Following interactions with business associates, businesspeople often send follow-up emails. Sending follow-up emails to people you hope to keep in contact with or appreciated spending time with has been shown to build closer, longer-lasting relationships than not sending them. Many businesspeople send a sales follow-up email no matter whether they had good experiences with their associates or not, as authoring them takes no more than a few seconds and is a hallmark of professionalism.
However, because they’re so common, they don’t really mean anything. Check out these superior alternatives to sending a sales follow-up email.
“How-To” Guides
Content marketing has taken the business world by storm. Rather than advertising to potential customers, content marketing involves providing them with genuinely useful information that either informs or educates them about relevant, interesting topics. Sending “how-to” guides to associates could turn them on to your writing, website, or expertise, all of which can result in more favorable outcomes than sending a sales follow-up email.
Relevant Blog Posts
Not everybody likes reading blog posts about topics that are relevant to their fields of business or personal interests. However, sending relevant blog posts to your associates certainly can’t hurt – at least as long as they’re appropriate.
Just like with “how-to” guides, sharing relevant blog posts with associates could turn them on to your writing skill, website, or expertise.
An E-Book
If you really enjoyed the company of an associate or feel like you owe them something, purchasing and sharing an e-book could be a great idea.
Even if they aren’t interested in reading what you send them, they’re almost certain to recognize your kindness and generosity. Wouldn’t you rather be known for going above and beyond instead of churning out virtually meaningless follow-up emails?
Customer Stories or Highlights
Business professionals are, by nature, experts in their fields of service. As such, they almost always are more familiar with what’s at hand than their customers are. Sharing customer stories or highlights, which often are shared as vehicles of getting their peers to laugh, could result in forming stronger bonds with your associates.
Further, customer stories or highlights can also be used in a positive manner that doesn’t shame their unfamiliarity or lack of knowledge. These sentiments can readily be shared with customers and clients.
Checklists or Infographics
Infographics are one of the most common forms of content that are disseminated by businesses, nonprofits, and governments in the name of content marketing. Infographics are images that are typically designed with colors, symbols, and patterns that increase readability and the ability to understand the content they contain. They’re also more likely to be perused by people than articles written in plain text.
Checklists can appropriately be sent to business associates who recently asked plenty of questions about topics at hand. They are also ideal messages to send to associates if your most recent meetings with them covered quite a bit of information.
The next time you’re drafting a sales follow-up email at your desk, consider attaching one of the above pieces of collateral. Smaller interactions should not be overlooked, as they can lead to long-lasting, valuable relationships.
