At Exceed.ai we’ve compiled millions of emails and analyzed them to uncover the fundamental components you need to include to create a high response sequence, increase engagement, and convert more leads.
With the average person receiving over 121 emails a day, organizations are constantly battling for our attention. So how can marketers break through the noise?
As digital transformation projects are becoming more and more commonplace, companies and organizations are looking to the power of artificial intelligence, automation, and internal data, to create real-time insights that can have a profound and direct impact on overall performance.
Our data shows you how.
Timing is essential, which means that selecting the day of the week to start your sequence is paramount. When determining which day to start, keep in mind that every day of the week has a statistical variance when it comes to open and response rates.
After analyzing millions of emails, the answer is clear: the best day to increase your chances of a response from a lead is on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, which have shown to have a whopping 7% increase in response rate. But beware of weekends. Sundays have shown to be the worst performing day, with a response rate of 4% less than all the other days of the week.
No one likes to be bombarded with emails, so make sure you are spacing them out properly.
When it comes to time between emails our results show that the best time lapse between your initial introduction, and first follow up email is between three-to-four days, with a 3.3% average response rate.
So what about the second follow up email you’re probably wondering?
Well, when moving from the first follow up email to the second, it's proven that the best time gap is two-to-three days, with an average response rate of 2.3%.
While most sales and marketing teams are afraid of the dreaded unsubscribe and give up after one or two follow-ups, our data has shown that the optimal number of emails is 10, with 1% of leads responding positively after the tenth email.
Most of you reading this are probably shocked to learn that someone who has ignored your previous 9 emails could respond still but it’s true, so as long as you properly space out your sends, send on the right days of the week, and remain persistent, good things can and will happen.
Most reps typically work a 40-hour week and the average rep sends roughly 94 emails per day. That is a lot of time and human energy spent simply to send that many emails hoping for two-to-five responses. This is inefficient and you are probably wondering how to achieve scalability and growth in your conversion process without the high cost of adding additional headcount to your marketing or sales team.
The answer of course is through the use of automated, AI based solutions that allow you to mimic the personal touch and nurturing process that leads expect - what is known today as “conversational AI.”
One of the most important factors of this process of course is response time. In fact, our data has shown that organizations that automated AI tools have 82% of their leads receive a response within 24 hours, throughout their entire journey, and 95% of the leads did not wait more than a week.
So the question is, if using an AI tool can make your existing team more efficient, automatically qualify leads, set meetings, and scale as your company, why wouldn’t you want to hire an AI assistant?