Even with all of the new communication outlets available to marketers, email remains one of the best ways for small businesses to reach and engage their audience. Email allows you to communicate with a target audience through a reliable channel. But how can you generate new leads for your business through email? Below, we’ll discuss why you need email lead generation and go over the basics for setting up your campaigns effectively.
Then, we’ll provide some specific and actionable tips you can use to get started generating more leads and maximizing conversions with your email marketing.
Why Email Lead Generation is Important
Even with all the new technologies and channels the modern marketer has at their disposal, email marketing remains one of the most effective. In fact, Experian shows that for every $1 a company invests in email marketing, they will make about $44. This is an impressive ROI for small businesses that want to get the most out of their digital marketing tactics.
One of the reasons why email marketing remains so effective is that consumers are comfortable with this marketing channel. In fact, many actually enjoy getting email communications from their favorite brands. According to Marketing Sherpa, 72% of U.S. adults prefer to communicate with brands through email as opposed to other marketing channels.
Email marketing campaigns are one of the best lead generation tactics for small businesses.
Every small business wants to generate more quality leads. If this is a focus for your business, email lead generation will play a vital role in your digital marketing strategy. To get the most out of your email marketing, you’ll need to start with understanding the basics of email lead generation and focus on tactics that are proven to maximize conversions over time.
Email Lead Generation: The Basics
Before we get into specific tactics that you can use to improve your email lead generation, let’s cover the basics. There are a few different fundamentals and best practices that you’ll need to familiarize yourself with before you start creating email marketing campaigns.
Email List Segmentation
Email list segmentation is the process of dividing your email subscriber list into smaller segments. These segments can be based on a number of different criteria that describe your audience. For instance, you can break your list into groups of people based on demographics or create different lists for various buying behaviors.
Sending targeted content to segmented lists drives higher ROI than general email campaigns.
List segmentation is an important tactic to help you personalize your email marketing. The more specific the messaging, content, and offers, the more effective your email campaigns will be. By segmenting your lists into similar groups of subscribers, you can provide more targeted content in your emails to improve relevancy. Ultimately, this will boost open, click-through, and conversion rates.
Email Automation and Drip Campaigns
Email automation takes some of the guesswork out of sending your email marketing messages. Rather than manually sending an email every time a subscriber takes an action, you can use email marketing automation software to send the right message to the right subscriber at the right time.
For example, let’s say that you want to send an email to site visitors that have filled out a landing page form for a free checklist. Rather than logging onto your computer to send the offer out to the lead manually, you can use automation software to automatically send the lead an email with the checklist content offer as soon as they fill out the landing page information.
Email marketing automation helps you send the right message to the right person at the right time.
Email automation can also be used to nurture leads over time. Email drip campaigns are automated email campaigns that are sent to a lead on a schedule. By sending targeted pieces of content to leads over time, you can work to guide them through the sales funnel and move them closer to conversion.
Let’s take the example we used before of the lead that has filled out the landing page form to download a free checklist. Your first email may come to the lead immediately, delivering the promised content offer. Then, a couple of days later, you may send another piece of helpful content like a blog post or e-book. Then, a few days after that, you may engage the lead again and ask them to sign up for a free consultation.
Not only does email marketing automation save you time, but it helps ensure that you’re getting the right content and messaging to leads quickly and consistently. For more information about how automation can help you improve lead nurturing, check out our email marketing automation services.
Email Marketing and Lead Scoring
Before we dive into how lead scoring can work with email marketing automation, let’s answer the question – what is lead scoring? Lead scoring is a process that involves assigning scores to leads based on certain characteristics and actions they take. Scoring your leads is the best way to prioritize which individuals you need to engage with.
With email lead scoring, each of your leads is given a score based on certain actions they take that identify them as qualified to buy your products.
You can use lead scoring to determine which leads might be right for different types of email marketing campaigns. For example, if you want to send out an email campaign focusing on a particular product or service you offer, you can use lead scoring to determine which leads might be most qualified or ready to buy this product or service.
Using lead scoring as part of your email lead generation campaign will help you improve click-through and close rates. This is because you are sending targeted messages to the leads who are most likely to be interested in the email content you are sending. Ultimately, this will not only improve conversions but also decrease the timeline of your buying cycle.
3 Ways to Generate More Leads and Maximize Conversions
Now you know the basics of how email lead generation works and what you need to do to get started. But which tactics will help you generate the most qualified leads? And which tactics will result in higher conversions? Below, we’ll dive into our top tips for generating more leads and maximizing conversions with your email marketing:
1. Use email newsletters to deliver consistent, relevant content.
If you want consumers to subscribe to your email marketing list, you need to provide some type of value. Email newsletters are a great way to share quality, relevant content with your audience. E-newsletters allow you to deliver unique content that your leads will find valuable straight to their inbox.
Not only do email newsletters help you stay top of mind with your prospects and customers, but they can also help you encourage conversions. By providing valuable and relevant content for your customers and prospects, you are working to build stronger relationships, which will eventually lead to conversions and repeat sales.