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Generate leads through email marketing

By on October 1, 2019 0

Lead generation is a process when a product or service is incentivize to capture interest in its target audience for the purpose of developing its sales turnover. With the advancement of technology, widespread use of internet, ease of use of internet in the palms of everyone who own a smart phone, it has become inevitable to use these platforms for the benefit of sales and marketing via electronic medium.

This is done through generating buyers through mail marketing. Generating clients aka buyers aka leads through email marketing is only one of the few methods of achieving sales in the electronic age. Information is free floating now a days, just a click away. Buyers are very well informed and well aware of the market and products available in the market.

Hence, it has become so much more crucial to generate new techniques and qualify potential leads before passing them to sales, in order to achieve the most effective way of reaching out to potential buyers. These buyers can then take an informed decision about purchasing a product or a service.

Why is lead generation important?

Lead generation is the procedure of collecting and accumulating leads by means of digital marketing. The purchasing process has changed substantially over the past few decades. Normally, there is a flood of information available on the internet and marketers need to keep evolving to reach their buyers and get heard amongst all the noise. marketers must build ongoing relationship with their customers to materialize long term sales turnover.

  • How is email marketing important for lead generation?

The purpose is to convince your target clients to willingly share their contact addresses which includes their Email addresses too. Once they share their Emails, marketers can use it to market their products or services. It acts as a low key continuous flow of information about a product, more like a constant reminder for buyers. It is less stressful and acts as a nurturing medium for your leads. If you listen to the less experienced entrepreneurs, they will tell you that lead generation through mailing is a thing of the past. But if you listen to the experienced business men, they will tell you it is a crucial element to march you to heights of unwavering success.

A recent study in the year 2019 showed that, a total of $350 million is expected to be poured into email marketing strategy and advertising this year. Businesses are investing such large amounts into email marketing because it is so vital to running a successful business. And large investments mean larger profit expectations.
Normally, the following steps are involved in an email lead generation process:

  1. Creation of good quality content on popular social media platforms. Then making guest blogs to increase site traffic.
  2. Allure your site visitors by attractive, colorful website content and entice them into sharing their contacts and email addresses.
  3. Incentivize them into purchasing your product or service. It can be done with discounts, first come first serve or early bird packages.
  4. Create an interactive platform for your prospects and send them regular reminders in the form of product updates, news about the product, what’s new, etc.

So, a very basic and important question arises here. How do you produce and grow your email leads and eventually convert them?

How to generate Email leads?

1. Run Email Drip Campaigns

This is a slow process of nurturing your potential audience by sending out weekly or daily emails. Thank them for subscribing to your newsletter and subtly nudge them into expecting one every week or every day. This step is experimental until you identify what suits your audience. This is just like a gardening project. You need to nurture your plants for some time before you can reap fruits or vegetables or herbs from them. Likewise, you need to tactfully nurture each lead until it converts into sale. Send out a series of emails over time and get your audience into the habit of expecting them periodically.

2. Pop-ups

Pop ups are a great way into alluring your readers into subscribing for your website. However, it is important to note that these work best when they come up at the right time. Time is money, literally in this case. So, when a reader has finished reading the content and hopefully you have provided relevant information to their content need from your website. On reaching the end of the article, they’ve read and acquired desired information and a pop ups appears, they are most likely to give their email addresses and subscribe.

Another opportunity is when they are about to leave the page. A pop up at this time can stimulate them into providing their email addresses and opting for subscription. This method solely works on the principle of urgency and in that moment of hurry, most visitors are likely to subscribe.

3. Hound your competitors

This may sound like an age old, insignificant method. Nevertheless, it is important. No one is suggesting you to downright copy their ideas or methods. But it is good to remain informed especially of the activities of the competitor. Sometimes it can help draw some inspiration for you, at other times it can be a source of an innovative idea for your own business. It never hurts to know what competition is up to. You can also attract a wider group of audience for your product or service and give them information visually. As, most people are better at visual learning. Generous outflow of knowledge will get you better email leads for certain.

4. Gated content and content upgrades

Great sources for generating email leads include gated content and content upgrades. These work graciously in providing email addresses. They act like premium products, that can persuade your readers into subscribing to your newsletter. Content upgrades have proven to be significantly useful when it comes to generating email leads. B2B businesses like Wish-pond rely on free email gated content to get new email leads for themselves. They work in a very easy and simple manner. They provide their readers with a free ebooks in exchange for their email addresses. Let us build up from gated content to gated homepage. Your homepage is essentially the most visited, most prominent page on your website. It is also the most authoritative page. It is easier to leverage readers into subscribing to your newsletter which ultimately leads to increased email lead generation. A simple idea such as this can also be used to attract lead generation. When readers visit your homepage, offer them a piece of juicy, free content in exchange for their contact numbers and / or email address.

5. Sidebars, slide ins and top bars

Many top websites and popular bloggers use sidebars on their websites these days. They provide the visitor with additional options for navigation around your website. Normally, sidebars are made with bright colors to attract visitors. Often, they include a subscription form with them. Visual aids go a long way in generating mailing leads. Sticky top bars provide with another option.  As the name suggests, they are always visible on the screen as long as the reader is on that particular page. These bars stick around and give a continuous reminder of their presence. Sooner or later through the content, the reader subscribes to the newsletter. Alternatively, you can subtly slide into the visual field of your reader while they go through the content on your website. This is done using slide ins. Slide ins provide a gentle and subtle intrusion of the subscription form on the website. Tools like “HelloBar” and “MailOptin” help setup these features.

6. Leverage Social Posts and Ads

Building on what we have already covered about gated content on your website, you can also leverage social media to offer you something similar. May it be an ebook, webinar, or some other resource, you should inform your social media followers about it in your posts. Guide them to the page on your website via your Facebook page. Your posts could be as simple as the title of your post, an image, and necessarily a link to it. Additionally, you can use social media ads to promote your gated content to your target clients. I recommend opting for an ad on the right column that clicks through to your landing page. The targeting capabilities on tools like Facebook and Instagram are an effective and easy way to connect with targeted audience. You could also target people who follow your competitors or other pages that offer similar content like yours. It is also helpful that you can keep track of the number of people clicking through your ads. This gives a good insight of popular pages and clicks available on your website. It also helps one keep track of the existing leads. This further helps your content reach the right people who will be interested in reading about it and following it in the future.

7. Record and score your leads

Scoring leads will help you make predictions which of your prospects are likely to change into purchasing clients. Once you have this information, it is easier to direct your focus towards capturing them. Here’s how you can do about it;
Let’s say a lead visits one of your product pages and looks over the specs, photos, reviews, and demo videos but doesn’t take any action. At that juncture, you should use an exit pop-up that offers them a discount to lure them into purchasing. Seeing as the prospect has expressed an interest in your product, it makes them a potential, qualified lead. After voluntarily yielding their details, they will receive a discount code that they can use to make the purchase and in exchange you get their information. Using such events to trigger pop-ups can increase your email lead capture multiple folds.

8. Authenticity

In an age of timeless ocean of knowledge and information, customers seek authenticity about a product or service. A great way of providing authenticity is adding a personalized message from one of the senior most personnel in the company. It’s a way to show that they care about their customers. People don’t talk to salesperson as much anymore compared to how much they go through online information already present on the web. It is an appreciable effort to include real people’s real experiences with your product or service. Customers are more interested in knowing how a product will change their daily routine and what kind of impact it will have on them in the long and short term.

9. Mobiles

The number of smartphone users is set to surpass the 5 billion mark in 2019 and yet, studies show nearly 1 of 5 email marketing campaigns wasn’t optimized for mobile devices. That means 20% of email campaigns are losing out on major revenue. Optimizing emails for mobile will be imperative to the success of any and every email marketing campaign in 2019. Customers aren’t just reading emails on their mobile devices any longer. They’re also going straight from your emails to your website and even shopping on their mobile devices. So it is imperative every business should make their email marketing optimal for all kinds of mobile and mobile users. Email should be such that they provide graphics that are easy to click through on mobile devices and smartphones. The links should then carry the subscriber to web pages designed for easy viewing and interaction on mobile. In fact, the web pages’ should work just as well on mobiles as they do on a desktop.

Here is a brief list of Best Email Marketing Softwares to Optimize Your Email Campaigns

  1. Pinpointe

  2. BombBomb

  3. ReachMail

  4. SendinBlue

  5. Cakemail

  6. Campaign Monitor

  7. Clearbit Connect

  8. Constant Contact

  9. ConvertKit

  10. EmailOctopus

  11. FeedBlitz

  12. GetResponse

  13. Hunter

  14. Infusionsoft

  15. Leadfeeder

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