I'm trying to add bank charges to a customer payment, but I get the error message "Bank charges are applied. Please select a bank account." I found this old thread, where it says that I need to "select a Bank account for the 'Deposit To' dropdown
      • Kaizen #207 - Answering your Questions | Advanced Queries using COQL API

        Hi everyone, and welcome to another Kaizen week! As part of Kaizen #200 milestone, many of you shared topics you would like us to cover, and we have been addressing them one by one over the past few weeks. Today, we are picking up one of those requests
      • Présentation de SecureForms dans Zoho Vault

        Soyons francs : demander à quelqu’un de transmettre un mot de passe ou des informations sensibles n’est jamais une tâche facile. On attend, on relance, parfois de nombreuses fois. Et quand l’information arrive, elle se retrouve souvent dispersée dans
      • Introducing Connected Records to bring business context to every aspect of your work in Zoho CRM for Everyone

        Hello Everyone, We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone - Connected Records, available only in CRM's Nextgen UI. With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to
      • Granular Email Forwarding Controls in Zoho Mail (Admin Console and Zoho One)

        Hello Zoho Mail Team, How are you? At present, the Zoho Mail Admin Console allows administrators to configure email forwarding for an entire mailbox, forwarding all incoming emails to another address. This is helpful for delegation or backup purposes,
      • Sales order & purchase order item links for item details

        This is fantastic for checking lots of things, I use it a lot. It would be great to see it extended to invoices & bills On another note, may as well throw in my favourite whinge ..... Wish you guys would get the PO receive differences sorted urgently,
      • Zoho Workdrive - Communication / Chat Bar

        Hi Team, Please consider adding an option to allow admins to turn on or off the Zoho Communication Bar. Example of what I mean by Communication Bar: It's such a pain sometimes when I'm in WorkDrive and I want to share a link to a file with a colleague
      • Kaizen #190 - Queries in Custom Related Lists

        Hello everyone! Welcome back to another week of Kaizen! This week, we will discuss yet another interesting enhancement to Queries. As you all know, Queries allow you to dynamically retrieve data from CRM as well as third-party services directly within
      • Need the ability to have read only fields on a form.

        There needs to be functionality in Creator that allows a field on a form to be read only. Most screen building software applications have this capability. I know you can hide certain fields from specific users and that you can also make the whole form read only but that's not the functionality I need. I want to be able to create a form where certain fields are editable and other are for display purposes only (read only). For example if the form was displaying information on an item that the user
      • Reverse payment on accidentally closed invoice.

        An invoice was closed accidentally with the full payment added. However, only partial payment was paid. How can I reopen the invoice and reverse this to update it to show partial payment?
      • New integration: Track booking page appointments in Google Analytics 4

        Hello all, Greetings from the Zoho Bookings team! We’re excited to introduce our new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) integration designed to help you track booking activity, understand customer behavior, and measure marketing performance, all in one place. What
      • How to list emails in a folder, e.g. Inbox, on multiple pages when using Zoho mail webpage?

        Something as shown in the figure. There are totally 50 emails in Sent folder. If "Mail per page" equals 20, then the Sent folder is split into 3 pages. When I wander through Sent folder, I can just select a specific page to jump to. BTW, it seems that
      • Zoho Calendar soft bounce on @hotmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses

        Hello, our Zoho calendar recently does not send the calendar invites to emails with hotmail and yahoo domains and comes back with a "soft bounce". other domains like Gmail works fine. Also sending "email" to the same emails to the above domains work well
      • ERROR CODE :512 - 5.4.4 DNS error:NXDOMAIN.

        Suddenly we cant send mail, we are getting this error for all outbound mail to multiple domains.
      • Can Zoho Flows repeat Actions more than once?

        I'm attempting to make an intentional Zoho Flow loop using the below layout. However, when "WithinLimit" condition is met, the program fails to execute the action "Get & Add Request Co..." again. Is this by design? Is Zoho Flows unable to repeat actions
      • Unveiling Cadences: Redefining CRM interactions with automated sequential follow-ups

        Last modified on 01/04/2024: Cadences is now available for all Zoho CRM users in all data centres (DCs). Note that it was previously an early access feature, available only upon request, and was also known as Cadences Studio. As of April 1, 2024, it's
      • customer data security

        We are exploring ways to enhance our within Zoho CRM. Our Goal: We want to fully integrate RingCentral with Zoho CRM to enable click-to-call functionality for our sales team. However, to comply with data privacy regulations and protect customer contact
      • Zoho Cliq not working on airplanes

        Hi, My team and I have been having this constant issue of cliq not working when connected to an airplane's wifi. Is there a reason for this? We have tried on different Airlines and it doesn't work on any of them. We need assistance here since we are constantly
      • Sync CRM inventory data with Zoho Books

        I just switched everything over to ZoHo books, but I am trying to find out why the CRM Estimates, Invoices, and Sales Orders created in ZoHo CRM are not then duplicated in ZoHo Books? I had Quickbooks before, and had to do everything twice, I thought
      • mask Customer phone number and agents cant see customer phone number

        Is there any way we can integrate Zoom Phone with Zoho CRM while ensuring that customer phone numbers remain masked? We need a solution where agents can make outbound calls but cannot see customer phone numbers. Please let us know if there is any solution
      • Email Reminders on Shared Calendars

        How do we turn off the setting that emails reminders to everyone who has accepted or declined a calendar invite? If 8 of us have been invited to the same meeting, we receive 8 notifications for every step of the process, from invitation to decision.
      • WebDAV / FTP / SFTP protocols for syncing

        I believe the Zoho for Desktop app is built using a proprietary protocol. For the growing number of people using services such as odrive to sync multiple accounts from various providers (Google, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, etc.) it would be really helpful if you implemented standard protocols such as WebDAV / FTP / SFTP so that alternative inc clients can be used.
      • What's New in Zoho Inventory | Q2 2025

        Hello Customers, The second quarter have been exciting months for Zoho Inventory! We’ve introduced impactful new features and enhancements to help you manage inventory operations with even greater precision and control. While we have many more exciting
      • How to refresh a ticket view ?

        I am doing a widget where I send a rest api call to make a new draft to the ticket I am viewing. The issue is sometimes it refresh a ticket view and I can see inserted draft right away, but sometimes I do not see it even if it is inserted correctly and
      • Ugh! - Text Box (Single Line) Not Enough - Text Box (Multi-line) Unavailable in PDF!

        I provide services, I do not sell items. In each estimate I send I provide a customized job description. A two or three sentence summary of the job to be performed. I need to be able to include this job description on each estimate I send as it's a critical
      • Merge Items

        Is there a work around for merging items? We currently have three names for one item, all have had a transaction associated so there is no deleting (just deactivating, which doesn't really help. It still appears so people are continuing to use it). I also can't assign inventory tracking to items used in past transactions, which I don't understand, this is an important feature moving forward.. It would be nice to merge into one item and be able to track inventory. Let me know if this is possible.
      • Supervisor Rules - Zoho Desk

        Hi, I have set up a Supervisor Rule in Zoho Desk to send an email alert when a ticket has been on hold for 48 hours. Is there a way to change it so that the alert only sends once and not on an hourly basis? Thank you Laura
      • ResponseCode 421, 4.7.0 [TSS04] Messages from 136.143.188.51 temporarily deferred due to user complaints

        Had email bounce. Let me know if you can fix this. Thanks. Michael
      • Automation #15: Automatically Adding Static Secondary Contacts

        Rockel is a top-tier client of Zylker traders. Marcus handles communications with Rockel and would like to add Terence, the CTO of Zylker traders to the email conversations. In this case, the emails coming from user address rockel.com should have Terence
      • New Zoho triggers Google Dangerous flag due toabnormal charcters

        Just signed up and doing my first email test. I sent it to my google email account but it got flagged as Dangerous" due abnormal characters. My DNS setup looks ok. Page snips attached Help Please Thanks, Rick DC PowerWorld
      • Is there a API to fetch tasks in a Board/Section

        I am writing a scheduled function that retrieves all the tasks and send an reminder on cliq. I cannot seem to find a API to fetch tasks (by user / board / section) What are the way to fetch tasks?
      • Having trouble fetching contents of Zoho Connect Feeds using the API, requesting alternative API documentation.

        I'm trying to retrieve feed/post data from Zoho Connect using the API but facing challenges with the current documentation. What I've tried: OAuth authentication is working correctly (getting 200 OK responses) Tested multiple endpoints: /pulse/nativeapi/v2/feeds,
      • Adding an Account Name to Tasks/Reminders

        Does anyone know how to add the related account name to a task?  When we look at the list of activities and when the reminders pop up, there is no way of quickly seeing who the account is. 
      • Triggering Zoho Flow on Workdrive File Label

        Right now Im trying to have a zoho flow trigger on the labeling/classification of a file in a folder. Looking at the trigger options they arent great for something like this. File event occurred is probably the most applicable, but the events it has arent
      • SendMail to multiple recipients

        Hi, I'm trying to send an email to a list of recipients.  Right now the "to" field is directed to a string variable. (List variables won't work here). In the string variable, how can I make it work? trying "user@app.com;user2@app.com" or "user@app.com; user2@app.com" just failed to send the emails. Ravid
      • Populate drop down field from another form's subform

        Hello, I found how to do that, but not in case of a subform. I have a Product form that has a subform for unit and prices. A product might have more than one unit. For example, the product "Brocoli" can be sold in unit at 3$ or in box of 10 at 25 $. Both
      • Usar o Inventory ou módulo customizado no CRM para Gestão de Estoque ?

        Minha maior dor hoje em usar o zoho é a gestão do meu estoque. Sou uma empresa de varejo e essa gestão é fundamental pra mim. Obviamente preciso que esse estoque seja visível no CRM, Inicialmente fiz através de módulos personalizados no próprio Zoho CRM,
      • Signup forms behaviour : Same email & multiple submissions

        My use case is that I have a signup form (FormA) that I use in several places on my website, with a hidden field so I can see where the contact has been made from. I also have a couple of other signup forms (FormB and FormC) that slight differences. All
      • Next Page