A foreign trade development letter like this doubles your response!

Our initial contact with clients typically occurs through development emails. While these emails are easy to start with, mastering them is not straightforward. Getting trapped in spam folders, struggling with content creation, and experiencing low response rates are three common challenges encountered by many foreign trade practitioners when writing development emails. Today, we'll explore how to overcome these issues together.


 
There are two approaches to development emails: one focuses on quality, while the other emphasizes quantity. Let's start with the quality approach. To elicit inquiries from clients through email quality, we need to thoroughly understand our clients through channels such as customs data, email validation tools, and social media before crafting a carefully tailored development email. Writing such an email typically takes 1-2 hours. These emails also tend to have the highest response rates, typically ranging from 6% to 20%.
 
On the other hand, the quantity approach is more commonly used by most foreign trade practitioners, which involves using templates for development emails. Of course, there's no absolute judgment between these two approaches. It's advisable to start with quantity, sending out development emails to clients first. Then, focus on "quality" for inquiries with replies or higher quality.
 
How do you write a qualified development email?
 
1. Think from the client's perspective and resonate with them
To understand the client's real needs, avoid simply asking questions, as frequent questioning comes across as information seeking, which clients generally resist. Instead, start by sharing useful resources or suggestions, such as information on client competitors or market insights you have access to. Building client trust becomes relatively easy when you give before asking.
 
2. Showcase professionalism to reassure clients
To reassure clients, demonstrating your company's strength is essential. Successful market cases are more convincing to clients compared to self-praise. For example, "We sell it nicely to Walmart. They like the finish and patterns so much that they repeat the item several times a year with a quality from 8000 to 10000pcs every order."
 
In addition to highlighting your professionalism with successful cases, it's crucial to showcase your core competencies. Also, avoid blindly catering to clients during communication; learn to commend yourself. Otherwise, your email may lack confidence, and clients may question your abilities, such as, "I believe you will like our proposal."
 
3. Focus on details to satisfy clients
Development emails should be written in business English, avoiding colloquial language. For example, "Work with a customer" should be used instead of "cooperate with a customer" for client collaboration. Similarly, "Service a customer" should be used instead of "serve a customer." While these are just details, they can significantly affect client satisfaction.
 
How to reply to development email inquiries?
 
Firstly, reply using the email address where you received the development email. Secondly, it's best not to include images, attachments, or links in the first two reply emails. This is to ensure that the first reply email reaches the client's inbox as much as possible.
 
If you must include attachments or images, you can add a sentence at the end of the email stating, "To avoid spam, the e-catalog will be sent in my NEXT email." This ensures that even if the attachment email is intercepted, the first reply email can still reach the client. If the client doesn't respond for a long time, you can also inquire about the attachment status to contact the client.
 
Those who have been engaged in foreign trade for a long time know that receiving replies to client development emails isn't difficult; what's challenging is multiple follow-ups. For clients who don't reply, a similar article was previously written by our assistant, which you can read in "How seasoned foreign trade veterans deal with unresponsive clients." 
 
Finally, here are a few email tools for everyone to choose from:
 
1. Email tracking tool: http://www.didtheyreadit.com
 
2. Email/IP monitoring tool: https://check.spamhaus.org
 
3. Time zone query tool:http://www.24timemap.com