This strategy is capable of producing the highest ROI compared to all marketing channels. Email marketing may also be optimized to help you generate more leads.
When played right, cold emailing can help introduce your brand to potential customers. Enterpreneur.com states that many successful businesses use cold email at the beginning of the sales process. Whether you have a big or small business, cold emailing can help drive sales leads plus, expand your network.
Are your email lead generation strategies working? Let us introduce the following 10 top, expert-approved strategies to spice it up.
What is email lead generation?
Email lead generation is a process wherein you collect leads using an opt-in form that’s part of your marketing email. Just like other lead generation strategies, you hope to turn these leads to full-pledged customers by creating optimized marketing strategies.
Get better lead generation with these email marketing techniques
Experts have reaped great results using the following email lead generation strategies.
Enhance your efforts with lead scoring
Lead scoring is like a scoresheet for every customer. They get points depending on the actions that they make as they relate to your business. Sending out emails to your prospects can help you categorize them accordingly.
Different actions will identify your prospects. They may ignore your email or immediately delete them from their inbox. They may open the email and read it but won’t care to click on your links. There are also prospects that are very interested in your service or products and want to find out more. They click on links on your email or reply to your email.
Scores are provided for each behavior. The more your prospects respond to your email marketing steps, the higher their scores. Yahoo Small Business recommends setting up a threshold before a customer moves on to the next step of the buying journey. Lead scoring can help come up with better-qualified leads.
Lead generation is also an essential part of B2B lead generation. A company uses lead scores to create marketing strategies for businesses that are ready to buy and those who are still considering other providers.
Create emails that are clear and easy to understand
Your customers will appreciate clear, concise, and easy-to-read and understand emails. They are more likely to take your offer if they get what’s in store for them. Create emails with captivating headings and short but sincere sentences.
Get to the point right away. People don’t have time for long emails, especially marketing emails! They want to know right away what the email is about. Use bulleted points or highlight important parts of the email. If you want to offer some new promo, service, or product, be sure to hyperlink this to your promo or product page.
An example of a “clean email” sent by a popular food delivery service Food Panda. The email is short, straight to the point, and has minimal but timely graphics. This email has a link for the prospect to click in case he’s interested. Also, the way the email is composed makes the content irresistible. This Food Panda email was delivered straight to the primary Gmail inbox and was able to avoid the Promotions tab.
You can also see that there are social media links (Facebook and Instagram icons) present at the bottom of the email. These help prospects to easily visit the company’s social media pages and to get to know more about their business, products, and services.
Facebook is the most popular social media platform with YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn also used in lead generation emails.
Learn how to use headers to get people’s attention
Properly formatted email headers and pre-headers can improve your conversions. Headers should entice your client to click through and eventually, increase your website views. A good header gives users incentives and promotes open rates and conversion rates.
Headers let you be creative, promote a new program or service or show a little bit of fun. Sometimes, customers will be ready to go aboard all because of a smart and eye-catching header.
Try a header optimization tool like the one from CoSchedule. This tool will help you write captivating headers with the right word balance, emotion, word, and character count.
Always include a strong call-to-action (CTA)
Now that you have your customer’s attention and introduced your brand or business through email, grab this precious opportunity with a strong CTA. Use powerful action words according to your purpose. For general emails, use words or phrases like “learn more,” “find out,” “check it out,” “see more” or “continue.”
If you want your customers to buy, words like “shop,” “save,” “order now,” “buy,” “view,” “add to cart,” and so on will grab their attention. If you want your readers to follow a newsletter or community, use words like “refer,” “subscribe now,” “join us” or “sign up.”
Fuel your customers’ enthusiasm by adding numbers to your CTA like “Order now and receive 50% off.” Promise something like “Grow hair in just 2 weeks.” Finally, add descriptions like “Own your dream car today!”
Make use of content enhancements and gated content
Provoke your customers’ curiosity even more with locked or gated content. Specify that this special, limited offer content is available after they fill out a form with their contact information like name, contact details (phone number, email address), job position, and other info.
Gated content helps you get crucial customer information to help you generate leads. It also improves customer experience as you can provide more personalized marketing strategies later on.
A landing page is great for presenting gated content. After clicking your link from your email, your visitor will be led to your website but has to pass a landing page. Landing pages help lead your visitors to the best part of your promo or offer.
Use email automation to save time
Email automation lets you free your time to do other more important things. HubSpot reveals that email automation strategies are one of the most preferred marketing automation strategies to boost performance.
Just some of the most efficient email automation tips are creating welcome email series, reminder emails, special occasion emails, survey and feedback emails, testimonial emails, and product launches or update emails.
Here are a few of the top email automation and marketing automation tools to check out:
- Sendinblue – this is one of the top marketing automation tools. It’s smart and intuitive to help you grow your business. Sendinblue is an affordable subscription tool but you can use the free plan to try it out. The free plan can send 300 emails in a day and will automate your marketing campaign for 2000 contacts.
- Drip – this email automation tool is perfect for eCommerce sites. Drip can help create personal and very profitable customer relationships no matter how small or big your business. This tool is also available as a subscription but a free trial is available for 100 contacts.
- ConvertKit – this tool helps you connect to your audience and prospects better and turn them into paying customers. You can try CovertKit for free for a limited time or you can go for a starter plan for unlimited emails.
Run split tests to find the best open and click-through rates
Split testing is effective in all steps of the customer marketing journey. Although this can be tedious at first but split testing can help you discover the best email lead generation strategy in terms of click-through rates, cost, conversion rates, and other factors. Smart businesses depend on these tests to get the most out of their lead generation strategies.
Provide valuable content
Create emails that will delight, inspire and present your brand. Your customers must find relatable content, something that will make them want to get to know your company more. Your content should also be relevant and should address customer needs.
Providing valuable email content also helps you get your emails out of the Promotions Tab. Website Planet has a few great tips on how to steer clear of the Gmail Promotions Tab for businesses in 2021.
Avoiding spammy or trigger words and using too many images, using correct email formatting, and personalizing your emails can also help.
The best time of the day to send your email
Campaign Monitor recommends sending marketing emails during work hours. Emails sent from 9 am to 5 pm are more likely to be opened and read compared to other times of the day.
People are often too tired to read at night and may be too busy to check their inboxes in the early hours of the morning. But the time of the day is just one factor; the content and personalization of the email matter more.
Company contact information should be updated and easy to access
Don’t forget to update your company contact information especially on your emails. A customer that’s ready to find out more about what you’re offering will likely look for a link to your website, a phone number to call, or a reply email.
Summary
Well-formatted, smart lead generation emails can produce amazing results. Always consider your customer’s needs, expectations, and emotions upon reading your emails. Finally, never take for granted this opportunity to connect and to take your customers to the next steps of the buying experience.
FAQ
Is it illegal to send email blasts?
There is nothing illegal with sending unsolicited, spam emails in the United States. However, other countries consider this illegal.
Is it legal to sell email lists?
It is not illegal to sell email lists. The CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S. regulates commercial email use doesn’t prohibit selling email lists.
Do you need permission to email someone?
You may send unsolicited commercial emails to anyone in the U.S. However, you must comply with rules regarding sending unsolicited emails according to the CAN-SPAM Act.
Can you get in trouble for emailing someone?
You won’t get into trouble by sending an email to anyone. It is legal in the U. S. to send unsolicited emails to anyone as long as you comply with the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act.
