Email is still the most tried, tested, and successful channel to approach prospects through outbound in B2B SaaS.
There’s less friction because it’s asynchronous, and leaves prospects to respond at their own convenience to agree on a time.
But you need a little more than just a kickass outreach to convert leads from email to schedule a meeting. Your product’s value props and the timing of your sales reps’ outbound emails can only grab prospects’ attention.
In this article we’ll discuss the new way of more leads to move from an outbound email to schedule a meeting.
You need a combination of content and processes to get prospects schedule meetings from email
Fortunately, we have enough emphasis on content today. All you need to do is look back and think about the last time you said YES to a meeting request email.
- It must have had clear use cases jotted down.
- It connects their B2B product with the problems you’re looking to solve.
- Empathy towards your individual and company-level pain points.
- A conversational tone with ample background research that doesn’t sound like ChatGPT-generated pitch slap.
- A complete value showcase touching upon what’s in it for you – despite being a concise, to-the-point email that you only had to skim.
Now think about the number of times you moved on because the follow-up process was slow and highly inefficient.
You get passed around random sales reps, someone gets back to you with additional questions to qualify you as a lead, it takes time for the reps to match you with an AE, and you just realize the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing in this organization.
No matter how good the product is, you start getting reluctant because it shows how things are going to be after you become a customer. What if I can’t get something sorted or get their help after I sign a contract with them?
Been there, done that! That’s why the conversions on your email to schedule meeting workflow is down to how you set up your GTM processes and sales ops from ground-up.
First, the conventional way of navigating from email to schedule a meeting
There are 2 ways to schedule a meeting from an email – inbound and outbound. Here’s how the flow goes for both these scarios.
Email to schedule a meeting – Inbound
1. Prospect comes across a CTA in one of your ads, blogs, or website pages, which triggers their buyer intent to schedule a meeting or a product demo.
2. Prospect fills up the meeting request form and receives a ‘thank you’ or confirmation email that says “someone will reach out to you in 24-48 hours.”
3. The sales rep to whom the prospect is assigned to, checks their lead qualification credentials to find out if they’re worth prioritizing over a call – all this, while already having a queue of other meetings and leads who are yet to be qualified.
4. After getting the lead qualified as high intent, the sales rep reaches out to the prospect again to set up a good time for a meeting. This could be manual or through a calendar link.
If there’s an AE in the mix, the process is more tedious for sales reps as they need to get two parties to agree on the perfect time.
5. After a lot of back-and-forth emails—probably more than 3 days after the prospect showed intent—they agree on a time.
In the meantime, the prospect has also gone cold and has shopped around with other players in the market because of a delayed sales response.
The old way of using Email to schedule a meeting through Outbound
1. SDR creates a list of potential companies by using tools like Clay and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
2. The SDR enriches data about these companies and adds them to the sequencing tool.
3. SDRs reach out to cold email lists built over a period of time based on the contacts’ credentials and decision making power. Apart from the value prop, the smart ones also add their personal meeting link to allow the prospects to set up a meeting instantly.
But there’s one problem though. For companies where meetings are assigned to AEs with SDRs doing only the outreach, the outbound emails add more complexities.
Because the SDR can’t book a meeting on behalf of AEs without playing fiddle between the prospect and AEs – after manually scouring their quotas and availability over excel sheets.
Not to mention, it causes a blip in the buyer journey, which actually needs to be fast-tracked to be a frictionless experience.
If you’re sending outbound emails, you need a system that will help SDRs handoff meetings to AEs in a few clicks, insteads of hours of finding the right person, and days of coordination with prospects to decide on the meeting time.
The modern way of moving prospects from email to schedule a meeting
Inbound or outbound, instant meeting scheduling and lead distribution software like RevenueHero have eliminated the inefficiencies involved in scheduling meetings via email, inbound, phone calls, or through any channel.
Here’s how the email to schedule a meeting workflow has changed to give way for faster pipeline generation:
1. Prospect comes across a CTA in one of your ads, blogs, or website pages, which triggers their buyer intent to schedule a meeting or a product demo.
2. Prospect fills up the meeting request form and receives the best SDR’s calendar, from which the prospect can book a meeting instantly – as opposed to the tedious back-and-forth emails that the conventional flow puts SDRs through.
Now, emails can instead be used to automate timely meeting reminders and updates, and also post-meeting nurtures.
3. But what about qualification? You can actually get it done before the prospect even chooses a slot from the calendar.
With custom lead qualification rules from form fields and form enrichment, meeting schedulers can qualify leads moments after a form fill.
4. In addition to adding personal meeting links on outbound emails, sales reps can also add 1-click magic links that automatically route the prospect’s scheduled meeting to the best available AE or SDR base do your round robin rules – without even asking the prospect to fill a form.
This reduces a lot of uncertainty in quota attainment while nudging customers from email to schedule a meeting.
5. What if your prospects could book a slot right from the email. Without having to move to another window to schedule a meeting? Yes, it’s possible today with embedded meeting slots.
Less friction, more instant gratification can now replace your nurtures for meeting drop offs and no-shows.
6. We spoke about the manual heavy lifting involved for SDRs when it comes to booking meetings for prospects on behalf of AEs.
But reps can now relay meetings to AEs by automating the handoff in just 2-clicks. Meeting distribution software like RevenueHero have purpose-built handoff mechanisms that work on custom routing rules.
- SDRs need to be able to book meetings when they’re talking to a customer on a call. A feature Relays from RevenueHero will let them book a meeting on behalf of AEs in just 2 clicks – from within Outreach, Salesloft, HubSpot, Salesforce, and other CRMs and sales automation tools they’re integrated with.
- On outbound emails, SDRs can simply add a relay link as a meeting scheduler. Instead of working like a personal meeting link, Relays will automatically map the prospect to the right AE once prospects book a meeting through this link.
Templates for requesting prospects on email to schedule a meeting
A skeleton with well-defined goals will help you plan your ‘email to schedule a meeting’ templates in the best interests of your prospect’s POV and business outcomes.
Here’s an example with RevenueHero’s email scenarios.
1. Sort your subject line for outbound scenarios
Keep the subject line crisp and tease what you’re about to solve for. Ensure that it aligns with your prospect’s probable goals and nudges them to open your email.
Goal-based cold outreach
Subject line: Are you looking to double your pipeline in 2024?
Outreach based on ad engagement
Subject line: There’s more to us than the lead distribution ad you engaged with.
Outreach based on value prop
Subject line: Stuck with a *competitor name’s* poor round robin? Let us buy out your contract!
2. Email template for prospects who submitted a form but didn’t schedule a meeting
Subject: You’re so close to doubling your qualified meetings
Hey [First Name],
Thank you for scheduling a demo with us. I noticed that you didn’t go ahead with a meeting after filling out the demo request form. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss the scheduler.
If you’re still reluctant, I totally understand.
But you should know why 100+ B2B companies use or switch to RevenueHero.
We’ve helped them finesse revenue-impacting variables like reducing CAC, shortening sales cycles, automating SDR to AE meeting handoffs, and distributing meetings efficiently.
✅ Qualify based on form values, enriched data, or any CRM properties.
✅ Set meeting distribution rules for sales reps by region, industry, company size, performance, job experience or any CRM properties.
✅ Qualify, route and schedule meetings instantly to reps’ calendar on the website.
Don’t just take our word for it, hear it from our customers.
Feel free to book a time with me in this link: *add personal meeting link or magic link to route prospect*.
3. Email template for an cold outbound email to schedule a meeting
Subject: Looking for a better meeting distribution that what *competitor name* offers?
Hey <First Name>,
I did some digging on your website and found that you are using *competitor name*.
Please let me know if I’m wrong, but we get about 10 meetings a week just from *competitor name* customers.
And the biggest reason is the lack of flexibility in their meeting distribution system and little to no custom branding options.
With your recent Series B (Congratulations!), I’d assume there’s going to be a lot more sales hiring and inbound lead overflow.
Let me know if you’re thinking about switching to a more scalable solution for your needs! You can book a meeting with us here if this sound interesting to you: *insert instant scheduling link*
Pro tip: Add the Bernie Sanders meme to your cold email follow ups :P
Best practices while implementing an email to schedule a meeting workflow
1. Add calendar and scheduler integration to your emails
Integrating your email with your calendar application eliminates the need to manually transfer meeting details between your meeting tools and calendar.
With a few clicks, you can add the meeting to your calendar, sync up with the CRM and your meeting scheduler – ensuring that you don't double-book or take multiple treks between different windows to update meeting details.
2. Use automated email reminders for meeting schedules
Email reminders are an effective way to ensure that participants don't forget about upcoming meetings. Set up automated reminders to be sent a day or two before the scheduled meeting, including all the relevant details.
We recommend setting at least 3 reminders — a reminder after the meeting is booked, one more a day before the meeting, and another an hour before the meeting. This can ensure you increase your meeting show rates.
Pro Tip: Add a glimpse of the demo as a video or as a workflow to warm up your prospects for what they signed up for.
3. Lay down email templates for consistency
Consider creating email templates for meeting requests to save time and ensure brand consistency.
Sure you can go off-script when the situation demands, but for repeatable situations like meeting drop-offs, no-shows, and meeting not booked scenarios, templates can come in very handy and save time.
4. Keep the email brief and concise
Avoid lengthy emails that may overwhelm your prospects. Remember that you’re fighting for their attention at a very small window.
Highlight the meeting's purpose and any actions that need to be taken, ensuring your message captures their attention.
Additionally, consider using bullet points or numbered lists to present information in a clear and organized manner. Break down complex information into digestible chunks and make it easier for your prospects to absorb and comprehend – and get that meeting scheduled.
5. Add meeting links to all your emails – sales or marketing
Consider meeting links like the CTAs you add across your GTM touchpoints. You add them because you never know when your prospects could find a buying trigger. But when they find some inspiration, they end up scheduling a meeting or sign up for a trial.
Email needs a similar approach. Whether it’s your product newsletter, customer marketing emails, reactivation campaign, ABM campaigns on LinkedIn InMail – give them the option to schedule an meeting instantly from the email so that you are readily available when they explicitly declare intent.
RevenueHero is the best way to optimize your email to schedule a meeting workflow for higher conversions
Having kickass messaging and value prop in your copy is table stakes to get good meeting conversions and pipeline from emails.
But to truly turn that into a great buyer experience, you need the right systems in place to reward your prospects’ intent with a hassle-free scheduling workflow.
Modern B2B companies like Customer.io, Inflection, AppCues, Okendo and 100+ others RevenueHero to qualify prospects instantly based on form values or enriched data, route them to the right sales rep, and book meetings on the sales rep’s calendar through email.
We have some great playbooks to share from our customers who used RevenueHero to:
> Cut down sales cycles by weeks
And much more. If you want to find out how RevenueHero can transform your pipeline and multiply your qualified meetings, you should schedule a personalized demo now.
