The inexperienced think, “email is dead.” They think emails don’t get read. Emails don’t help businesses generate leads. And only simply add to the already cluttered inbox. Or, end up in a recipients’ junk or trash folder. Well, we hate to burst these naysayers’ bubble, but they are just plain wrong. Now that isn’t to say there aren’t some who still send old-fashioned “batch and blast” campaigns to untargeted lists, feeding these views. But if done correctly, email can be your top lead generation channel. And if you use an email sending software like Clickback it can help propel your business forward. In fact, Circle Research cites 42% of businesses naming email as one of their most effective lead generation channels. Additionally, a recent study by Radicati Group reports that there are 3.6 billion email accounts. A number that will increase to 4.6 billion come 2016.
Email proves to be an elite channel for business communications. Which is why email matters more today. To understand why email can help you drive leads, take note of these tips.
Extend Your Reach
This is a topic we bring up often. So apologies if we sound like a broken record. But, it’s extremely important and merits repetition. Having a large, healthy email database to send to is critical. It gives you a larger pool of potential leads that you can connect with to create and foster a strong brand-customer relationship. However, building a list of quality contacts through organic methods can take years. And you’re only connecting with those who have found you. What about potential customers who know nothing about your company? How are you connecting with them? Best method is to acquire a list of targeted, industry specific contacts. You’ll instantly have a list of contacts you can start engaging and connecting with so you can begin filling your sales funnel with qualified, new sales leads to drive ROI.
Segmenting
Historically, email was used to “blast” generic content to a list of contacts turning them into leads and customers. Now it’s evolved into a platform that is used more to engage and provide thought leadership and value added resources. But, in order to serve up informative content pieces to your end user, you need to have a solid understanding of who your buyer is. Get to know their demographic, buying journey, geo-location, preferred method of communication, job title, and industry type. This insight will help you segment your target audience into batches, where you can send customized content to each audience type. Creating tailored messaging for each target will help maximize sales opportunities increasing the quality of each lead that gets filtered to your sales team.
Lead Generation Software
So you’ve acquired and segmented your new list and now you’re ready to deploy an Email Lead Generation campaign. Wait. Before you hit ‘send’ ask yourself: “What are the terms of use policies of your Email Service Provider or Marketing Automation software?” “Are they optimized for sending to a list of cold contacts?” “Will they quarantine your list, ban you from sending or suspend your account?” The answers to these questions are usually: ‘No, your Email Service Provider or Marketing Automation Software does not allow you to send emails to a list of cold contacts and will take actions to prevent it.’ It’s important to find software that can deliver your message to your cold contacts and convert them into leads for your business. A trusted name in the industry is Clickback. We DO allow our customers to send emails to a list of cold contacts. We also clean your email list to remove moles, bad addresses and spam traps prior to sending. And we run numerous deliverability variable checks to ensure optimal email delivery.
Content Marketing
There’s no one-size fits all strategy for developing email messages. It ultimately depends on who you’re targeting and what your overall goal is. For example: Are you trying to generate new business? Understand your audience better? Break into a new market? Speak to your audiences’ pain points? Provide thought-provoking content? Establish a rapport with your target market? These are some of the questions you’ll need to ask yourself before you craft your message. Knowing what you’re looking to accomplish will help you to determine what content you’ll need to create. From there, you can plan how to create it and deploy it accordingly so that you can maximize the leads you obtain from your Email Lead Generation campaign.
Ready to get started with your Email Lead Generation campaign? Contact Clickback and we’ll show you how.
