B2B Email Templates That Work: From Prospecting to Closing

Email is one of the most powerful tools in a sales team’s playbook. 

Most (77%) B2B buyers prefer email as their primary contact method, and research shows that an effective marketing or sales email generates an average of $38 in revenue for every $1 spent creating it. 

B2B email templates can help sales reps save time and scale their success by enabling them to create, save, and schedule winning email messages that can be personalized and used time and time again. 

Sales tools like Yesware are designed to streamline the email outreach process for sales professionals. With an intuitive and analysis-driven B2B email template feature, Yesware gives sales reps the power and flexibility to always have their most effective emails right at their fingertips.

In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about B2B email templates, including how they can level up your email outreach, how to create an effective email template, and several proven successful examples. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Why B2B Email Templates Matter
• Essential Elements of Effective B2B Email Templates
• Types of B2B Email Templates Every Sales Team Needs
• Best Practices for Crafting B2B Email Templates
• 7 Examples of High-Performing B2B Email Templates
• How to Use Yesware to Enhance Your B2B Email Outreach
• Common Mistakes to Avoid with B2B Email Templates

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Why B2B Email Templates Matter

As effective as email is within the sales process, it can also become overwhelming in a hurry. The average person receives over 120 emails every day, and it’s safe to reason that salespeople likely exceed that number. 

With so many emails coming and going, it’s easy for messages to get lost in the shuffle. Very few emails are interesting, exciting, or urgent enough to stand out in a crowded inbox. 

That’s why email templates are so important. When sales reps discover a formula for message structure, copy, and timing that consistently converts, saving it as a template can save them time and help scale their success. 

B2B email templates also help create consistency in messaging and can help strengthen your brand voice. 

With email templates, sales reps can rely on the messaging that’s proven to work, while also leaving opportunity for personalization based on the recipient. 

And, because email templates can be tracked and analyzed, sales reps can constantly measure and improve the effectiveness of their messages over time. 

Essential Elements of Effective B2B Email Templates

Regardless of when and how you plan to use your B2B email templates, be sure to include the following components in each template framework.

Clear and Compelling Subject Lines

The subject line of your email is a make-or-break moment for your B2B email template, so it’s important to get this right.

The average email open rate is only 22.1%. And readers decide whether or not to open your message (or delete it, or send it to spam) largely based on the subject line alone. 

There are several “dos and don’ts” when it comes to subject lines:

• DO keep it short and sweet (1 – 5 words).
• DO personalize the subject line with a name, question, pain point, or other attention-grabbing tactic.
• DO try to generate curiosity or urgency.
• DON’T try to trick your readers into opening your message with an irrelevant or false subject line.
• DON’T write generic, boring copy.
• DON’T use capital letters (note the irony here!) or excessive capitalization. 

There are also several specific words that Yesware has found trigger certain ESP spam filters. Keep these out of your email subject lines to ensure you aren’t sent straight to the junk folder. 

Remember to keep an eye on the data—no template or subject line will be effective forever, and it’s okay (and expected) to adapt them over time. 

Personalized Greetings and Introductions

Just because email templates are designed to be saved, stored, and reused, doesn’t mean the message itself shouldn’t be personalized before it’s sent to a recipient. 

At a minimum, each of your B2B email templates needs to include a personalized greeting to the recipient that uses their first name. 

Beyond that, details matter. If you know something specific about the recipient, their role at their organization, or their current challenges, go ahead and mention it (tactfully). 

With the amount of emails to sift through on a daily basis, readers are eager to open a message that’s clearly written directly to them. 

Concise and Relevant Content

To that same end, make sure the overall content of your email is relevant to the recipient and worth their time to read. Make your value proposition as concise as possible using short sentences, brief paragraphs, or even bullet points to highlight the most important points.

Embedding social proof examples in your B2B email template can be another effective way to persuade your reader to keep reading, stay engaged, and learn more.

Remember, though, to be persuasive and not pushy — don’t go overboard. Your message only needs to get them to the next step in the sales funnel, not close the deal. 

Strong Call-to-Action (CTA)

A strong call-to-action (CTA) can help concisely wrap up a B2B email template and encourage the reader to take the next step (i.e., book a meeting, sign up for a demo, etc.)

The CTA should be clear, concise, and stand out from the rest of the text within the message. 

Professional Signature with Contact Information

The final element of a successful B2B email template is the professional email signature. 

Your email signature should include your basic contact information (excluding your email address), and always be professional in appearance. 

You might also consider including links to your social media profile in your email signature if they are relevant to your target buyer. 

Types of B2B Email Templates Every Sales Team Needs

Sales teams who want to use B2B email templates should work to build a library of the following types of messages.

Cold Outreach Emails

Cold emailing is one of the most common and effective prospecting strategies among B2B sales teams.

A cold email is an email message that a sales rep sends to a lead with whom they have not yet had contact.

Cold email templates should be designed to initiate a positive and genuine sales relationship — not make a sale with one message. 

Remember to make this template personalized, short, and sweet. The only goal of a cold outreach email template is to generate a response from the recipient and keep the conversation going. 

Follow-Up Emails

Most B2B sales require at least four follow-ups to close. With that in mind, sales reps should try to have as many follow-up email templates in their library as possible. 

For example, you’ll need certain templates for following up with leads who haven’t responded yet and others for prospects who are engaged and successfully moving through the funnel. 

Access to several different follow-up email templates will help ensure that sales reps always have a proven, successful message on hand to send at the exact moment a buyer is most likely to be receptive and ready to move forward. 

Meeting Request Emails

Sales reps send meeting request emails for a variety of reasons, as well. 

Sometimes, reps meet with buyers for a demo; other times, they need to work through contract terms. There are dozens of reasons to meet with buyers. 

Teams should build as many meeting request email templates as they need to make these requests more streamlined. 

With that in mind, one of the most important things to include in all of your meeting request email templates is a direct scheduling link to your online calendar. 

Tip: Yesware’s Meeting Scheduler allows you to include a personalized link where recipients can pick from your available time slots. The meeting will then auto-populate on both of your calendars.

Yesware’s Meeting Scheduler also sends automated reminders to both parties at specific intervals before the meeting. 

Product/Service Introduction Emails

Many sales teams also rely on B2B email templates to help them announce new products or services or roll out updates to their current offers. 

These emails are designed to create buzz and anticipation around the new product. Here’s an example:

The CTAs on your product launch email templates might include prompts to:

• Sign up for a free trial
• Join a waiting list
• Read a blog post about the new product
• Browse case studies and testimonials

Your team can also personalize these emails by pointing out specific pain points and product features, depending on the buyer segment. 

Post-Meeting Recap Emails

The post-meeting recap email can go a long way in keeping deals moving forward. 

The key to successfully executing this type of B2B email template is to add value beyond what you provided during the meeting. 

Check out the meeting recap template below that has a long track record of success for Yesware reps (feel free to copy and paste!):

Hey {!Company Name} team,

Great meeting with you today — thank you for your time and having us {!come by the office/share in a discussion}. Look forward to reconvening on {!Agreed upon date}. Separate calendar invite to follow shortly for that. 

Quick Question

Can you please reply to confirm I recapped our discussion accurately and if I missed anything?

Your Current Initiatives / Priorities / Goals:

• {!Priority 1}
• {!Priority 2}
• {!Priority 3}

Evaluation Success Criteria:

• {!Measure 1}
• {!Measure 2}

How {!My Company} Can Help:

• {!First Benefit + End Picture} 
• {!Second Benefit + End Picture} 
• {!Third Benefit + End Picture} 

Agreed Upon Next Steps / Action Item Owners / Dates & Times:

• {!First Action + Date} — {!Owner 1}
• {!Second Action + Date} — {!Owner 2}
• {!Third Action + Date} — {!Owner 3}

It’s also important to make the post-meeting recap easy to read — and easy to deal with. All the recipient should need to do is confirm receipt and acknowledge the next steps. 

Best Practices for Crafting B2B Email Templates

Keep in mind the following best practices as you draft your team’s B2B email templates.

Research and Understand Your Audience

Just like everything else in sales, successful email templates depend directly on how well you know your target market. 

Sales and marketing should collaborate on a continuous basis to develop and optimize their teams’ ideal customer profile vs. buyer personas. 

The better you know your buyers, the more effective your templates (and the ways in which you subsequently personalize them) will ultimately be. 

Use Data-Driven Insights to Tailor Your Messages

Also, just like everything else in sales, data should be the driving force behind the decisions you make about the content of your email templates. 

Use what you know about your recipients from your ICP and buyer personas to write templates that address specific, well-researched pain points. 

You might also include relevant data or statistics, where appropriate, to help demonstrate any claims in your message. 

Write your messages according to what you know from your data. Then, collect data on the performance of those messages, and iterate on your templates until they’re optimized. 

A/B Testing to Optimize Email Performance

A/B testing email templates can go a long way in finding the exact subject lines, content, CTAs, etc., that are most effective for each of your messages. 

If you’re new to A/B testing, start small. Test only one variable at a time until you’re confident you have a collection of email elements that work well for your audience. Once you’ve mastered the basic process, you can trial-and-error more complex forms of A/B testing to optimize every aspect of each of your templates. 

Keep the Tone Professional Yet Friendly

Even though B2B email templates are stored in a library and reused, it’s crucial that the recipient has no inkling that this message has been sent to anyone but them—and that a human being has written them.

Make sure the tone of your template is natural, friendly, approachable, and professional. 

Incorporate Storytelling to Engage Recipients

Many sales email templates include an opportunity for storytelling, given how effective it can be for engagement. 

Just remember to be mindful of your recipients’ time. Sales emails, in general, should be short. Any storytelling you include in your templates should be concise, relevant, and valuable to the reader. 

7 Examples of High-Performing B2B Email Templates

Here are several examples of highly effective B2B email templates, several of them from Yesware’s very own template library. 

Cold Outreach Template

Copy and paste the template here:

Subject Line: Articles for your commute home

Hi {!First name},

The last few calls I’ve had with companies like yours who {!specific stats about the recipient’s company} have led me to research {!topic that could be a pain point for them}.

I thought you would appreciate these articles. I thought they did a great job at addressing {!pain point}:

{!Link to content 1} – {!description of content 1}

{!Link to content 3} – {!description of content 2}

{!Link to content 3} – {!description of content 3}

If these resonated with you, let’s grab 15 minutes to see if {!your Company} can help by {!proposed solution for solving pain point}.

Is there a day or time that generally works best for you?

One thing that makes the above template so effective is that it adds a tremendous amount of value for the reader, with no effort on their end. The sales rep does all the work for them, and even makes it easy to set up a (quick) meeting. 

Follow-Up Email Template

Copy and paste the template here:

Subject Line: Reply to previous email you sent

Hi {!First name},

I’m sure you’re very busy so I just wanted to check in to make sure that this didn’t slip through the cracks.

{!Ask a question / re-iterate initial ask}?

No problem at all if you’re too busy, just let me know.

Best,

This follow-up email template nails the short-and-sweet requirement, and the rep even acknowledges the fact that they’re respectful of the reader’s busy schedule. That being said, there’s also a level of respectful persistence in requesting a response, one way or another. 

Tip: See more follow-up email templates here.

Meeting Summary Email Template 

Copy and paste the template here:

Subject Line: Meeting Summary + Next Steps

Hey {!Company name} team,

Great meeting with you today — thank you for your time and for having us {!come by the office/share in a discussion}.

I’m looking forward to talking again on {!Agreed upon date}. I’ll send you a calendar invite for that shortly.

Lastly, can you confirm that I recapped our discussion accurately?

Your Current Initiatives / Priorities / Goals:

• {!Priority 1}
• {!Priority 2}
• {!Priority 3}

Agreed Upon Next Steps:

• {!First Action + Date} – {!Owner 1}
• {!Second Action + Date} – {!Owner 2}

Best,

The positive tone of this email template helps keep the sales opportunity moving forward, and asking them to confirm the recap shows that you appreciate their perspective and want to hear from them.

Final Outreach Email Template

Copy and paste the template here:

Subject Line: My last pitch (without fluff)

Hi {!First name},

You haven’t replied to my previous message, so I’ll lay off after one last pitch that’s completely devoid of fluff.

I’ve been reaching out because I see a great opportunity to {!Outcome 1}, {!Outcome 2}, and {!Outcome 3}. For details on how we’ve helped companies like {!Your company} achieve similar results, please see the attached case study.

I’ll plan on reconnecting in a few months, unless you tell me you’re ready to evaluate sooner. If you were interested in {!offer for testing product/service or learning more about it}, I could help set that up too.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to seeing {!Your company}‘s continued success and wish you nothing but the best!

Thanks,

Some sales reps leave lapsed sales opportunities in the pipeline because they aren’t sure how to decisively deal with them. The email template above can help reps determine how to best proceed with each and every prospect, so that dead leads don’t clog up the pipeline and resources can be used to their maximum potential. 

Before-After-Bridge

Copy and paste the template here:

Hi {!First name},

If you’re like most companies, {!painful before}

{!My Company}’s {!type of product/service} allows you to {!after statement with pain removed}.

If you are willing to give us 15 minutes, I can show you how, on average, our customers see a {!percentage metric 1}, {!percentage metric 2}, {!percentage metric 3}.

What’s the best way to earn your ear for a few minutes and share how your peers are {what you solve for}?

The template above uses a specific formula to help warm up the reader and keep them reading until the end. 

(It’s worth noting, though, the lack of CTAs here — imagine how much easier it would be for these readers to book a call with our Meeting Scheduler!)

Problem-Agitate-Solution

Copy and paste the template here:

Hi {!First name},

I noticed on your careers page that you’re hiring a {!Role} who {!responsibility of role}.

Would love a few minutes to discuss how {!My company} removes this burden.

{!My Company} helps clients like {!Customer 1}, {!Customer 2}, and {!Customer 3} to {Solution}. This means:

– {!Benefit 1}
– {!Benefit 2}
– {!Benefit 3}

Would you be open to a call next week to see how we could help your team?

The B2B email template above uses a tried-and-tried sales framework known as Problem-Agitate-Solution (PAS). This email framework can be easily adapted to fit the needs of many different types of sales emails. 

AIDA

Copy and paste the template here:

Hi {!First name},

Are you interested in {!benefit of your solution}?

Companies like {!Customer} are doing just that by enabling {!My Company} to better their {!outcome}

In addition to saving time, our clients have reported {!social proof}.

I’d love to schedule a time to chat and show you how {!My Company} can better {!Your Company}. Would you have some time to connect this week?

The Attention-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) framework is another common approach from B2B email templates. Note the way this message includes specific case studies and success metrics that entice the recipient to learn more about the product. 

Tip: Grab more proven email formulas below.

10 Cold Email Formulas That Just Plain WorkSee how B2B sales professionals are using these cold email templates to engage more prospects, fill the top of their funnel and build more sales pipeline faster.

EmailDownload PDF

How to Use Yesware to Enhance Your B2B Email Outreach

B2B email templates are just one of Yesware’s many features that were built to help sales teams execute personalized email outreach at scale. You can easily create, organize, track, and share email templates for maximum success.

Our multi-channel email campaigns give teams the ability to combine multiple successful templates to build sophisticated, multi-touch campaigns that even include calls and social touches. 

And our reporting and analytics features make it easy to stay on top of the performance of every message, campaign, follow-up, and meeting request.

Lastly, with 100+ million enriched business profiles in our Prospector database (and more being added every day), Yesware makes it easy for sales teams to quickly and easily build a pipeline of well-qualified leads who are ready to read your high-performing emails. 

Yesware’s integrations are unmatched, syncing seamlessly with Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, and more. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid with B2B Email Templates

Email templates can be a great asset in your sales process, but there are also some challenges to be aware of as you implement them in your outreach. 

Overly Generic Messaging

One of the biggest risks of using email templates is the tendency to send email messages that are too generic.

Vague and impersonal emails are the fastest way to end up in the spam folder. It’s always okay (and even advantageous) to use a B2B email template to structure the general framework of your email, but it’s imperative to always include plenty of room for personalization. 

Neglecting The Follow-Up

Remember: sales is a follow-up game. 

Very few sales are successfully closed in one or two interactions. In fact, most warm inbound B2B sales today require 5 to 12 touchpoints before converting to closed-won. 

The initial email template you send is important, but the follow-ups are just as impactful as the first message you send. 

And, of course, your follow-ups should be just as personalized as all of your other outreach.

Ignoring Mobile Optimization

Optimizing your B2B email templates for mobile deliverability is one of the most important (and overlooked) steps a sales team can take to improve their outreach metrics. 

And, this goes without saying, but all of your email templates should be free of spelling, grammar, or formatting errors — regardless of the device from which your readers access them. 

Conclusion

Effective B2B email templates can save an immeasurable amount of time for your sales team — not to mention the impact they can have on your overall sales performance. 

Take time this month to analyze the performance of some of your team’s most recently-successful emails and save them as templates. Then, A/B test specific components until you find an optimized formula. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to build a library full of ready-to-use B2B email templates that are proven to convert. 

Sign up today for a free trial of Yesware to start saving, sending, and analyzing email templates for scalable outreach campaigns.