The Best Email Lead Generation Action Plan in 2020

Before getting started, just let me ask you a question.

Are email lead generation campaigns worth your time and effort? Let’s get back to it in a while.

For now, picture this:

Your business is running successfully. Your website is climbing up the ranking ladder. Everything seems to be unrealistically good. Every detail is on point, BUT your email lead generation is not up to the mark.

The content team is struggling to generate emails that garner responses. The email campaigns are rigorous, consuming the marketing hours but not generating the desired results. They are failing to entice existing and prospective customers through online lead generation.

So, what do you do?

How do you win back the prospects that sure are the lifeline of your business?

Would your business survive as the lifeline weakens up? How do you strengthen it up?

Here’s an insight from Hubspot:

According to research, 49.5% of the marketers were planning an increase in the email marketing budget in 2019.

This email lead generation stat says it all. You need to work on all the platforms, but the email leads ask for your focus this year.

Marketers are shifting gears towards this medium of lead generation. Your time and energy guarantee results, only when you steer in the right direction.

The content strategy is ready. The website is doing great. It’s time to straighten up the email marketing side of your business. Remember, no stone should be left unturned when you’re fighting for survival in a cut-throat business space.

Lucky for you, we have decided to set the correct direction for you.

Just give the upcoming text a read and head towards the cherished goals.

Covering The Basics

Before we dive into the hardcore business, first gauge the tip of the iceberg.

In this section, we will learn:

• Defining leads
• Different types of online leads
• Email lead
• How do you make email leads?
• A complete actionable lead generation process

Defining Lead:

Kicking the lead generation business off, here’s what you call a lead:

A lead is a potential customer that has been precisely targeted and qualified based on a business’s marketing criteria.

Any individual who takes an interest in the business offerings is a lead. The goal of any lead generation campaign is to convert that individual into a customer.

Types Of Leads:

Here we go with the next question:

B2B leads are of three types:

Information Qualified Lead (IQL)

Here the lead provides the essential contact information against a solution to their problem (an offer from your business).

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

After going through the IQL stage, your company takes the next step of directing the IQL to a follow-up. The company sends emails and the details of the offerings. If the IQL downloads the information, it converts to an MQL which comes in the decision phase (buy or not to buy the solution).

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

Here comes the intervention from the sales side. They offer a sales conversation in the form of a demo to the MQL. At this stage, the company knows that the lead is a perfect fit for its offering.

For getting qualified leads, it is important to break the shackles of mediocre questioning. There’s drilling involved. There must be probing questions to understand what preferences does the lead have.

These objectives cannot be achieved by straight forward name, and email address questions. You have to dig deeper to learn exactly what the target market’s preferences are. What are the pain points and how your product is going to make a difference?

Watch the video here to understand how to generate qualified leads.

Defining An Email Lead

Now let’s see what an email lead is:

An email lead is a prospective customer who sends information through an opt-in form, live chat or agrees to receive emails from the company.

An email lead is a potential buyer.

What the company needs to do here to make this potential buyer its permanent buyer is to craft a strategy for converting him into a customer.

Email Lead Generation

For generating email leads, the first step is to know your target audience. This process goes to the basics of marketing. We need to target, analyze, and then segment our audience.

Once your target market is defined, use social media platforms to get email addresses using gated content such as videos or webinars. Give discount offers on newsletter subscription to grab the desired email addresses.

The Lead Generation Process – An Actionable Guide

For generating email leads, the first step is to know your target audience. This process goes to the basics of marketing. We need to target, analyze, and then segment our audience.

Once our target market is defined, we collect email addresses using lead magnets and gated content such as videos or webinars. Give discount offers on newsletter subscription to grab the desired email addresses.

The lead generation process has the following steps:

Attracting Clients By Using Suitable Content:

After the target market is defined, this is the next step where you attract prospective customers through engaging content.

This content can be included in your blog posts or your newsletter. Gated content can be used here to acquire email addresses.

Make An Effort To Convert These Leads To Make Them Qualified Leads:

When the informative content is created, you push it towards the interested individuals in an attempt to convert them to a lead.

By creating quality content, you generate quality online leads who are genuinely interested in your business. You just need to set the segmentation correctly and know who you’re targeting.

Close The Deal By Offering Your Product/ Service So That It Solves The Problem Of The Lead:

At this step, you have made the effort of presenting your business offering to the lead. Now it’s the lead’s turn to take action. The more befitting content you present, the more likely is the deal to close.

At this stage, both marketing and sales work together and the sales usually happen at this point.

Delighting The Lead By Offering Follow-up:

This is the final stage, where follow-up strategies are used. You delight the buyer with feedback forms and follow up emails about how they liked the product. You get genuine insights of the thought process of the buyer.

Once a customer is delighted, he refers the product to his circle through word of mouth. This instigates the process of lead generation for new prospects now.

Example:

How to make a lead online? Let’s see this process in an actual business’s perspective.

Step 4:

I am an individual who likes to read stuff about blogging. Someone recommends Ryan Robinson’s blog to me.

(Remember word of mouth – where the businesses delight the existing customer and they recommend it to others).

I try to search for it over the internet.

Step 1:
The blog presents me with the most enticing and exciting blogging insights.

(A complete attraction strategy)

Step 2:

I subscribed to their newsletter by providing my email address.

(Conversion)

Step 3:

Once I have subscribed, I start getting updates on the new blog posts.
I keep reading them because they’re worth reading

The blog offers me a blogging course for $100.
Since the content I have been reading for months is relevant to me, and I admire the quality of the content, I register for the course.

(Deal closed;)

Step 4:

After the course, I receive follow up emails about how the course benefitted me.
I was highly satisfied. The course was awesome. It enhanced my blogging skills. They offer me a special offer in return for my feedback. I am ecstatic because they doubled up the value for me.
In the next sitting with my blogging circle, I recommend the course to a few of my mates (Delighting the customer and getting word of mouth for free; Step 4)

I know what you’re thinking.

It is too much of the bookish text but the next section required an understanding of the long-forgotten facts. So a quick skimming would also serve the purpose.

Here comes the practical part of the email lead generation.

8 Highly Converting Strategies For Email Lead Generation

Automation Of Email Marketing

The automation of the emails for lead generation is an essential step in preserving your marketing hours.

What does it mean?

You can opt for automation software to aid the analytics of your website and do much more for you.

For instance:

• If you’re using an email automation tool, it does the segmentation on your behalf.
• Such tools trigger emails in response to a specific set of defined rules/actions.
• They create brand awareness by targeting relevant leads.
• They save the time of the sales team through bulk personalized emails.

How Does An Email Automation Tool Work?

If you’re signing up for a newsletter, you will receive a thank you email in response. The automation tool will not send it unless the individual subscribes to the newsletter.

Automated emails are usually time-bound and can save you from the hassle of customizing campaigns through selecting filters.

The recipients are targeted on the basis of their segmentation. This segmentation is done on the basis of

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Interests

Many other parameters are also used for segmentation that are relevant for a business.

Here comes the important question:

Why is the automation of an email campaign so crucial for the success of your email lead generation process?

Here’s why:

Source

The above image summarizes the facts. It is crucial because it affects both the number of leads and the number of conversions drastically.

And we, here, are concerned about increase in the conversion rates. Right?

Creating Engaging Subject Lines:

No matter how strongly we advocate ‘Do not judge a book by its cover,’ all of us do it unintentionally.

Your email subject line works as the ‘book cover’ here.

Does that say anything about the importance of email subject lines?

It speaks volumes!

Here’s the thing:

The individual at the receiving end will judge your email by its cover.

Therefore, the content team needs to consider this while designing this cover.

33% of email recipients open emails because of catchy subject lines.

Therefore, it is the job of the content team to create such subject lines.

• Precise subject lines are preferred in B2B lead generation – 82% of experts send emails with subject lines of 60 characters or less.

But, why are smaller headlines valuable? The fact that it’s hard to read lengthy subject line text on smartphones makes the shorter headlines super converting.

Source

• Personalized subject lines create a sense of identity – Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.

But, why?

That’s because seeing your name in the subject line attracts you and entices you into opening the emails.

• Subject lines with an emoji make the emails stand out- Businesses that use emojis in their email subject lines have a higher open rate of as much as 56% over those that don’t.

Making your emails sharable so they reach more people:

To ensure the high reach of your email message, it is a great practice to add sharing options in the email body.

But, how can you do this?

By using the below-listed techniques:

Follow Us Buttons:

On the email template of your company, add follow us buttons on the sidebars. These buttons will direct your subscribers to your other social media handles creating new leads from other platforms as well.

Here, have a look at the example of the follow us buttons from My Quora Digest’s copy.

Alt-text: The follow us buttons for Quora Digest

Social Sharing Buttons:

Add social sharing buttons to your content. The recipient will be able to share the article which he/ she loved with his circle. The sharing cycle will increase the lead generation ultimately by reaching new prospects.

Here’s how your email templates can have social sharing buttons.

Alt-text: social sharing buttons

Creating Emails Suitable For Mobile Devices:

According to recent stats, there are 3.5 billion smartphone users globally in the year 2020. This vast number makes mobile phones to be a target medium for any digital activity.

Source

Smartphone users have email suites installed on their phones. Most of them prefer opening their emails on their phones.

Here, the marketer’s task is to keep an email format that is easy to read on phones. The data says that 81% of smartphone users open emails on their phones.

Source

Mobile phones have outnumbered desktops and laptops. All the more reason we need to adapt to the mobile-first approach.

Let’s have a look at how to create mobile-friendly emails:

• Short subject lines: As discussed earlier, the optimum length of a subject line should be between 60-70 characters.
• Large fonts: Large fonts are easier to read on small screens, so go for them when writing emails.
• Single column template: A single column template is better readable on a mobile device.
• Small images: Inserting heavy images would create loading issues for smartphone users. That disrupts the readability, user experience, and conversion rates.

Using Urgency And CTA Statements:

When there’s a call-to-action phrase added in the text, it creates the need for prompt action. Designing email campaigns which trigger a prompt action is one of the lead generation goals.

Your leads will be interested in knowing what discounts will exhaust at which point in time. If you get them on their toes right away, they are most likely to take action.

If you’re promoting a limited time offer, state it clearly. When your sale is live for an indefinite time period, don’t misguide the prospects or you risk your trust and the future bonding options with prospects.

Your honest marketing attempts will generate more leads.

Offer Discounts To Your Current Customers For Sharing Your Content:

Who doesn’t love discounts and freebies?

A marketer needs to smartly make use of the vulnerabilities.

In the lead generation process, companies focus on the delight part of the process. They offer a discount to the existing customers for sharing their word. It is a smart move not only to keep your current subscriber list happy but also to attract prospective leads.

Keep Your Email Design Simple, So They Are Easy To Read:

Lead generation emails should be simple. The content can be catchy but the design and color schemes used must be easy on eyes. Nobody wants to see tacky colors and dancing fonts in a professional email.

The subject line has done its part. Now, it’s the turn of the email body to keep the lead generation process going.

Use The Power Of Great Content To Keep The Process Going:

We have saved the best for last.

The quality of your content matters a lot. The relevance of the content to your target needs careful attention. There’s no throwing away fluff and glitz.

There must be a solid content strategy in place that pinpoints the problems, speaks directly to the prospects to engage them, and makes them take the desired action.

Delivering value to a prospect is the prime goal. This goal can be achieved through proper communication through the content.

A Quick Recap:

We have made an attempt to answer the following questions:

1. What is a lead?
2. What is an email lead?
3. How do you generate successful email leads?
4. What are the basic types of leads?
5. What is the actionable lead generation process?

We have discussed 8of the most effective email lead generation strategies:

1. Creating engaging subject lines to avoid your emails to end up in the spam box
2. Running drip email campaigns or automation of email marketing to save marketing hours
3. Making your emails sharable so they reach more people
4. Creating mobile-friendly emails so that maximum people open them
5. Using urgency and CTA statements for converting a lead
6. Offer discounts to your current customers for sharing your content
7. Keeping your email design simple, so they are easy to read
8. Using the power of great content to keep the process going

We aren’t done yet.

Email lead generation requires consistency. You cannot rely only on a single campaign to make qualified leads. The process needs continuous testing with different parameters.

The Takeaway Points:

• All industries don’t work on the same email marketing parameters.
• The basic strategies can be utilized across different B2B and B2C channels. However, there are chances that every strategy might not befit every business.

Email marketing is highly converting; however, it could be overwhelming if you don’t have much help with the business.

Following the mentioned strategies would be very useful. However, email lead generation companies can be your savior when it comes to generating leads online profitably. Here at CANZ Marketing, a well-known local lead generation business in the U.S.A, we have mastered the targeted lead generation and overall lead management.

While you’ll find lead generating companies in abundance all around you, our experts are real champs in generating high lead revenues through their strategies. They have mastered the art of finding that lead you have been after for so long. Read how we were able to generate great results with email marketing one of our clients. Read another Email Marketing Case Study here.

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Top Email Marketing Industries