On average, B2B customers engage with 11.4 pieces of content before they purchase.

That can either be your content or your competitor’s content.

You’re a smart business owner, that’s why you constantly publish new valuable content. The problem happens when your less web-savvy prospects don’t know how or where to search your site for the right content. They need to be guided no matter what department they’re talking to.

You need to make it as easy for your team to share your content as it is for your prospects to find your content.

You can do this in a number of different ways. You’re probably familiar with the power of email templates from using them in email list building tools. But in this post I’ll share 10 free email templates of a different kind that I welcome you to swipe and make your own.

These templates are for everyone from sales to customer service to account management and will do a few things for you:

• They’ll save your team time. For example, instead of repeating the same answer to the same question for the 700th time, you can provide even more value to somebody with a well-timed email giving the same information.
• They’ll help employees in other departments become thought leaders in the company. Sharing resources with customers and prospects and anticipating questions will encourage your employees to look for other ways to add value to your audience. This will help them take a proactive approach and your marketing department will love them for it.
• They’ll take the guesswork out of improving your communication. Templates make it easy to test small variations and continually improve your content. Use these as a starting point to optimize your emails.

If you have a blog and are publishing great content, but you aren’t providing a simple framework for your employees to share that content, you are missing out on your most important and engaged audience: The people that are actually INTERESTED!

To get the most out of these templates, I suggest using an email add-on software like Yesware or Mixmax. Gmail even has a free hidden template creator in their labs section.

To find it in Gmail, just click on the gear icon on the right, click Settings, click Labs then Enable Canned Responses.

These allow you to quickly create templates inside your email and track your personal emails to know when someone opens your emails and clicks any links inside.

I also highly recommend using a tool to automate your appointment scheduling. No more back and forth emails trying to figure out which time works best. Use a tool like Calend.ly, Timebridge or Assistant.to to select your availability and let the other person choose a day & time. I’ve been using Calend.ly since it was released and it’s saved me countless hours in scheduling and interruptions alone. If you schedule meetings consistently and aren’t using one of these, you’ll never look back once you start using it!

The other key to getting the most from these templates is providing easy access to all your content and reports in an easy to use knowledge bank. Having a place to organize all of your content with links and descriptions makes it easy for anyone in your company to easily find and share what they’re looking for. Here are a few things to add to your knowledge bank:

• Blog posts
• Case studies
• White papers
• Success stories
• Common objections and the best answers to them
• Industry stats and facts
• Stages of the sales process and the best content for each stage

You can get all the email templates below OR you can download them here in a handy PDF to copy/paste into your email.

The Case Study Touchpoint

This is a great template for reaching out if you haven’t talked to a prospect in a while, you’re ready to schedule a follow-up call, and you want to add extra value and address a certain need or pain point they have.

The Customer Service FAQ Hero

Content marketing isn’t just for the sales department. The customer service department is also a treasure trove for content ideas.

This template is for going above and beyond when answering a question, without having to re-create the answer a million times. You can either provide links to the resources or have templates with the directions directly inside the email.

New Client Onboarding Welcome

Just because you signed the new client doesn’t mean you can stop adding value. Use your knowledge bank and blog archives to help get your new clients up to speed on the things you know they’ll have questions with.

It’s also a great idea to reverse engineer this process and document everything new clients do have questions about to create content that anticipates their needs.

Educational Sales Follow-up

If you haven’t heard from a prospect in a day or two after the follow-up, it’s always good to check in with them. This educational sales template gives you a good reason to check in  and adds value with a resource that may address some of their objections.

Great Reason for Checking In

You never want to just touch base and not have a reason for scheduling a call. You want to train prospects to expect value from each of your emails, so send them something valuable you know that they would be interested in.

Objection Mind Reader Follow-up

The goal of this template is to give your prospect a relevant case study that seems to be written just for them (even though you’ve written one for every main objection you receive). You’re also arming them with valuable sales resources they can share with decision makers in their company you may not be able to reach. You are giving them the tools to fight on behalf of you.

Put Them in The Spotlight: The Expert Roundup

In this template, I’m flipping the script. Instead of using your existing content to send to prospects, you are reaching out to prospects to help them contribute to write an article. This works really well when you are contacting to hard-to-reach executives.

Something you can also do is mention a few people they’ve probably heard of that you’ve already secured that day to legitimize your request. This positions you as a resource rather than a salesperson going forward.

Networking Follow up with Resources

This is a simple template that’ll help give prospects you meet at events a good reason to look at your follow-up email in a sea of all the other follow-ups.

Instead of just saying “Nice to meet you” and “I hope we stay in touch,” if it works in your initial conversation, mention a resource that you can send them. This also positions you as a thought leader instead of a salesperson.

Assign Them Homework

Marcus Sheridan owns a pool and spa company. The company was getting a lot of excited prospects, calling the store and requesting someone come to their house to give them more information on installing a pool. The amount of interest was great, but the problem was that his company was spending more time on educating unqualified prospects than actually selling.

So instead of giving a quote before the prospects knew anything, Marcus started sending them an email template like the one below and giving them homework before they met. A pool is no small purchase, so educating themselves as consumers and ensuring they weren’t making a mistake was worth their while, and it saved Marcus’ company valuable time.

Your prospect is going to do due diligence either way. They’ll either use your content or someone else’s, so why not provide them with the resources?

Prime The Initial Call

After you’ve met the prospect initially, your next step is probably to schedule an exploratory or pre-qualification call.  This is a great time to follow up after that initial connection and help them do their research. The template above works great for products and this one works great for services, but don’t hesitate to use parts from each to find what works best for you.

What am I missing? I’d love to keep adding to this list. Please suggest your favorite templates in the comments below and if we add it, we’ll make sure to give you credit!