Personalized Sales Follow-Ups: Boost Conversion Rates Faster

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Personalizing sales follow-ups can help you achieve higher conversion rates by increasing engagement and improving customer satisfaction. People like to see their names in print. When a prospect opens personalized communication, they’re curious to learn more, and it makes them smile. Customized marketing pieces make recipients feel seen and heard. They’re less inclined to think they’re just a number in the thousands of leads you contact regularly.

While personalized communications can garner initial interest, salespeople don’t always make a sale on the first appointment. It often takes multiple contacts to move prospects down the sales funnel before they’re ripe for conversion.

Along the way, you will gain additional knowledge about each client that you can use to personalize communications further. Continued engagement also means you will have opportunities to share insights, trends, and testimonials to provide additional value.

Most importantly, engagement ensures that you are available when it’s time for the customer to buy.

Shortcuts:

Why Is It Crucial to Personalize Your Follow-Ups?

3 Key Components of Personalized Sales Follow-Ups

  1. Knowing Your Audience
  2. Tailoring Your Message
  3. Timing and Frequency

Tools for Effective Personalization

5 Practical Tips for Writing Personalized Follow-Ups

  1. Write a compelling subject line.
  2. Reference specific details from previous interactions.
  3. Leverage storytelling.
  4. Include a value-driven call-to-action.
  5. Create a sense of urgency.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Personalized Follow-Ups.

Measuring the Success of Your Personalized Follow-Ups.

Personalization: The Key to Driving Sales Success.

Why Is It Crucial to Personalize Your Follow-Ups?

Salespeople regularly face the challenge of being stereotyped as pushy and relentless. The stereotype immediately conjures up visions of a door-to-door salesperson putting their foot in someone’s door as soon as it opens.

While today’s sales often occur online, a barrage of impersonal marketing pieces can turn off buyers who may otherwise be interested. On the other hand, personal communication attracts rather than deflects attention.

Personalization means delivering something that meets the customer’s individual needs. Generally, personalized communications speak to the customer’s unique feelings, emotions, or personality.

Statistics Support Personalization in Sales

Marketing professionals have studied the impact of personalization on sales. The statistics overwhelmingly show that it’s worthwhile to develop strategies to personalize your follow-ups.

Benefits of Personalized Follow-Ups

You have much to gain by taking the time and energy to personalize follow-ups.

Here are four ways you benefit:

  1. Differentiating yourself from the competition
  2. Building rapport with customers
  3. Enhancing the customer experience
  4. Increasing trust in your brand

The following statistics further demonstrate statistics and examples showcasing the impact of personalization.

  • Customers increasingly feel disconnected — 61% believe companies often treat them like numbers rather than individuals. (Salesforce)
  • Over two-thirds (63%) of digital marketing executives struggle with providing tailored customer experiences. (Gartner)
  • 85% of companies think they provide personalized experiences, yet only 60% of customers concur. (Segment)
  • 75% of company executives view personalization as essential for digital experiences. (Segment)

3 Key Components of Personalized Sales Follow-Ups

To personalize your follow-ups, you need to know exactly who you are talking to and what they need to hear, and then, time your communications strategically.

1. Knowing Your Audience

Can you describe your ideal customer according to their occupation, geographical location, family size, and lifestyle?

A buyer persona is a detailed profile of someone who would likely buy from you. You probably have a vague idea of some of your preferred clients’ characteristics. Knowing your audience means identifying as many characteristics as possible to form the clearest description possible.

Web analytics will provide much of the data you need. You can also gain insight into your ideal customers by interviewing customer-facing individuals, such as customer service representatives and customer happiness managers. Surveys are another good way to garner valuable feedback.

Once you create profiles for your audiences, it’s time to segment them. You can group them any way you want.

Here are some specific ways to segment your audiences:

  • Needs
  • Behaviors
  • Goals
  • Geographical location
  • Social media use
  • Email preference
  • Phone preference

For example, let’s say you’re selling car insurance. You could segment your customers in the following ways:

  • Reside in an area with competitive rates
  • Reside in an area with noncompetitive rates
  • Married
  • Homeowners
  • Multiple cars
  • Classic cars
  • Boats
  • Snowmobiles, motorcycles, ATVs, etc.

For life insurance, you might segment your audiences according to these groups:

  • Gender
  • Smoking
  • Age
  • Medical history
  • Life stage
  • Preference for term or whole life
  • Goals (death benefit, final expenses, wealth accumulation, etc.)

After segmenting your audiences, you can get to work tailoring your message specifically for that group.

2. Tailoring Your Message

Craft your messages to your segmented audiences using relevant customer data. Speak to how your product meets their specific needs or solves their pain points.  It’s a bonus if you can do both.

Consider their communication preferences and contact them on their preferred channel (e.g., phone, email, social media).

Also, think about how your product differentiates from your competitors. Highlight the ways your product brings customers great value.

3. Timing and Frequency

How often do you contact your lists? When is the best time to nudge them with a fresh communication? Balancing persistence with respecting the customer’s time is a challenging facet of sales.

You don’t want to contact customers so frequently that you’re bothering them. Too many interactions can turn customers off to the point they won’t buy from you at all.

That said, you don’t want to let so much time pass they’ve forgotten who you are.

A good rule of thumb is to contact the customer as soon as possible after your initial interaction.

Then, maintain contact, but space out your communications unless they indicate they want you to contact them soon. Try three or four follow-ups during the first two weeks.

After that, you may want to space your communications out to monthly or bi-monthly.

Adjust the timing and frequency of your communications based on their responses.

Tools for Effective Personalization

CRM systems, customizable email templates and scripts, and screen-sharing software are essential for effective personalization, enabling you to tailor interactions, streamline communication, and enhance customer engagement.

CRM

Forbes aptly describes your CRM as “your single source of truth.” Yet, the problem with some CRM platforms is salespeople spend too much time entering and updating data and not enough time using it.

To get the most out of your CRM, Forbes recommends salespeople use a CRM that captures customer engagement data, efficiently tracks interactions across channels, and provides them with an intuitive user experience.

Additionally, a CRM that’s overlaid with AI/ML-driven technology enhances sales activities by:

  • Capturing rich contextual data from daily activities
  • Highlighting best practices of top-performing salespeople
  • Predicting next steps for timely interactions

Email Software

Email templates allow you to create an email and merge a segmented list into it, so each customer receives an email displaying their name or other customized information. 

Be sure to use a friendly, relatable tone in your text for warm and cold leads. This type of approach humanizes your communication even though the same message goes out in a mass communication.  

Email software also tracks customer interactions and responses automatically.

Keep a file with email scripts and strings, noting which yielded the best results.

Screen-Sharing Tool

Since most sales are virtual, a screen-sharing tool is a must-have tool. Depending on which software you choose, you may be inhibited or limited by its features.

When you use CrankWheel screen-sharing software, your customers won’t have to download software. They can easily use a link to view a personalized screen directly in their browser, allowing you to start a demo quickly and in real time.

The software is intuitive and easy to use whether you want to share specific windows or your whole screen for smooth navigation every time.

Screen-sharing enables meaningful visuals, which will keep your customers interested and engaged.

Tailor your presentation to each customer’s needs by dynamically navigating through relevant information. Insert slides or videos to enhance concepts and features even if they aren’t part of your intended presentation.

5 Practical Tips for Writing Personalized Follow-Ups

We’ve compiled the following 5 practical tips for writing personalized follow-ups:

1. Write a compelling subject line.

Recipients will likely open an email with a thought-provoking headline (e.g., Protect What Matters Most: Your Loved Ones Future, Make Your Health Your Priority: Affordable Coverage Available, Drive With Confidence and Save Big on Your Auto Insurance Policy).

2. Reference specific details from previous interactions.

Did they mention their dog’s name? Do they have a child going off to college soon? Did they mention the birth of a grandchild? Do they have plans for an amazing vacation? Reference details of your last conversation to get a conversation going.

3. Leverage storytelling.

Share stories and case studies relevant to the recipient from your own experiences or others you find to build trust.

4. Include a value-driven call to action.

Always use an action verb – download, get, start, learn, explore, show now, register. Use contrasting colors on your CTA button and display it prominently.

5. Create a sense of urgency.

Highlight a limited-time offer or announce new programs. (e.g., United Health is now in your area, enroll before OEP ends, it’s time to sign up for Medicare, your auto insurance is coming due).

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Personalized Follow-Ups

It’s not always as simple as it sounds to write a solicitation email. It’s easy to make some basic mistakes that can turn customers off with a word or two.

Here are some things to look out for when working on sales follow-ups:

  • Don’t be overly friendly. It could come off as intrusive or too personal for a business purpose.
  • Get their names right. Be cognizant of complex spellings and unusual names.
  • Use the appropriate titles such as Ms., Miss, Mrs., and Mr. Names like Leslie, Riley, and Finley could be either male or female. It’s also more common today for people to be genderless or gender fluid.
  • Avoid sharing sensitive information in general communication.
  • Don’t overwhelm them with too much information upfront. A few shorter, informative emails will serve you better.
  • Get to the message at hand as quickly as possible.
  • Pay attention to feedback. If they request that you not contact them, don’t.  That said, never throw out a lead. They may be receptive maybe even one or two years down the line.
  • Space out your communications so as not to overwhelm them with too many follow-ups.
  • Always offer something beneficial, such as insights, solutions, or relevant updates, to keep the recipient interested.

Measuring the Success of Your Personalized Follow-Ups

The only way you can know for sure whether your approach to personalization is effective is to measure your results by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs).

Here are some things to keep track of:

  1. Response Rate – The percentage of recipients who reply to your follow-up messages is a primary indicator of engagement. A higher response rate suggests your message is relevant and compelling.
  2. Open Rate – If you’re using email, track how many recipients open your follow-ups. A low open rate may indicate weak subject lines or poor timing.
  3. Conversion Rate – Whether your goal is booking a meeting, completing a purchase, or signing up for a service, the number of recipients taking the desired action is a critical success metric.
  4. Time to Response – The swiftness of how quickly recipients reply can indicate their level of interest. Faster responses often signal a strong connection with your message.
  5. Click-Through Rate (CTR) – If your follow-up includes a link, tracking clicks helps measure how well your message drives action.
  6. Feedback and Sentiment – Analyzing responses for tone and sentiment can help gauge how well your follow-ups are received.
  7. Follow-Up Frequency Effectiveness – Testing different cadences will reveal the optimal number and timing of messages before engagement drops.

It helps you to conduct A/B testing to refine your personalization strategies. A/B testing means to send out two similar emails and compare the results to see which is more effective.

Personalization: The Key to Driving Sales Success

When you develop and stick to a designated plan for personalizing communications, you set yourself up for higher conversions. To accomplish that, you’ll need to understand your audience, tailor your messages to them, and send out communications at the right intervals.

Furthermore, you’ll need the right tools at your disposal, including a functional CRM, email software program, and quality screen-sharing tool. As always, be sure to demonstrate professionalism and demonstrate that you are an expert in your craft.

Finally, enjoy the process as you implement and test strategies. Your enthusiasm is bound to show in your interactions.

Interested in personalizing your slides and sharing them seamlessly with your customers? CrankWheel’s screen-sharing solution allows you to customize your presentations starting today. Learn more about how CrankWheel can help you achieve higher conversion rates, and give it a try for free.