5 Ways of Building a Rapport with Prospects via Email

Email may be one of the oldest marketing tools, but it remains one of the most powerful when effectively deployed. It is key in order to build a relationship with your prospects and nurture them through to becoming customers.

Building rapport with prospects means to build “a good understanding of someone and an ability to communicate with them”. When rapport is built, a prospect is more receptive to your marketing content and becomes easier to drive towards conversion. Building a rapport via email can be more challenging than doing so face to face, so here are 5 ways of building a rapport with prospects via email:

Send a Personalised Welcome Message

Begin the relationship by showing the prospect that you are grateful for the chance to communicate and build a relationship with them. Use their name to address them- ‘Dear Matthew…’ sounds much more personal than ‘Dear Subscriber…’ Tell them a bit more about you and your company, let them know what to expect from your future emails and tell them that you are there to help them if they need you. This email might be the first interaction you have with your prospect and first impressions are vital. Taking time to perfect your welcome message will go a long way towards building a rapport with prospects via email.

Offer Value Upfront 

Your prospect is very likely to be bombarded with hundreds of emails attempting to sell one product or another every day. However, your prospect doesn’t want to be constantly sold to. Make your emails stand out by offering something valuable, relevant and targeted. If your lead is interested in accounting software, a review of several options available would be more valuable than a mere description of your product. Offer as much valuable content as you can before you attempt to sell to them. This could be in the form of an e-book or video series for example. Giving something and asking for nothing in return is a highly effective way of building rapport.

Communicate Regularly

You’ve completed the difficult step of capturing your prospects email address, therefore it’s in your best interests to keep them engaged with regular emails. We’re not saying you should bombard your prospects with multiple emails every day but decide how regularly you want to send out communications and stick to it. This can easily be achieved using your CRM system and creating an automated campaign.

Ask for their Opinions and Input

By asking for your prospect’s opinions, it will prove to them you care about what they think and that you value them as a prospective customer. Do this by asking questions in your emails- ask them to respond to you with a topic they’d like you to cover in your next email for example. Alternatively, send them a short survey. Not only will this help you towards building a rapport with prospects via email but it will also mean that you can use their answers to aid your future marketing.

Show you Understand them and their Needs

Since rapport is all about understanding, showing your prospect you understand them is our final tip towards building a rapport with prospects via email. Show to your prospect that you really understand them and their needs by providing them with targeted communications. This means segmenting your email list effectively and then developing content especially for each of your segments.

First however, you have to learn more about your prospect. This can be done via the initial webform on your site– create custom fields that will help you to collect any extra information about your prospect. I.e. ask what problem they are looking to solve. The second way this could be achieved is through a survey. And finally; their level of engagement with your emails- have they clicked a link to a specific product? Have they been opening certain emails and not others? Data like this can help you see what they are interested in and therefore indicate what pain points they’re trying to solve.

With this information, target your prospects with the information they’re likely to be interested in and reach out to them with your solutions to their problems in time.

Using InTouchCRM’s powerful features mentioned in this article, we can help you to build a rapport with your prospects and bring them over the line. Take a free trial of the system and see for yourself.

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