10 Tips on Using Email Marketing to Generate Leads

Email marketing and lead generation can go hand in hand, and when done properly, can make a significant difference to the organic traffic going to your website. Not only will you get more traffic to your website, but those users will also be people you know are already interested in the brand and your products, meaning they’re more likely to buy and buy again in the future.

Appreciating that your subscribers are at the core of every campaign you do, and using the following tried and tested email lead generation techniques, you can start to see the growth in the quality of the leads coming to your website.

Foundations of email marketing and lead generation

In May 2018, changes to GDPR requirements came into play, which meant the majority of companies had to ask customers to confirm they were happy to receive emails from them and for their information to be stored. Although many businesses saw this as something that would harm their business, the reduction in the volume of email subscribers actually meant that only interested parties remained.

A loyal and interested list of email subscribers is the foundation of email marketing to generate leads, even if the number of subscribers looks depleted in comparison to previous years. The list can then slowly grow and be nurtured over time, so those better quality leads can gradually start to increase in volume.

There are a few things you can do to ensure your current list of subscribers open your email campaign, engage with the content and can easily access your website. There are also a few ways you can grow your subscriber list to increase the volume of high-quality email leads using various email lead generation techniques.

Content:

1. Produce quality, engaging content

If you haven’t already developed buyer personas for your customers, this would be a great opportunity to check out our blog on how to create a buyer persona, to ensure you’re creating email campaigns with your customer base in mind.

Although a customer has signed up to receive emails, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to read them, let alone open it, read it, click onto the website and buy something. The content you use on your campaigns needs to be entirely tailored to your customers. As a starting point, take a look at the best-selling products on your website and also use Google analytics. There you can see if any of your products or topics around your products are trending and if they’re of significance to your customers at the moment. This data combined should be a clear indication of the content you need to be producing for your email leads.

2. Subject lines

When considering email marketing to generate leads, the subject line is an important piece of the puzzle. The subject line needs to grab the customers attention, but you don’t want to be too aggressive and put them off. Including a sale offer in the subject line and informing someone an exclusive offer is available is always a good idea, e.g. “20% off today only”, “online sale exclusive offer”. The subject line needs to be short, snappy and to the point and also relevant to the campaign you’re sending. People will unsubscribe pretty quickly if you lure them into opening your campaign under false pretences from the subject line.

3. Add call to actions (CTAs)

CTAs are extremely helpful in email marketing and lead generation, as they provide the customer with a clear way to access your website. Therefore, helping you to qualify those customers who are interested in your products and are keen to learn more, browse or purchase.

4. Links to products and blogs

Although all readers may not be ready to click the CTA button ‘Shop Now’, many may be interested in other pages of the website that are relevant to the campaign. Including links to other relevant products, website pages and blogs can help other readers find out information about your brand and services. Although this may not cause them to purchase that day, it’s more likely they’ll open and engage in future campaigns.

5. Make sure your campaigns are mobile-friendly

It’s essential that the formatting of your campaign is mobile friendly as well as desktop friendly, to ensure you don’t alienate a whole section of subscribers that is predominantly mobile-based. If you’ve not already done this for your website, we’d highly recommend it, so that your leads don’t drop off and your bounce rates aren’t sky high!

6. Nurture your subscribers list

You’ve built your subscribers list and know that your audience is engaging with your brand and products, so why compromise that? You don’t want to have to qualify email leads any more than you need to and you want to be able to class each loyal subscriber as a lead from the minute they sign up.

The easiest way to do this is to set aside some time to keep your subscribers list updated and clean, with only the information you need for each customer stored and nothing more. Depending on the email campaign creation and scheduling system you use, when a user unsubscribes this may be done automatically. However, some systems do require manual removal, so be sure to check with your email campaign software provider if you’re unsure.

7. Analysis is key

For you to generate leads more efficiently, you need to always be analysing the data from your campaigns. All the activity and connections between your email campaign and your website need to be accounted for, so you know what’s working and what isn’t for future campaigns. Start small at first and decide what metrics you are most interested in, e.g. open rate, link click-through rate, landing page hits etc. Again, depending on what email campaign creating and scheduling software you use, this can all automatically be recorded and filtered down so you can focus on what’s important to your business.

8. Keep subscribers happy with exclusive offers

Suppose you want your current subscribers to engage more. In that case, we recommend creating an exclusive sale or discount offer for email subscribers only, one that you know they’ll appreciate and respond to based on the data from previous campaigns. Not only does a sale encourage activity, but it also makes your subscribers feel valued and encourages them to stick around as a subscriber, so they don’t miss out on exclusives.

9. Use social media to grow your subscribers

If you have a social following, you can use this to grow your subscribers. The chances are if someone is following your social media, they’re interested in your brand and products, so why not utilise these potential customers through email campaigns as well as social media? Promote your email campaigns on social and watch your subscribers list grow.

10. Test out new ideas and engagement techniques

Using the data you’ve gathered from some of your previous campaigns, don’t be afraid to try different things to see what is the most effective method. For example, try splitting your subscribers and sending your campaign in the morning to one half, and in the afternoon to the other, to see which has the highest open and engagement rates. The only way for your campaigns to stay relevant and up to date with your email leads is to keep trying and testing.

These are just a few of the email marketing lead generation techniques we use at Zelst, for further information on how we can help you design, create, send and analyse your email campaigns, please contact us.