Can you use generate leads using email marketing in your business? Every entrepreneur knows that leads are the lifeblood of business growth. The moment they dry up, you may as well shut down the enterprise.
The normal sales funnel involves.
- Informing people about your products or services
- Getting prospects from these people who may be interested in your offer
- Qualifying these prospects into leads
Leads are the potential customers who are actively seeking the type of products or services that your business offers. Leads are already familiar with your business and you don’t need to explain much about your company. Qualified leads have expressed interest in what you are offering. Simply reaching out to these prospects will make it easier for them to convert into customers.
The rule of thumb to generate leads using email marketing is, to get is the more qualified leads you have, the more customers you will get…Thus the faster your business growth.
What is Email Marketing and can it Help Your Business Grow?
Email marketing is a method of promoting your business. In this case, you send out emails to your contacts and prospects where you tell them about your products or services. It can be used as an effective method of communication with your contacts and customers.
Follow these tips and find out how to use email lead generation services to increase your company profits.
Benefits of Email Marketing for Your Business
First, it helps you to connect with your existing and potential customers 24 hours a day. Unlike with other forms of marketing, you don’t have to socialize or call up customers to tell them about your products or services.
Second, it is convenient. Sending emails doesn’t require you to be physically present to your customers and prospects. You can use your computer, smartphone, or any other device to send emails.
Third, it is fast. Compared with other forms of marketing, email marketing is relatively faster. You can send an email and get a response within minutes, hours or even days.
Finally, it’s economical. Direct marketing is cost-effective compared with other forms of marketing. You don’t need to hire a professional company to manage your email marketing.
How Important is Email Marketing in Turning Prospects into Customer?
Research shows that over 48% of marketers believe that email marketing is the most effective strategy for generating leads online. (keap.com)
This is a good sign for you if you are interested in using email marketing to generate leads.
Check out our other articles on generating leads for your business at the lead generation blog
Email marketing is one of the most valuable tools for lead generation. Generating leads simply by collecting contact information via a contact form embedded on your website is an outdated model. Marketing automation has allowed for a more targeted and comprehensive approach to generating qualified leads – one with less wasted time, effort, and expense.
Did you know that at least 99% of consumers check their mail on a daily basis? That can’t be said of any other communication channel. (optinmonster.com)
Mail is still the #1 way to communicate with customers even higher than SMS’s. It’s very difficult to ignore them especially if your customer base is a B2B lead.
No one can take those leads away from you. (optinmonster.com)
One of the biggest challenges for online marketers is relying on a social media platform to run your business. This is especially true with social media marketing. Stories abound of these third party platforms suspending or deleting accounts.
You won your list and no one can take it away from you. Especially if you have an engaged audience.
People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than those who do not receive email offers. In fact, email marketing has an ROI (returns on investment) of 4400%. media. (optinmonster.com)
That’s huge! And if you are wondering if social media converts even better, think again: the average order value of an email is at least three times higher than that of social.
It’s obvious that the in order to get more leads through email, you must first increase the size of your mailing list.
Steps to Increase the Size of Your Mailing List
Gone are the days when you could buy email addresses and then spam people with unwanted information. For your email marketing campaigns to be effective, you need to capture subscribers who are interested in your offerings.
The secret is not only increase the size of your list, but also have an engaged subscriber. There are several ways to capture a loyal subscriber. These include:
1. Using an Effective Content Marketing Strategy
The best way generate leads using email marketing is through using a powerful content marketing strategy. Content marketing includes strategies like creating ebooks, infographics, webinars, and social media posts. By creating content around a specific topic, you can create useful content that will be useful to your target audience and get more people on your mailing list.
The more targeted your pieces of content, the bigger your list will be.
2. Lead Magnets and Lead Generation Forms on Your Website
You will need to collect all the information about those who visit your site. All of this information can be captured in the form of a spreadsheet. The information you need is the email address, name, and where possible their phone numbers.
Offering lead magnets such as white papers and ebooks is a great way to increase the size of your subscriber base.
3. Capture as Many Contacts as Possible
You need to compile a list of your contacts from various sources. Start with the business cards that you collected while doing transactions at an event. Try to identify people who work for the same companies with whom you have done business in the past.
Any existing customers who are not yet part of your email database?
Collect the email addresses of your current clients. You can ask them to send your newsletter to their contacts and prospects.
You need to capture the email addresses of those who have purchased from you in the past but who have not yet received their orders. This helps you continue to give them special offers and discounts at no additional costs.
Marketing Automation and Email Marketing Software for Your Business
The art of converting a prospect into a customer is called marketing automation. This requires you to have a list of customers which you can then convert into customers.
There are a number of automation tools that you can use to grow your business through email marketing. These are great tools for any online business, as they help capture leads and send targeted emails to customers while offering some other benefits. Here are a few tools you can use to help send those emails.
1. MailChimp
MailChimp is a service that allows you to send targeted emails to people interested in your business. You can easily make professional-looking emails using MailChimp.
3. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign allows you to create a website for your business to make it look more professional. You can create a database of contacts that you want to target in your campaign and target active users on social media sites. This is one of the best tools for those looking to grow their business.
4. Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is also a great tool for creating and sending emails to your customers. You can send out newsletters on a regular basis and even send emails when new products are added to your store.
5. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an email newsletter aggregator that allows you to send out your emails to multiple sites simultaneously. This tool allows you to create newsletters and send them out to a large mailing list.
7. iContact
iContact allows subscribers to unsubscribe from your email list. This is a great option for those looking to grow their list and reach new subscribers.
9. GetResponse
GetResponse allows you to send out targeted emails as well as newsletters to your list of contacts. You can also choose a variety of templates to design your email.
10. Emma
Emma allows you to create a professional business profile that allows you to share contact information with potential customers. It creates a highly professional presentation for your business.
12. Hubspot
Hubspot allows you to create a variety of blogs and websites to help with marketing your business. It is a great tool for creating an online presence for your business, as well as getting more information out about your products and services.
Now that you have a huge list, it’s time to nurture them into qualified leads.
How to Nurture Your Prospects into Customers : Generate Leads Using Email Marketing
Most business owners are unclear about the specific steps needed to effectively use email marketing and lead generation, and would rather skip it. Here are a few steps that we use to generate a never ending list of engaged leads using email marketing campaigns.
Identify Your Target Audience
The first step in creating your email marketing campaign is to identify who you are targeting.
Your target audience is your ideal client. This means you’ll need to develop a buyer persona to better understand their pain points.
One way to do this is to listen to your customers. Engage in a conversation with them on how they use your product or service, and what problems they face. Use social media and review sites to get more feedback from your customers.
Create an Irresistible Offer
When you know your potential customers and know what their pain points are, you will have enough data to generate a lead magnet that they will find useful. The offer, also known as a lead magnet, has to be a solution to a particular problem your prospect has.
Whitepapers, case studies or webinars are examples of effective lead magnets for your email marketing campaign. They provide a solution to the problem that you potentially offer.
Lead Magnets with Gated Content behind them
Since you are trying to gather contacts for your list, you have to include a form on your website that allows customers to get the lead magnet. In an ideal scenario, you will have a form on each page of your website.
Ensure they can only get the content they need after giving you the contact information you need.
Choose Valuable Content for Your Newsletter
The content you choose will determine how successful the campaign will be. Search for relevant content and find out what your prospects are interested in. Your newsletter should be informative and entertaining.
The key here is to write compelling and helpful information for your readers. You will need to create unique content that works for your business.
Your newsletter should be interesting to read in order to nurture them into paying clients.
Write Clear Email Subject Lines
Your email subject line should be compelling and relevant to the content. It should compel a subscriber to open your email. Include a call to action in your subject line, so they know exactly what they are going to get from opening your email.
You will find that your click through rate as well as your open rates will increase simply by creating engaging email subject lines.
Personalize Your Newsletters
Aaron Ross, CEO of Predictable Revenue, gained 16 new customers simply by personalizing his automated email template. (blog.hubspot.com)
One way to increase your response rate is to customize your emails.
You can do this by adding relevant information about the individual recipient, such as their name, address or even relationship. Personalization also means including things such as the recipient’s photo or logo in your email message.
Segment Your Email List
There are many ways to segment your audience, and this will help you create a highly customized campaign. Segmentation helps you send email to the right audience at the right time. Segmentation also helps you choose the best marketing message for your audience.
You can use the following variables to segment your list: Age, gender, location, interests and behaviors. Only send emails to people who are interested in a particular product or service.
Segmentation is one of your key email marketing tools. This is an effective way to help you create audiences for specific events or campaigns.
Keep Your Content Short and Precise
After studying millions of emails, marketing specialists found that the ideal length of an email body is in between 50 and 125 words. Also, the subject line should be three to four words. So, when it comes to content, less is definitely more. (blog.hubspot.com)
Your email content should be brief and to the point. You should not be explaining everything at once. Get to the point and get out as fast as you can. If your emails are too long, you are going to lose your audience’s interest.
Make it easy for them to read and understand what is being offered.
Create an Email Sequence
77 percent of like-minded marketers saw their number of conversions increase after switching to automated systems. (leadfeeder.com)
It is important to create an email sequence using one of the automation tools mentioned earlier. This usually starts from the lead capture form, to the confirmation email all the way to thank messages.
There are a lot of automated sequences that can increase conversion rate in turning the prospects into a prospective customer. Tools such as Active Campaign are especially great at this and are highly recommended.
They increase customer experience as well increase potential customer retention as the prospects view you as someone who cares about them signing up for your newsletter.
A Call to Action
Include a call to action in your email campaigns. This can be a URL or a link to your website.
You need to provide a clear CTA in your email that lets your subscriber know what you want from them. The content you send will be more effective if you provide a clear CTA.
Design your Email Campaign
Utilize templates and formats that are relevant to your industry. Your templates should be tested and verified before going live. If your industry requires images, please use them.
However, the best emails have little or no images. Just the information that your subscribers will find useful.
Design an email signature that includes your company’s name, the address of your website, and a link to view your contact information or download a brochure/application.
Maintain a Lead Management System
This is a tool that allows you to track your email campaigns, convert subscribers to leads and manage other important aspects of your business.
Measure the Success of Your Email Campaigns
Find out who has opened your email and what your response rate is. You can track this through open and clickthrough rates. It’s important to integrate a powerful tool such as Google Analytics in your lead generation strategy. That way you can figure out which of your mails are working and how to improve on them.
Follow Through
Follow up with your customers using various channels of communication. Tell your customers or clients that you would like them to send your newsletter to their contacts and prospects.
You can ask them to share your emails with others or you can remind them using various retargeting tools. The more they think you care, they more likely they become your clients in the future.
The Bottom Line
Email marketing is a great way to nurture potential leads into paying clients.
For every business owner, it should be part of your customer journey and digital marketing strategy. When you take the time to do it right, an email newsletter can have a significant impact on your business.
