Over the years, email has proven itself time and again to be one of the most effective means of communicating with and reaching a targeted audience. Social media platforms sometimes garner more headlines, but their attention is trend-related. The fact remains that as social media ebbs and flows, good ‘ol fashioned email continues to consistently get the job done. Read on to understand why email is so effective in marketing, and how to use email to generate leads for your business.
Related: Email Marketing for Business Owners
Why Email Lead Generation?
Email lead generation can be considered the workhorse of the industry. However, being tried and true does not mean that email marketing is not experiencing significant gains in effectiveness and efficiency. Business can now to test and tweak their emails, and monitor and measure their results down to very granular levels.
An astounding 72% of all adults in the U.S. prefer to receive communication from companies through email. Compared to only 17% on social media channels, email is still THE number one way to communicate with your audience.
Email Lead Generation Fundamentals
Every effective email lead generation campaign pays careful attention to the following elements:
Subject Line
The first element of emails for lead generation is an effective subject line. Your subject line should be intriguing or catchy without coming across as too spammy. The idea is to create enough interest to get them to open your email in a very crowded inbox.
Clean Design
The subject line of your lead generation email gets a user to open it, now you need to get them to stay. Make sure your email is easy on the eyes. Use white space and don’t crowd too many elements into the layout. High-quality images used sparingly will also add to a visually appealing design.
Engaging Content
People have extremely short attention spans. If you want your email to generate leads, get to the most important message quickly. Use larger fonts to allow people to scan your message and take in all the high points in one pass. Provide other details and links to more information for people who want greater details.
Valuable Offer
Lead generation is essentially collecting the contact information of potential customers. People do not give out their information unless it is in exchange for something of value to them, such as a discount code, free gift, or useful information.
Call to Action
This is where all the elements above are leading your reader. Make sure you have a very clear call to action phrase or button that makes it easy for them to identify and take the next step to becoming a lead.
Email Lead Generation Strategies
The above fundamentals can be applied to various types of marketing emails. Below are four strategies aimed specifically at email lead generation efforts.
Provide Gated Content
Use email to generate leads by introducing your audience to a quality piece of free content. Include a link or call to action button that redirects them to a landing page, where they will have to provide their contact information to download or access the material. Make sure you provide content that your audience will want, and be sure to highlight features and benefits of the content offer in your landing page. Remember, a good landing page conveys the value of the offer in order to earn the user’s trust.
Promote Other Marketing Channels
You may already have a highly engaged audience online and have figured out how to use social media to generate leads. If so, use email lead campaigns to drive traffic to those platforms. Another channel to promote with an email lead campaign is your business blog. Through informative articles and effective messaging, blogging can help a business get more customers. Use email to drive readers to your blog, where you can foster deeper engagement with potential leads.
Invite Readers to Events
If you are running an event, promote it with a lead-generating email. Create a quick and easy way to RSVP, and add in some excitement and urgency so that they will not want to miss out! For optimal effectiveness, make sure your content and call to action resonate with the interests and language of your target audience.
Another strategy is to offer a sign up for a reminder about the event, in lieu of an actual RSVP. Being less committal, the reader may be more likely to provide their contact information, giving you permission and access to communicate with them in the future.
Segment Your Audience
Knowing where different portions of your audience are in your sales funnel will help you craft better messages in your emails and use landing pages more effectively. When you segment your audience by level of engagement, demographics, or geography, you can customize your message for the intended audience.
One way to implement this strategy is to classify your users as active or inactive based on their responsiveness to previous campaigns. Create a specialized campaign for those that have not opened your messages with a stronger enticement. Those who have actively opened your previous messages were worthy of special attention as well.
Utilizing a person’s inbox for email lead marketing is an effective tool that you must use responsibly or risk being relegated to the spam folder. Back in 1999 Seth Godin coined and defined the phrase Permission Marketing as “the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.” Almost 20 years later and this concept still rings true.
Follow the fundamentals and strategies outlined in this article and you will be on your way to creating an email lead generation campaign that your audience will actually want to get as well!