What are email leads?
Email leads are the people who share their contact information with you. This is usually through an opt-in form that they fill out in exchange for a free gift.
Email lead generation is a means of collecting leads through the use of an email opt-in form. It’s all about gathering information on potential customers, such as their name and email address.
But, an email lead generation strategy does not end with the lead capture form. It also involves strategically nurturing leads to ultimately transform them into customers.https://www.youtube.com/embed/ahq1N7mKrqY
Why having a lead generation strategy is important
Having an email lead generation strategy is crucial for businesses to grow their customer base and generate more sales. Without an effective system for gathering leads, your business will struggle to make sales and grow.
But with the right plan in place for attracting leads, you will be able to nurture your audience and guide them to the ultimate conversion from prospect to paying customer.
Research shows that over 48% of marketers believe that email marketing is the most effective strategy for generating leads online.
A good lead generation strategy will also benefit your business in the following ways:It allows you to target your desired customersIt helps you boost your brand awarenessMore leads equate to more customers, which means more revenue
While there are many different types of lead generation strategies that are helpful, specifically like the LinkedIn lead gen strategies listed here, the focus of this article is on email marketing in particular.
Email marketing techniques for better lead generation
Now that you understand the importance of having a lead generation strategy for your business, let’s take a look at the different ways you can attract new sales leads.
Listed below are 10 email lead generation techniques that you can use to drive a steady stream of leads to your business.
1. Optimize efforts with lead scoring
A big part of marketing is the ability to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. Lead scoring can help you do that by ensuring that you capture higher-quality prospects.
Lead scoring is a way to help you sort and prioritize your leads. It’s an effective technique for ensuring that you get qualified leads that are most likely to welcome your emails.
One way to use lead scoring in your marketing is to use email automation to help you score leads.
For instance, if a potential customer has already viewed a certain product on your website, it makes it more likely that you will be able to convert them with an email offering them a 25% discount on that product.
If the visitor isn’t already on your list, you can use this as an opportunity to get them to sign up by displaying an exit intent popup as they’re leaving the product page.
2. Design clean and concise emails
When it comes to lead generation, the design of your email is extremely important. It’s important to have clean and concise emails, and they should not be overly long. A lot of excess in the design of the templates can distract from your message. Here are a few best practices to follow when designing your emails:Plain fonts: Your emails shouldn’t be flashy. They should be easy to read, so use plain fonts.Simple Design: Choose a clean, simple template design that makes your emails easy on the eyes. This will help you generate more leads.Text Formatting: Use well-spaced, concise wording, and highlight important information to make it as easy as possible for your subscribers to digest your email content.Clear CTA: Your call-to-action button must be easy to see and click on, particularly for readers on mobile devices.
3. Learn to grab attention with subject lines
It’s important to get creative with ways to inspire curiosity or urgency to click. Use elements like bold, italic font, and emojis to capture the attention of your audience and draw their gaze to the most important part of your email – the subject line.
This tactic can make a massive difference to the success of your email campaign by increasing your email open rates, and ultimately your customer conversion rates.
For instance, if you started a sports blog and had an email list of engaged contacts, you’ll want to focus a lot on current sports news to connect with your audience. But, to go even a step further, you’ll want to leave a hint of curiosity to engage the subscribers.
As an example of a great subject line for a sports blog:
What Lebron James Said in Last Night’s Game is Shocking
This is almost certain to get opened, as people are curious what Lebron James said, and if the body of the email is good, people will surely want to view the story.
4. Always include a strong call-to-action (CTA)
Every email should have one clear and compelling CTA that is easy for readers to act on. To incorporate a strong CTA in your emails, use creative language that will attract your readers’ attention and encourage them to follow through.
The most effective CTAs are those that incorporate an element of urgency, excitement or mystery. They are hard to ignore and spur readers into action, helping you to improve your conversions.
Listed below are a few ways to help you get more action from your CTAs:Use action oriented text: Draw the reader in and compel them to take action by using text like “Get the Discount”, “Reserve Your Spot”, “Try for Free”, and so on.Keep it short: As a rule of thumb, keep your CTA text to just two to three words. If necessary, you can use up to five or six, but no more than that.Create urgency: Use phrases like “Shop Now!” “3 Spots Left”, “60% Off Today Only” to create a sense of urgency in your CTAs and generate higher click-through rates.
5. Utilize content upgrades and gated content
Content upgrades and gated content allow you to leverage your most valuable content into an email collection tool.
Gated content is content that is accessible only after your visitors have provided their contact information. You can use gated content as a content upgrade to entice your readers to subscribe to your email list in a non-invasive way.
For instance, after visitors read a post on your blog, you can then suggest that they download a relevant article, ebook, report, etc. in exchange for their email. Not only will this help you make more money blogging in the long term, but it’ll help you grow an email list in the short term.
This type of content is great because it incentivizes lead generation. Content upgrades are particularly effective because they are contextual and relevant. The reader’s interest is predetermined, which makes it more likely that they will convert.https://www.youtube.com/embed/-O2jwtqqKI8
6. Leverage social media channels
Your social media channels can be a powerful tool in helping you grow your email list. You can add a CTA to your profiles and schedule daily posts to help you promote your free download so that you continue generating leads on autopilot.
In addition to promoting your email list on social media, you should also promote your social accounts through your email list. This way, you will grow your social media audience and your email list at the same time. For best results on social media, you can also try tools like Facebook marketing tools, Twitter marketing tools, etc.
Here are a few additional ways to leverage your social accounts to build your email list:Add content upgrades to your blog posts, and then promote them on Pinterest to grow your traffic and your audience. I personally recommend that you use Thrive Themes for this, as it’s the tool I use. You can read my full review of Thrive Themes here.Add a sign-up button and opt-in form to your Facebook page to give people even more opportunities to sign up for your list.Use promoted pins and Facebook ads to grow your list at a faster rate.Add click-to-tweets to your content upgrades so subscribers can share your lead magnets with their networks, thereby expanding your reach.
7. Use email automation
Email automation is about using email software to automatically send bulk emails to specific recipients at specific times.
Automation allows you to set and forget your email marketing strategies so you can free up more of your time. Email automation also allows for automatic personalization, which helps you improve your email campaigns.
You can use specific triggers to send the right emails to the right subscribers at the right time. Potential triggers could be when customers do any of the following:Opt in to your email listBuy one of your productsRegister for a webinarSubscribe to a service
Automation makes email one of the easiest and most effective tactics you can use for lead generation, as evidenced by the graph below:
8. Split test to increase open and click-through rates
Split testing your emails is important for optimizing your copy and your strategy. There is always something that can be improved, and by testing the different versions of your emails, you will be able to find the best performing emails in order to improve your conversion rates.
For each email that you want to test, first decide on what you need to test. This could be any of the elements, including the CTA, subject line, body text, images, or the layout of the email message.
Once you’ve decided which elements to test first, you can then use the built-in AB testing tools in your email marketing software to begin running the test.
9. Provide valuable content
Rather than sending out “fluff content” just to send an email, provide useful, targeted content that will keep your email list subscribers engaged.
Always prioritize value over all else. To accomplish valuable content, all you have to do is find your audience’s major pain points and create intent-based content around them.
For instance, if your audience’s biggest challenge is building a profitable online business, you might create high-quality content that answers the question of “How to build a successful site starting from scratch” and then break it into sections and send it out in a series of emails.
10. Incentivize referrals from current subscribers
One of the best ways to generate leads for your business is to put your existing customers and subscribers to work for you.
Offer appealing rewards to incentivize your current subscribers to refer their friends to your email list. This is a lot simpler than trying to get them to refer customers to purchase your products.
You are likely to experience higher conversions if you offer an attractive reward, such as a small discount for a future purchase, or any other similar benefit. Make sure that what you offer is worth their while, and your subscribers will be happy to promote your list to their circle of family and friends.
One last side note, I highly recommend that whatever email database you develop, you download the contacts to your computer on a routine basis. I know many email platforms have their own databases, but I do this myself to make sure that I have a copy just in case the platform you’re using has issues. If that redundancy fails, like it did with me previously, you can use recovery software to get your data.
2. Design clean and concise emails
When it comes to lead generation, the design of your email is extremely important. It’s important to have clean and concise emails, and they should not be overly long. A lot of excess in the design of the templates can distract from your message. Here are a few best practices to follow when designing your emails:Plain fonts: Your emails shouldn’t be flashy. They should be easy to read, so use plain fonts.Simple Design: Choose a clean, simple template design that makes your emails easy on the eyes. This will help you generate more leads.Text Formatting: Use well-spaced, concise wording, and highlight important information to make it as easy as possible for your subscribers to digest your email content.Clear CTA: Your call-to-action button must be easy to see and click on, particularly for readers on mobile devices.
3. Learn to grab attention with subject lines
It’s important to get creative with ways to inspire curiosity or urgency to click. Use elements like bold, italic font, and emojis to capture the attention of your audience and draw their gaze to the most important part of your email – the subject line.
This tactic can make a massive difference to the success of your email campaign by increasing your email open rates, and ultimately your customer conversion rates.
For instance, if you started a sports blog and had an email list of engaged contacts, you’ll want to focus a lot on current sports news to connect with your audience. But, to go even a step further, you’ll want to leave a hint of curiosity to engage the subscribers.
As an example of a great subject line for a sports blog:
What Lebron James Said in Last Night’s Game is Shocking
This is almost certain to get opened, as people are curious what Lebron James said, and if the body of the email is good, people will surely want to view the story.
4. Always include a strong call-to-action (CTA)
Every email should have one clear and compelling CTA that is easy for readers to act on. To incorporate a strong CTA in your emails, use creative language that will attract your readers’ attention and encourage them to follow through.
The most effective CTAs are those that incorporate an element of urgency, excitement or mystery. They are hard to ignore and spur readers into action, helping you to improve your conversions.
Listed below are a few ways to help you get more action from your CTAs:Use action oriented text: Draw the reader in and compel them to take action by using text like “Get the Discount”, “Reserve Your Spot”, “Try for Free”, and so on.Keep it short: As a rule of thumb, keep your CTA text to just two to three words. If necessary, you can use up to five or six, but no more than that.Create urgency: Use phrases like “Shop Now!” “3 Spots Left”, “60% Off Today Only” to create a sense of urgency in your CTAs and generate higher click-through rates.
5. Utilize content upgrades and gated content
Content upgrades and gated content allow you to leverage your most valuable content into an email collection tool.
Gated content is content that is accessible only after your visitors have provided their contact information. You can use gated content as a content upgrade to entice your readers to subscribe to your email list in a non-invasive way.
For instance, after visitors read a post on your blog, you can then suggest that they download a relevant article, ebook, report, etc. in exchange for their email. Not only will this help you make more money blogging in the long term, but it’ll help you grow an email list in the short term.
This type of content is great because it incentivizes lead generation. Content upgrades are particularly effective because they are contextual and relevant. The reader’s interest is predetermined, which makes it more likely that they will convert.https://www.youtube.com/embed/-O2jwtqqKI8
6. Leverage social media channels
Your social media channels can be a powerful tool in helping you grow your email list. You can add a CTA to your profiles and schedule daily posts to help you promote your free download so that you continue generating leads on autopilot.
In addition to promoting your email list on social media, you should also promote your social accounts through your email list. This way, you will grow your social media audience and your email list at the same time. For best results on social media, you can also try tools like Facebook marketing tools, Twitter marketing tools, etc.
Here are a few additional ways to leverage your social accounts to build your email list:Add content upgrades to your blog posts, and then promote them on Pinterest to grow your traffic and your audience. I personally recommend that you use Thrive Themes for this, as it’s the tool I use. You can read my full review of Thrive Themes here.Add a sign-up button and opt-in form to your Facebook page to give people even more opportunities to sign up for your list.Use promoted pins and Facebook ads to grow your list at a faster rate.Add click-to-tweets to your content upgrades so subscribers can share your lead magnets with their networks, thereby expanding your reach.
7. Use email automation
Email automation is about using email software to automatically send bulk emails to specific recipients at specific times.
Automation allows you to set and forget your email marketing strategies so you can free up more of your time. Email automation also allows for automatic personalization, which helps you improve your email campaigns.
You can use specific triggers to send the right emails to the right subscribers at the right time. Potential triggers could be when customers do any of the following:Opt in to your email listBuy one of your productsRegister for a webinarSubscribe to a service
Automation makes email one of the easiest and most effective tactics you can use for lead generation, as evidenced by the graph below:
8. Split test to increase open and click-through rates
Split testing your emails is important for optimizing your copy and your strategy. There is always something that can be improved, and by testing the different versions of your emails, you will be able to find the best performing emails in order to improve your conversion rates.
For each email that you want to test, first decide on what you need to test. This could be any of the elements, including the CTA, subject line, body text, images, or the layout of the email message.
Once you’ve decided which elements to test first, you can then use the built-in AB testing tools in your email marketing software to begin running the test.
9. Provide valuable content
Rather than sending out “fluff content” just to send an email, provide useful, targeted content that will keep your email list subscribers engaged.
Always prioritize value over all else. To accomplish valuable content, all you have to do is find your audience’s major pain points and create intent-based content around them.
For instance, if your audience’s biggest challenge is building a profitable online business, you might create high-quality content that answers the question of “How to build a successful site starting from scratch” and then break it into sections and send it out in a series of emails.
10. Incentivize referrals from current subscribers
One of the best ways to generate leads for your business is to put your existing customers and subscribers to work for you.
Offer appealing rewards to incentivize your current subscribers to refer their friends to your email list. This is a lot simpler than trying to get them to refer customers to purchase your products.
You are likely to experience higher conversions if you offer an attractive reward, such as a small discount for a future purchase, or any other similar benefit. Make sure that what you offer is worth their while, and your subscribers will be happy to promote your list to their circle of family and friends.
One last side note, I highly recommend that whatever email database you develop, you download the contacts to your computer on a routine basis. I know many email platforms have their own databases, but I do this myself to make sure that I have a copy just in case the platform you’re using has issues. If that redundancy fails, like it did with me previously, you can use recovery software to get your data.
The purpose of getting these email leads is so you can nurture them through permission marketing into a loyal tribe of customers.
Your email leads will form the foundation of your email marketing campaigns and, if nurtured well, will become the core source of your revenue.
What about buying a ready-made list of email leads?
There are 3 major risks involved in this:
- The people on the list don’t know you. Chances of them opting out and leaving you with an empty list are high.
- Since you are not the person they expected to hear from, they’ll probably mark your emails as spam. This will result in you getting a low sender score and suffer from low deliverability rates.
- You won’t make any sales from your list.
How do you get email leads the right way?
Getting a list of engaged leads is not rocket science, if you know how to do it right. Here are a few tips to help you get started:
Identify your target audience.
The first step in getting leads for your email marketing campaign is to identify your target audience. Your target audience is made up of your ideal client. This also means that you will have to develop a buyer persona to help you better understand their pain points.
Create an irresistible offer.
Once you understand your target audience and know what their pain points are, you will have enough data to help you create a resource they will find useful. The offer, also known as a lead magnet, has to be a solution to a particular problem your prospect has.
Conversely, if your offer is irrelevant and provides no value, your opt-in form will gather dust.
Leverage social media.
There are 3.196 billion active social media users in the world. Use social media to get email leads by promoting your offer or running some paid posts.
This strategy is especially profitable, as it will help you not only generate email leads, but also gain followers on social media.
Keep subscribers engaged with valuable content.
Once your prospect has signed up to receive emails from you, they are officially a lead, but this is only the beginning of their customer journey with you.
To nurture them into a paying client, you will have to keep them engaged with valuable content.
Use personalization to reel them in.
Email marketing software has brought marketers a convenient tool they can use to improve their results: data. With a good email marketing tool, like Campaign Monitor, for instance, you can gather enough data about your prospects to create personalized emails.
These will endear them to you, as it gives your brand a human touch.
Does it really matter?
With email being the most preferred method of communication, getting email leads that are interested in your products and services is a must. Without a list of highly engaged leads, your business will not be able to reach its full potential and may not survive in the future.
What now?
Now that you know what email leads are and why you need them, you should invest in a good email marketing platform to help you collect and store those email leads.
If you need more help generating leads for your marketing campaigns, check out our resource on email list building, and turbo-charge your lead generation.
While creating your email marketing campaign, have you ever wondered what is email lead generation? Is it an important part of your email marketing technique? Well that’s why we’re here. We will walk you through the basics of email lead generation and also offer some tips on how to implement this skillfully. Emarketer reports that in for 2015, B2B marketers expect to generate 25% of their leads from their own websites. That’s up from 15% in 2014.
CONCLUSION
Lead generation is a fancy piece of jargon many small business owners hear in business strategy meetings. But what is email lead generation, and why is it considered an important strategy to establish?
Email lead generation is a process of acquiring and nurturing leads who connect with a company through a business’ emails. Because email addresses are sold to other companies, a web-based brand who is seeking to acquire email addresses for lead generation purposes must be completely honest about their intentions to proceed.
Email marketing has grown in popularity as it allows for more personalization and greater scalability (read: a broader reach with less effort) than other channels. Since big brands such as Apple started emailing customers, e-mail has been considered a “safe” advertising channel.