According to the latest report from Radicati Group, there are 247 billion emails sent worldwide each day. That number will more than double to 507 billion by 2013!

My initial response to those findings were “OK, but how many of those emails are those stupid poems about butterflies that if you don’t forward it to 10 people you die a slow death?”

No matter how you slice it, there are lots of emails hitting the inboxes of our decision makers each day.

Here are 6 ideas to help you maximize your email efforts:

1)    Take advantage of Peak Vacation Reply Periods: Why the heck would you want to go and do something stupid like send an email when you know there’s a high probability of the prospect being out? Because you will increase the quality of your information big time! Many of your prospects will use an auto reply when they are on vacation. That auto reply often will contain the name and phone number of (quite possibly) another decision and even the Grand Puba. That auto response may contain your prospect’s cell number that you might use (cautiously mind you) another time. The auto response might tell you where they went so you have something cool to talk about next time you call. Starting with Memorial Day, give it a shot during peak vacation seasons.

2)    Use The Internal Chatter Provocation Method: Here’s how it works. Instead of sending an email to just your prospect, send it to several people at the 30,000 foot level. I can  hear you now saying “I already cc the head honcho” Well, that’s your mistake, because cc’ing the head honcho makes it look like you were trying to get cute. It can also get you an immediate “See ya” from your prospect. A better way to execute the strategy is to put all the recipients on the “To” line. Doing this does several things. First, it gives you an out if someone gets cranky. You can say “I didn’t know who to send it to so I figured I would send it to your executive team” The next thing it does can be simply magical. It can create “internal chatter” It might get brought up at the next senior meeting, it might get forwarded to the true decision maker with a note encouraging them to take your meeting etc. And just for the heck of it, I’m thinking since more and more decisions are being made by committee these days, perhaps it speaks to that too! By the way, I’ve been teaching this to reps for about 4 years now and the results have been well worth it! I have to admit that this was inspired by an awesome book I read several years ago by Michael Boylan called The Power To Get In.

3)    Cross Pollination: You should be using your own auto signature to cross pollinate your social networking efforts. I would highly recommend that you: a) download a linkedin and twitter icon (facebook if its used for business) b) cut and paste it into a word doc  c) hyperlink to your profile d) cut and paste it into your auto signature. Doing this gives them one more look at you. Quite frankly, it invites them in to get to know you much better than that email will!

4)    Utilizing Your “PS” As Free Ad Space: Lot’s of cool things you can use the “PS” for. One way is to use it as a way for you not to get pigeonholed into being a vendor for only one type of product or service. The best way for you to do this is to have them “Ask you about” something as in “Ask me about how our new TPS Reports save you time and money” “Ask me about how you can get double digit response rates” Etc. The other thing you can do (and not a bad idea since you want to mix it up a bit) is to cross pollinate your blogging efforts, or that white paper, open house, free webinar etc. The key to leveraging this technique is in changing out your message 1-2 times per month so you train their eye to continually check your “PS” Why bother looking if it’s always the same. Homework: Create 6 “PS” messages (in advance) and start using them ASAP. Sales Managers: Share this idea with your team and have them each bring 6 “PS” messages to the next sales meeting. Appoint a scribe to compile a master list and presto, you have an arsenal of “PS” to cut through the “BS” Oh, before I forget, use a slightly larger font size and write that bad boy in bold!

5)    Emailing Through Social Networking Sites: Did you know that (according to a study published by Epsilon) emails sent through social networks have a 24% higher open rate than traditional email?  Here’s something else to chew on, we might not be getting any younger, but our buyers and people who influence the decisions are! Guess where they like to go? Gold star if you said Social Networks. Nuff said!

6)    Learn “The Google Trick” Need to email a prospect but you have no clue of their email? Tried to ask for it but everyone is guarding it like you asked for their Social Security number or the launch codes for the nuclear arsenal? Try the “Google Trick” Go to your favorite search engine, and type in open and closed quotes and then the name of the company’s website. So let’s say I want to find out the email protocol (first initial last name, last name first initial etc) for the abc company and their website is abc.com. I would go into the search engine box and type “”@abcdot(I wrote it out so it wouldn’t link)com. It will then pull up any results on the web where their email address has been used and you have cracked the code Columbo! It works about 85-90% of the time and is always worth a shot! One other back door approach you might try (don’t tell anyone) is to do a search for your prospect’s name on a social media search engine like http://socialmention.com/ . This is a cool search engine designed to help you find mentions in blogs, twitter etc. What does that have to do with emails? What if I do a search on my prospect and I find that the old son of a gun writes a blog. Perhaps there is an alternate way of contacting them through their blog or a listing of an email address. At the very least, you might have just found another awesome way to research your prospect in a way that most people miss.

So there you have it. 6 ways for you to re think your email!

Happy emailing!