Demo invitation

After a long time of qualifying leads, writing cold emails, and nurturing prospects, you're finally ready to schedule a demo with a prospective client.

Well done – but the sales process isn't over yet, not at all. How you schedule a demo meeting will determine whether the prospect shows up and the effectiveness of your product demonstration. 

Booking a demo with a software demo invitation email might sound like an easy thing to do, but nailing your demo meeting invitation actually takes a lot of thought and finesse.

To help you nail your software demo invitation letter, we've put together the best practices and tips that will help you schedule more and better demos. We will also introduce MailMaestro's demo email template to show you how our AI writing assistant can help you save time and be more productive throughout the sales cycle. 

How to schedule product demo appointments

You likely already know that booking a demo is one of the most critical steps in the software sales process. It's your first – and probably the last – chance to showcase to your prospective client what your product can do for them.

Once you've demonstrated how your product can solve their pain points, closing the deal becomes easier. Unfortunately, getting a prospect to schedule a demo with your company is easier said than done.

They are likely busy, and most often, the buyer is used to testing software products on their own and avoids meeting with sales representatives.

That's why the importance of software demo invitation letters shouldn't be overlooked. The following tips and best practices will help you send demo meeting invitation emails that will convert to appointments.

1. Qualify your prospects

Before you send a product demo invitation email, you have to make sure that you reach out to the right person. The previous steps in the selling process should steer your way and ensure that you understand who the decision-maker in the company is, what needs they have, and what level of technical proficiency you can expect from them.

Spending time studying your prospect will help you write a personalized meeting invite for a demo. So don't be lazy with your homework and research before hitting send. 

2. Get the content of your product demo email right

When writing your demo email, you should remember that you are selling a meeting instead of the actual product. So don't burden the prospects with too much hard-do-digest information on the demo meeting invitation email, but don't be too vague either. 

An email to schedule a demo should answer the following questions:

• Why should the prospect spend their precious time to meet with you?
• What will they get from the demo?
• Why should they book a demo with you instead of your competitor?
• How much of their time will the demo take?
  

If you answer these questions in your demo email, you are one step closer to scheduling a demo. If you also manage to underline the value your product can create for the prospect's company, you'll likely have a new product demo appointment in your calendar.

3. Get straight to the point and be clear about your intentions

Nobody has time to read their emails. Let alone ones that are overly long. Be concise in your expression and get to the point.

Your prospect will immediately see through flattery and consider it fluff that takes up their precious time. Instead, focus on demonstrating your knowledge about their business and don't make assumptions.

Remember that a meeting invite for a demo has one goal only: to schedule that demo. So any unnecessary asks and exchange of pleasantries will only create friction for your path to get to "Yes".

So keep the small talk to a minimum, write short sentences and be clear in your delivery. For example, note "the demo will take place on Monday, March  1" instead of "the demo will take place at the beginning of next week".

4. Use an appropriate tone in your demo meeting invite

Yes, software demo invitation emails should be enthusiastic, but should your email remain formal or err on the informal side of the professional email? Only you know the answer – at least if you have done your research.

The tone of the invitation email should be based on the tone of voice of your brand, the type of prospect you're approaching, as well as anything you know about the decision-maker who'll read your email.

For example, startups selling SaaS products to other startups may go with a more informal tone in their demo invites, and large corporations in the industrial sector are likely used to more formal email correspondence.

5. Provide all important information about the demo

Repeat after me: "I promise not to burden the prospect to look for more information about my product and company." You are responsible for providing all the specific information the recipient might need in your meeting invite for a demo.

Before you hit send, you can check whether your email answers to what, why, where, when, with whom, how long, and how from the prospect's perspective. If you manage to schedule the demo, it's best to send a pre-meeting email ahead of time to recap the valuable information.

6. Always personalize your software demo invitation letters

When sending an email to book a demo, you should use everything you know about the prospect to make the invitation personal.

You've hopefully researched their industry, business, and competition. You also might know a bit of them as a person based on your cold emails or discovery calls, and now it's time to put those insights into action.

Show that you understand their motivations to participate in a demo from you by mentioning something their business is trying to achieve or solve and promise to show your product can help with that.

If you cannot personalize the demo invite, it only indicates that you have not done your homework and are merely spraying and praying to hit your quota for demos booked. 

7. Don't ask for too much to schedule a demo

One of the rookie mistakes many sales representatives make is that they ask for too much too soon. When writing your email for a product demo, remember that your goal is only to book that demo and nothing else.

Considering that the prospect is a busy decision-maker in their company and gets dozens of demo requests from companies just like yours daily, asking for more than 30 minutes of their time is like asking for the moon in the sky. The less time your demo will take, the more likely you will book one.

So aim to schedule 15 or 20-minute time slots for the demo if it's only possible.

8. Provide several options for the schedule of the demo

Rule number one when scheduling demos: Don't leave it up to the prospect to set up an appointment. Take the pressure away from the recipient's shoulders to find time for your product demonstration by providing several options for dates and hours for the demo.

If you've been in previous exchange with the prospect in the earlier phases of the sales process, aim to book your demo date within no more than five business days of your last contact to keep the ball rolling. Momentum is your friend when it comes to closing a deal.

9. Write a compelling email subject line for your demo meeting invitation

The email subject line is often the most important yet most overlooked part of the demo meeting invitation emails. The ground rules you should follow are to use email subject lines that are professional, clear, and intriguing.

Avoid click baits at all costs, and provide the prospect with a clear picture of what to expect from the email when they open it. 

Here are five examples of good email subject lines for product demo emails:

• Improve your <key metric> by XX%
• A new approach to <strategy/tactic/process> for <Company>
• Idea for resolving <pain point>
• We can help <company> to reduce <key metric>
• Additional revenue stream for <Company>
  

The best way to get started is to study email subject line best practices based on data, get acquainted with A/B testing, and begin to run experiments on what works for your target audience.

10. Send the product demo email at the right time

Timing your demo invite right is crucial. To know when to send your demo invitation, you must know the prospect you are trying to reach.

The perfect timing also depends on the industry you are in. But regardless of what you sell, most of your prospects will be enjoying family time on the weekends.

That means reaching out to them on the weekend will lead to a poor email open rate. Industry veterans say that Tuesday is the best day to send emails if you want to get them opened.

The same research proved that people are most likely to read your email at 10 am or 1 pm. There's no all-size-fits-all approach, so you should experiment with building your insights on when is the best time to send software demo Invitation letters.

Demo email template by MailMaestro

When it comes to sales email templates, email templates to schedule a demo are among the most important ones anyone working in software sales should have at hand at all times. That is where we come to play.

MailMaestro is an AI writing assistant that turns your instructions into ready-to-send emails. Our AI email templates allow you to focus on the message instead of the delivery by adapting to the situation and creating unique emails considering the recipient and your previous correspondence.

Forget copy and pasting, canned responses, and typing out emails as you know it. With MailMaestro and our demo email template, you will create personalized demo meeting invitation emails faster than ever before.

Try our product demo email template yourself

Give our demo schedule template a try below and see the sample invitation letter for the product demonstration it generates to fully understand how much time you and your sales team can save with MailMaestro.

Still wondering how to write a software demo invitation letter? MailMaestro and our demo email template can help you to nail all the best practices for demo meeting invitations we've just described – and ultimately book more product demos.

Furthermore, our template gallery comes with various other sales email templates to help you and your sales team save time and be more productive in your daily communication.