9 Tips to Become an Awesome Content Creator

Marketing is just as important today as it was during the start of the Industrial Revolution. Now the difference is the wide array of choices available to a business such as, SMS, Email, Blogging, and more.

It’s without doubt that content is king in today’s society. And for inbound marketers (content creators), there’s one piece of information that’s intergral to driving any dollars for the business, and that’s content and marketing.

91% of business-to-business (B2B) professionals use content marketing as part of their strategy. However, this doesn't mean all the content they create is top-notch, compelling, or valuable content.

It’s the burning question that’s on the tip of every executive’s tongue. But what does it take to become a good content creator? Just how do I become one that peers in my industry would look to for advice and opinions?

I believe that all good things are the result of the amount of effort you put into it. It should start with what you do before you put your fingers to a keyboard.

The core of a content creator is to produce entertaining or educational material that is catered to a selected group of people. These can be delievered through many ways including, blog posts, videos, ebooks, photos, and more. AND today, businesses have caught on to this wave, and aggressively employ content creators to engage new and existing customers on the brand's behalf.

As with most things there are some tried-and-true habits you can adopt that will put you on the path to being a truly successful content creator.

As mentioned before like all good things, it's not going to happen overnight. And it shouldn't, because you're trying to get good at it, not just simply do it. But the sooner you start working these five habits into your routine, the sooner you'll be well on your way to becoming a high-quality content creator.

1. Read news about your industry every day.

Creating great content means, content that resonates with your target audience. Simply put: You should know what’s going on in your industry. The best content creators dive deep into a topic and search widely on the internet for industry news and trends to discover what are shaping their audiences current mindset.

Staying organised here is key. There’s a lot of information that is freely available on the internet, and getting in the habit of readying by putting everything you read in one place is going to help greatly.

To expand on what to read be sure to ask a few colleagues what they're reading these days and follow suit.

2. Regularly write.

If you don't use it, just throw it. Successful content creators understand the importance of constantly flexing their writing muscles. Writing is just like any other muscle, it requires training to mould and to perfect.

Get in the habit of writing by doing it daily or every other day. You don’t need to write a polished essay, but rather set aside a few minutes a day to write down any thoughts and ideas you may have. Some questions to help yourself to start the flow are: What did you read yesterday that stuck with you? What didn't you understand?

3. Your audience is king.

Don’t make the mistake when most start as a Content Creator. Understand that your audience needs are most important. They pay the bills, and help to drive KPIs.

It’s imperative that you know your audience inside and out. Examine your own readers and viewers: What do they want that you're not yet giving them? What problems do they have that you can solve for them? Don’t just read into them using demographic data, but consider what are the real problems they face day to day.

4. Establish your own voice.

Earth to human: You’re not the only content creator out there. There’s a lot of other people who are too. That means you’re not the only one offering advice, observations or seeking thought leadership in your industry.

Diving deep or diversifying into other topics seem like a good idea, but don’t forget that there are many others who are doing the same too!

However what you can bring to your content, that nobody else can, is your own personal voice. Readers click on your content for the information, but they come back for the personality.

Writing about an unmissable competition? Don’t just write about the details about the competition, describe the scenario of them winning the competition and what it could do to their lives.

Learn how to blend other available content with your own creativity, and you'll become a much more valuable content creator in the long run.

5. Curate other content.

There isn’t a shortage of content curation. In fact, anyone on the internet can take someone else's content and retweet it, share it on Twitter, pin it -- the list goes on. However, successful content creators know it's not enough to take relevant industry news and deliver it back out to your content readers.

Sharing content just isn't enough. Engaging with the content you're sharing now makes it unique to you.

Only curate content when you have something valuable to add. Ensure you give your readers additional, useful information or even a thought or opinion when sharing content from others.

6. Understand your KPIs.

The Internet is a big place with a lot of competition, and I dare say that it is too big for your content to be discovered.

Just publishing your content online doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy the traffic it deserves. To get your content discovered, you first need to focus in on a key performance indicator (KPI), and optimize your content for it. A KPI is a specific metric you've chosen to measure how well your content is doing against your expectations. Modern KPIs include:

Social media traffic, the number of visitors that come to your content from a social media post.
Direct traffic, the number of visitors that come to your content by entering your website's URL directly
Organic traffic, the number of visitors that come to your content from a search engine result link.
Submissions, the number of people who visit your website and leave having submitted their contact information

7. Always Network.

Networking forces you to continue to learn and grow and sometimes having a bit of an idea drought is a sign that you should sit down and talk to others’ to spur new ideas and take them into consideration instead of just your own.

Social networks are good for socialing as the name suggests for it to be! Spend some time on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to check out who the thought leaders are in your industry and follow them.

Once you do that, you can ease into in-person networking. Make it easy on yourself and start small with people you already associate with on a day to day basis such as your colleagues. You already have something in common, so striking up a conversation in the kitchen or at your desks shouldn't be too scary.

8. Offer solutions, not just comments.

Want your audience to remember your content? Don't just recite the things you know -- explain why they're important and what your audience can take away from it and it's your job to put your market observations into terms they can understand and find lessons in.

9. Learn to ask why.

It is important to be curious. Insights learned from this curiousity is what continues to make great content.

It’s these solutions that drive great content pieces, and deliver outstanding value to your readers.

An alternative would be to play the devil’s advocate. Taking a contrary view on a piece of content is a unique spin that would get readers instantly reading an opinioted. Start questioning why the author things that way and you would be triggering a different viewpoint, and you will start to think critically about any given point.

In conclusion, there’s a lot of pressure on you to deliver. You need to develop great content to deliver a strong marketing strategy, but do not be disheartened take small steps and you will eventually reach your goals.

Discover how you can deliver smashing content through Email, here.

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Optimise Your Email and Skyrocket Conversions

Email Marketing is still important in today’s day and age. Even with the advent of Social, and the hype of AI.

It is the most personal way of engaging with your customers or prospects.

How is Email still relevant today? 

Emails can be segmented, personalized and automated while maintaining the relevance to the conversation going with the customer.

But to maintain the effectiveness of your email campaigns, it’s important to understand this fundamental question; Am I providing additional value to my subscribers?

Here you can learn about the importance of optimizing your email marketing campaigns and how to craft your email messages to improve conversions, based on a methodology based on 20 years in the research and testing.

To optimize email campaigns, is to refine a process and understand that Email is a communication between 2 different landing pages.

The 1st landing page is the form where you try to convince the people to willingly have a communication with you.

2nd, is your email’s ability to raise the interest of the subscriber and guides additional information to them.

So the overall flow is as follows:

Capture email of prospects >
Have them open your emails >
Interest them to and motivate them to click (through your Call to Action) >
Lead your subscriber to a landing page with more information.

To capture a prospect’s email you need to show that there is mor value compared to the cost of subscribing.

While your subscribers do not pay any money in order to be added to your mailing list, but the cost is their email and risk of them subscribing to spam and their time taken off to look at your email.

Don’t discount the importance of providing enough value to the subscriber. Overcoming the cost of a subscribers willingness to subscribe can prove to be a huge stumbling block.

Ideally you should collect their name and email address. The name is important because you can send them a personalised message.

A great way to lead your subscribers into engaging with you through email for example is in the first visit you only collect their name and email address, then the next asks for specifically which products that they might be interested in knowing more about.

Doing this progressively collects additional information about your subscribers and it is only possible if if your subscribers have reasons to visit you repeatedly.

Generally, in email there are a lot of factors that weigh in. But know that the optimization of emails becomes easier when you simplify the process. It’s also easier if you understand that the base of all email marketing is to get 2 actions from your prospects.

1st to get email opened.
2nd to get an action.

Learn more about email here.

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How To Dramatically Improve Your Cold Email

When sending a sales email, always put yourself in the context of meeting someone you’ve never met before for the first time.

Sending a sales email, is just like trying to force someone to marry you on the very first hello.

When you send a sales email, you could have the most compelling subject line. The most enticing content. The most exciting CTA.

But if I don’t know you and who you represent: Why should I trust you?

If you want to get a better response rate for your sales emails you need to answer that question. And one of the best ways to do that is with social proof.

What is social proof and why does it matter for sales emails?

Social proof is proving your credibility by pointing to other people or organizations you’ve worked with that already have credibility with your prospect.

In our experience, it’s the quickest way to go from a random name in someone’s inbox, to a person they don’t mind to work with.

If you’ve spent hours writing the best subject line, clearly articulated your proposition, and given an exciting call to action, all this will be in vain if you don’t make me feel comfortable with you. And without social proof, all of your efforts will be but for a lost cause.

Below are the 3 levels of social proof you need to show to gain someone’s trust over email:

This is a simple concept. But it can be complex to get correct.

You can’t just write to tell someone to trust you. You need to show it to me. More than that, you need to show me social proof on multiple levels:

1. Company credibility: Who have you worked with that I know and trust?
2. Product credibility: What verifiable results have you created for people with your product?
3. Personal credibility: Who are you and why should I trust you?

What types of social proof can (and should) you use?

There are tons of ways to show social proof and which one you choose will depend on what you have available.

However, before choosing any type of social proof to include in your sales emails, you need to ask two questions:

First, does this social proof resonate with this specific prospect? 

Next, will the prospect perceive this social proof as credible? 

With that in mind, here are the best ways you can show social proof in your sales emails.

Your customers

Happy customers are the best source of social proof. Instead of you telling a prospect all of the value they’re going to get, they get to hear it from someone they know who has already gone through the process.

You have a few options when choosing the right customers to use for social proof:

1. Famous and popular brands
2. Companies in the prospect’s market
3. Local companies they might be familiar with
4. You can use customer social proof by talking about them in the third person. 

Common connections

If you don’t have any customers or any you feel confident highlighting, you can create social proof by showing a common connection you have with the prospect.


However, you have to be careful here. A common connection isn’t just one of 5000 people on your LinkedIn or Twitter. It has to be a real connection you both know and trust.

Revenue and profits

Money talks. And highlighting verifiable monetary success is a great way to prove your legitimacy.

Have you done some impressive numbers in the past year?  Or pass a major milestone?

Any social proof connected to money has to be easily verified by another source or else it’s useless.

Press

Press doesn’t carry the same social status as it once did, but it’s still a great way to show you’re worth talking about. You can assume your prospect will click any press links you include.

Associations or former employers

In certain situations, the places you’ve worked in the past or where you went to school can be used as social proof.

Accomplishments

Again, in certain circumstances, relevant accomplishments or personal awards can help build your personal or product credibility.

Whatever social proof you use, assume your prospect will try to verify it. No matter what social proof you give, it has to be honest and verifiable. 

Beyond that, your personal online presence needs to have credibility as well. Most people will check your LinkedIn or social media profile to see who you are. And if those pages are shady or unprofessional it can make any social credibility you’ve developed to die with them.

Where to place social proof in your sales emails

The next question after what kind of social proof to use is how do you use it? The short answer is: It depends.

If people are abandoning your emails early on: Add social proof to the beginning to grab their interest and engage their imagination.

If people are reading your emails but not responding: Add social proof right before or after your call to action so people feel confident about responding.

There’s one more place you should use social proof that is so underutilized. Your signature is a social proof machine.

What do you do when you don’t have any social proof?

Social proof is a powerful sales tool. But if you don’t have any yet, there’s still a few options you can use.

First, you need to recognize that personal social proof is important to everything you’ll ever do as a sales rep and an individual. Your brand and reputation will follow you everywhere you go. And while it takes time to build, it brings massive returns in the long-run if you keep up with it.

Next, honesty and openness can be just as strong as social proof. 

Instead, if you don’t have any good social proof to show, just be transparent about your situation

This kind of vulnerability can be incredibly powerful and make someone want to trust you, even if you don’t have the proof to back it up yet.

Always remember, if I don’t trust you, I won’t talk to you

You wouldn’t let a complete stranger into your house, so why should a prospect reply to your sales email if they don’t know you and trust what you’re saying?

With social proof, you give your prospects a reason to believe.  Use it. And build that trust. Because without it, I don’t have a reason to talk to you.

Learn more about how Everworks's professional business email hosting will help you to deliver consistent email responses every time here.

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5 Don’ts of Email Signature Marketing

As discussed previously, there are great tips to using your email signature.

But here is 5 tips of what not to do for your email signatures.

1. Do not Go Overboard

You need not go overboard by including every single detail and contact information. Only add contact information that is necessary and regularly used.

2. Avoid Multiple Fonts

Although you can experiment with colors and fonts, it is difficult for the reader to follow.

3. Avoid Using Images for Signature

Using an image as your signature is a big NO.

With many devices and email clients having default settings that block images, an email signature that is in an image format will not be visible to all.

Also, not hosting images in your signature on a web server can turn against you.

4. Avoid Personal Quotes

Personal quotes in a business email signature can be a turn-off. Avoid them unless you are a writer or you have a mighty good reason to do so.

5. Disclaimers

Do not include long disclaimers in your signature.

Just add a few lines and then, if the need be, include a link to a detailed version.

Learn more about Everworks business class hosting here.

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5 Hidden Tricks to Convert More Emails for Your Business

The email signature. You’d be surprised how many people actually read this. It is in general just information tagged at the end of your email, but do not look down on this as it is valuable space to let your recepient know a little bit more about you and what is going on.

An average employee sends out about 30 emails a day, and it could be to either customers, prospects, partners, investors, and more.

If there are 50 employees who send out such emails for 250 business days, there will be 475,000 annual sends.

Just imagine the brand visibility all those professional email signature can help you get, besides driving traffic to your website, and creating awareness about your company’s initiatives.

Here are 5 Best Practices you can follow for your email signature marketing efforts:

1. Lay out a good email signature design

A maximum of 7 lines – that’s the ideal size of a professional email signature.

This should contain your key contact details, social media icons and advertising message. However, it is important to consider the design of your signature.

Your key contact details should always be in the color of the email body text for consistency. Links can be in different colors.

Maintain a fixed font type and size throughout the mail. You can experiment with the font but it’s better to stick to the websafe fonts, so as to ensure its legibility across devices and email clients.

2. Link Email Recipients to Your Website and Blog

Every email sent from your Company should have an email signature accompanied by a link to your website. Surprisingly enough, very few companies stick to this basic rule.

By providing a link to your website, you are giving them an option to re-engage and stay connected with you.

3. Connect with them through social media

Include links to social media pages on which you post regular updates – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. in your email signature.

4. Inform them of Upcoming Events

Is there a conference at which you are invited as a speaker? Are you coming up with a trade show? You can change your professional email signature to reflect the happenings in your company.

Create a simple banner, with a link to a landing page describing the details of the event, and place it below your main email signature.

5. This is a MUST

Different countries have different laws. So depending on where you run your business, it is mandatory to add a few details about your Company in your email signature.

Therefore, it is best to consult your legal representative to find out more.

Learn how you can send professional business emails here.

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Enhance Customer Loyalty At No Costs (Your Business's Email Hidden Superpower)

It is common for most businesses in Malaysia to consistently follow the saying that every “Customer is King”.

So why don’t do it for your Email Marketing too?

You can do this through the act of boosting customer loyalty programs through email marketing.

Psychologically, most people just want to be remembered and feel important. 

Once this happens, there is bound to be loyalty.

Also, multiple studies have shown that loyalty mailings generate higher transactional rates and revenue per email.

Below are 4 examples of customer loyalty programs you can use for your small business email marketing campaigns in Malaysia:

1. Early & Exclusive Deals

Providing your customer with early and exclusive deals like discount vouchers, early holiday bonuses, one time offers, etc. (just for them) is a great way to break the ice.

Showing them that they come in your VIP list will make them feel wanted. This will make them look forward to your emails and offers, keeping them loyal

2. Appreciation Emails

We love to be appreciated.

Thanking your customer for being a part of your brand journey is again a great way to grab attention. So, appreciate your customer and make them feel you are thinking for them.

3. Reward Redemption

Shooting emails that offer rewards and exclusive offers for old customers, initiating them to visit your brand again, can help increase communication. It opens a platform for the customer to engage in and come back.

4. Reward Expiration Reminders

Shooting emails with reminders for last day of deals, or ‘use before’ a particular date vouchers, or discount coupons codes for only a day can help create urgency and increase traffic.

Learn more about how you can host your email on an enterprise platform that scales along with your business here.

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5 Tips On How You Can Use Email To Your Advantage

It is widely known that email marketing is one of the best channels for engaging subscribers and nurturing leads.

Below are 5 Tips on How you can use email to your advantage

1.  Make use of interactive content

As Social metrics have noted that interactive content is the best way of garnering a subscriber’s attention. It doesn’t only make the emails more accurate and simpler but also brings out its fun elements and informative side. For example, you can include embeded links which show GIFs.

2.  Subscribe to an email savvy brand

Good emails pave avenues for a successful email marketing campaign.

However, finding emails that stand out on a regular basis is a tough task. So, to get hold of some creative email ideas, subscribe to a brand that’s email savvy.

How I organise this in my inbox is to create a custom email filter which sorts these emails into folders for easy reference in future.

3.  Watch on your competitors’ email campaigns

Apart from subscribing to an email savvy brand, keeping an eye on your competitor’s email campaign is also a great idea to get a competitive edge over them. See what strategies they are implementing to capture the subscriber’s attention.

Pay attention to how they write their content, design their email templates, and layout their email campaign and how they include their Call-to-Action.

4.  Make use of professional images

Nothing grabs a subscriber’s attention more than a high-end, professional image.

It doesn’t only help in breaking long walls of text but, also gives you the option to include something attention-grabbing.

A great resource is Pexels.com

5.  Go the automation way

Another sure-fire way of keeping your email marketing top-notch is by opting for automation.

From welcome emails to drip and triggered campaigns, email automation helps you do it all instantly. This is the reason

Although this reduces your workload, you shouldn’t skimp at the opportunity to personalise whenever possible. While it sends welcome emails automatically to help establish a connection with your new subscriber, it uses drip campaigns to send unique content at regular interval and keep the customers involved.

Learn more about how you can host and access professional business email from Everworks here.

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10 Common Email Mistakes to Avoid

People are social by nature and we set ourselves apart from other animals through the way we communicate and present ourselves.
Similarly your business is unique to other competitors in the way it builds and portrays itself (the brand) to its customers and prospects.

And out of the many channels of communications available, email is the only one where the conversation can be personalised depending on which point of entry the customer chooses to interact with your brand.

Here are some common mistakes that most email marketers make:

1. No welcome email

Almost every subscriber expects some sort of a welcome email when they subscribe to any email list. It is confirmation that they have performed an action and it is reciprocated in a manner in which they expect.

It’s as good as meeting a someone and not greeting that person and not even making yourself known. The first impression is extremely important, but not making the effort to present yourself with the opportunity to make that first impression is equally damaging.

A welcome email, is triggered immediately after a prospect has agreed to exchange time to receive your emails.

2. Not asking for permission.

Don’t assume that your prospects want to receive everything at any time. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. What would you do if you received email from a brand that you do not recognise? Would you continue to subscribe or even purchase? I don’t think you would.

3. Don’t hardsell. It’s as good as saying, “Thanks for joining, the solution costs you RM x.”

A visitor subscribes to your email newsletter hoping that your brand can help solve their problems.

Somtimes email marketers forget this and tend to sell their products under the pretext that it is providing a solution.

4. Not fixing on a sending schedule

Don’t forget the importance of time. Consider when you are sending your readers emails. The likelihood of them not reading your email is high if the majority of your customers are based in Malaysia, but your email is being sent after 12 midnight.

5. No personalisation

This is a very common mistake. Imagine sending out an email to a guy about the latest dress discount your store is having right now.

It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t add any value to the subscriber.

Always make sure you segment your list before sending out your email, even though it is done through an email service provider.

6. Multiple emails sent together

There are many email marketers that set overlapping automated email lists. While they may contain different messages the subscriber in short gets spammed.

7. Stopping subscribers from leaving

You can’t win over everyone. And sometimes somethings aren’t meant to be. If a subscriber wishes to unsubscribe a marketer should readily offer this.

Not giving subscribers this option might prompt them to report your email as spam to stop receiving emails and this will lower your sender reputation (means the likelihood of your future emails being in spam is higher)

8. Improper punctuations & grammar

Regardless of any business, there is no excuse for poor grammar. Especially punctuations.

The grammar used is a reflection of your image and professionalism.

9. Improper email tone

A spell-checked email copy is useless if it conveys the wrong tone. The prime areas where marketers tend to miss their footing in setting email tone is improper salutation, wrong choice of words or even how they sign off.

10. “Ciao, Mr. Shawn”

Addressing your subscriber with wrong personalization is one of the common mistakes that email marketers tend to commit. The root cause of the error exists in wrong list entry, wrong personalization tag or even the lack of a tag.

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Your email is a reflection of you. Don’t make these mistakes as it will only does the brand’s personality get dented, but you also weaken the relation between you and your subscriber.

Did we forget any other mistakes? Share your views in the comment section below.

Learn how you can integrate email marketing into your business here.

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Tips on How To Not Make the Mistake of Choosing the Wrong Email Service Provider

Email marketing is the bread and butter for most marketers as it draws the most ROI compared to other marketing channels.

Every brand is now implementing inbound methodology, marketers are choosing email marketing as the best way to build trust and increase sales.

The idea is to capture a prospect’s brief approach to you with a problem and subscribes to your emails with a hope to be educated and finding a solution to his problems.

During this critical moment, your catch to these prospects is that they will lose out on a valuable aspect of information that wouldn’t be otherwise available unless they subscribe to your email.

There is a large chance that this isn’t even presented to your prospects when they need it most.

And this fault is likely to be due to your Email Service Provider ("ESP"), as your message would have ended in spam.

If you wondering what an ESP is or if you are facing troubles with your current one, this article is for you.

The role of the Email Service Provider ("ESP")

To send emails to a customer you need an ESP. They help you to deliver your email to your customers in bulk. Yes there is the ever present popular options such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and more, but these are only good for sending individual cold emails to individuals.

ESPs have other features built into them, which make them the first choice for any email marketer such as:

1. Database and App API integration
2. Email list segmentation and management tools
3. Automated email sending

How to choose an ESP

Setting up an ESP from scratch requires time and money, so the best option is to choose one that already has a set amount of features and service offerings that fit your needs:

1. Costing: 

In the realm of ESPs, there is one for every type of budget. There are free-to-use ESPs like Mailchimp who offer user-friendly email editor, premium looking email template library, email automation workflows and email campaign analytics for almost nothing provided that you send out less than 2,000 emails monthly. While it seems like a sweet deal, the email template is not yours and the footer will carry Mailchimp banner. Plus, you can send only 10 campaigns every month. This is an excellent option for someone who has just started out or on a tight budget.

2. Deliverability Standards: 

Any emails you send are scanned by an Internet Service Provider at the user-end before being delivered. If the IP that you send your emails is blacklisted, the ISP filter will not allow your emails to pass through. Since you shall be using an ESP to send your emails, you need to ensure that they provide you with good deliverability. Enquire about the different kinds of reputation support such as white listing.

3. API integration support: 

Sending emails is a process that is constantly improved upon based on previous campaign performances (this is dependant on whether you really need this or not)

4. Scalability: 

Since you have a mailing list of < 2,000 subscribers, you decide to choose the free model of the ESP. Will your ESP have the capability to send emails when your mailing list explodes to >20,000 subscribers? Does it support adding more users in your plan?

5. Customer Support: 

Imagine you scheduled an email to be sent early morning but owing to ESP server downtime, the campaign could not be delivered. Does your email service provider cater to customer support at odd hours?

6. Ease-to-use: 

Are the specified features easy to use? Is the FAQ section easily accessible? How quickly does customer support respond? Do you require any technical knowledge to operate the platform?

Tips to keep in mind:

1. Metrics you measure: 

Email campaign metrics such as open rates, click rates, unsubscribes are provided by all ESPs, but you need to identify other metrics that you wish to measure such as heatmap, optimum open rate, last email opened etc.

2. Plans for improving interactivity: 

You need to check whether you plan to send emails with innovations to boost user engagement. This is important since most ESPs don’t support CSS interactivity.

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Although choosing or switching ESPs is like making a life-long commitment. You may choose to change. BUT beware as it would mean a waste of resources.

You can learn more about our email services here.

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Next Generation Followup Emails (Don't Send "Just to Follow Up" ever again)

The action of performing sales places people in front of the task of convincing another person that the offer being presented is going to improve their current situation.

Notice how sales is described as "a task of convincing another person...". Often sales people forget that behind the email that they're sending out they are in actuality trying to reach out to someone that they have not before in an attempt to request that they act on something you're selling to them.

Take a moment and think this through, it's already a long shot to get a friend to do something for you, and it's even tougher to get someone that does not know you to do anything you ask of them.

Described here involves the "checking-in" scenario when the person you're trying to reach out to does not respond in a favorable manner. The secret to it is to always remember, you're talking to a human being and sending out emails "just checking in..." is like a virtual nudge that not many people like to receive.

Scenario: If they have never responded

(1) Bring up a common challenge that your buyers face and ask if they're currently facing it. 

Example: 

Hi Nurul,

The clients I worked with are often struggling to find creative low cost ways of engaging with their local communities.

If so I have several ideas that may help -- like [idea]. If you'd like to discuss more I'm free for a call on [date at time] or [date at time].

(2) Bump your email up using the buried email technique. 

Example: 

Hi Mohammad,

Just wanted to follow up in case this email got buried.

(3) Call attention to what they're competitor is doing and ask how they'll resolve it.

Example:

Hi Lee,

I saw that [competitor] has been doing well in [area] lately. Do you have any plans in place for addressing it?

I have some ideas -- if you want to hear them. Let's schedule a call.

Scenario: If you lost the deal

(1) Check how things are going after implementing a competitor's product.

Example:

Hi Tan,

It's been a [time period] you signed on with [competitor]. How are things going?

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Often salespeople get caught up in sending standard touching base message often because of time. With some of these examples, sending a thoughtful email message takes mere minutes -- with an increased chance of converting into a large payoff.

Try reaching out to customers using unique channels. Get they're attention through SMS, it's cheap and is guaranteed to reach the target recipient. Find out more here.

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