How to use email marketing for Lead Generation?

This content gives a clear idea of how to generate leads with email marketing. But before moving into a deep and detailed discussion, let’s know about email lead generation: what it is, what the types are, why they are important, how you can get it, whether it is purchasable or not, etc.

What is Email Lead Generation?

Lead generation is a marketing process. It looks forward to gathering potential customer information, such as their name and email address. Meanwhile, an email lead is someone who has shared their email address and agreed to receive more mails/messages from you to find out more about your business/services/info. In other words, email leads are leads whose contact information has been collected by businesses/agencies/marketers through an opt-in form. You can also define email leads as potential customers who have shared their email address with your business. They do this usually by filling out an opt-in form. And in the process, businesses/services generally offer something useful for free. It can be an e-book or a discount code. Meanwhile, a lead magnet is something that enables you to attract organic lead generation.

In simple words, email lead generation is the process of collecting contact information from potential customers. And email leads are potential customer who gives you their email address to find out more about what you are offering.

Types of Email Leads

One can classify email leads through various criteria. Based on sources, it can be 3 types. Inbound Leads, Outbound Leads, and Referral Leads. By funnel stage, there are also 4 types of email leads: IQLs, MQLs, SQLS, PQLs; abbreviated respectively to Information, Marketing, Sales, and Product Qualified Leads. Finally, on the basis of intent and engagement, the 3 email lead types are Cold Leads, Warm Leads, and Hot Leads.

Basic Process of Lead Generation through Email Marketing

The basic process of lead generation through email marketing involves a few steps, including the exchange, nurturing, and the pitch.

Exchange Policy: Businesses build an attractive form generally on their website where potential clients willingly provide their names and email addresses. But in exchange for what? Well, businesses usually utilize lead magnets (something valuable for free). That can be a discount code, a free e-book, useful information, etc.

Nurturing: When you have gathered a mailing list or contacts of potential clients, you try to build a relationship with them. Generally, the process is to interact with a sequence of friendly, informative emails. It helps them to realize your value and know more & more about the product/services you offer and how those can help them.

The Pitch: After building a trustworthy relationship, you can ask them through your emails to make a purchase, book a call, or sign up for a trial. It’s the ultimate stage to fulfill your goal through lead generation via email marketing.

Why is Lead Generation in Email Marketing Important?

Ownership of Audience: Social media platforms just act like a rental place for marketers with almost no control over the audience. And there are issues like algorithm changes that can heavily impact your audience list or marketing strategy. But when you own an email list collected through lead generation via email marketing, that list completely belongs to you. You are the owner of that list and have complete control.

Cost-Effective and Cheap Option: You don’t need to pay to boost a post whenever you want to reach your audience, and that too at a comparatively higher cost. Instead, you can get things done at a lower cost via email marketing lead generation and get access to the most engaged fans.

Leads Resulting in Conversion: Email leads are much more valuable. They are the clients who have agreed to hear from you and have an interest in your product/service. Hence, there is a high chance of conversion, as a huge part of your audience is ready to purchase.

High Return on Investment (ROI): It’s one of the top ways to get a higher ROI. What you get in return is way more than the amount you are spending.

Customer Retention: It doesn’t only provide you with new customers; it also makes sure that you retain many more clients on a continuous basis. It keeps your business cycle running and capitalizes on opportunities, as well as increases the brand value of your business.

Personalization: Leads let you gather customer information and help you segment based on behavior and past purchases. Thus, you can send personalized messages, and it’s way more effective than generic messages.

How to generate leads with email marketing?

Here are the ways to use email marketing for lead generation in a nutshell:

How to use email marketing for lead generation?

Here are some proven techniques that will help you to generate leads through email marketing:

Refine the Targeting of your Business

Just having an audience is not everything. You must have a clear idea about your goals, and you need to find out who your ideal clients are. Identifying ideal customers is a crucial task. You can get help from information about industry, company size, and location. Build a customer profile and then work on how to target them.

Quality Email List Build Up

A massive email list is always an asset, but that won’t bring fruitful results if it doesn’t ensure quality. You would love to have an audience that is active, interactive, and suits your business. One thing to keep in mind is that quality is always over quantity. Inactive users would degrade your metric performance; hence, you need to clear those accounts on a regular basis.

Irresistible Lead Magnets

It’s one of the fastest and smoothest ways to attract an audience. Everyone wants some profit or something valuable. Offer something that would be helpful or valuable to people and, in exchange, get their emails. This term is known as the lead magnet. Do not make it complicated; keep it simple. The best lead magnets would solve issues of your audience, and hence they would love to hear more from you and would make them trust you. It can be a simple discount, a helpful checklist, or even a fun quiz.

Email List Segmentation

The massive email list features various sorts of clients. The tastes, choices, needs, everything differs from client to client. Indeed, every customer has unique needs, interests, and positions in their buying journey. List segmentation would help you group similar sorts of clients. You can send tailored, relevant messages to each segment that match their interest and are useful to them. You can segment them based on behavior, demography, purchase history, browsing patterns, cart abandonment, etc.

Landing Pages that don’t fail to Convert

Your busy homepage wouldn’t let someone sign up for your list; instead, a good landing page would do. The specialty of landing pages is that they make the audience take a specific action. It serves as a direct path from your offer to the sign-up button. How can you build a good landing page? Well, use a headline that is short and tells the benefits to the audience. It should have a moderate amount of text that clarifies what is in it and a useful CTA button.

Simple Sign-Up Forms

Dedicated landing pages won’t bring in all your audience. You also need to rely on your website, blog, or pop-up forms for many of them. These sources bring in an audience directly, and to make sure, you keep the sign-up form simple. It only needs to ask for a first name and email address. Forms that also ask for a phone number or job title tend to be less fruitful. According to Constant Contact, 53% of successful businesses use simple sign-up forms to grow their list.

Social Media Promotion of your Email List

Many of your social media followers may not have received an email from you. They can also come in handy. Invite them to be on your email list. Use your social channels as the platform where you consistently talk about your email list and create an opportunity for your followers to join your list. How can I promote my mailing list through social media?

• You can place a sign-up link in your Instagram bio.
• Use the stories to talk about your sign-up form or link.
• Make your FB business page a place where you can use the “Sign Up” button.
• Running contests or Giveaways can also help you.

Special Treatment / Exclusive Offers

Everyone loves to get special treatment. Offer exclusive facilities only to the subscribers. It will help you attract a large number of new subscribers. They may feel a necessity to sign up due to those offers. You can apply a discount code only available to subscribers. Or present them with an early bird offer when you launch a product.

Hosting an Event or Webinar

When you host an event, it gives you the opportunity to deal with new people and that too with interest in what you do. Indeed, a workshop, a virtual class, or a product demo; all these involve registration that results in new email leads. Keep the registration form short. Don’t forget to send a “thank you email” when the event comes to an end but the interest is still high enough.

Email Lead Collection through Daily Interaction

The online world is not the only place that brings you leads. You should utilize the real and physical world. You can use your physical store, restaurant, or office, and invite people to join your list. A simple sign-up sheet or a QR code can be really handy to successfully do it. Train your team in a way so that they can explain the benefits of joining.

Leads through Content Marketing

Content marketing can be a very good long-term approach for grabbing ideal customers. Make sure you create genuinely helpful blog posts, guides, or videos that appear as the solution for the problems of your audience. It will build trust for you among them, and they will not only be on your list but can end up being a direct purchasing client.

Targeted Personalization

Sending relevant and personalized content is crucial. Use dynamic content and ensure that it’s valuable to the recipient. Don’t go for generic messages. Trigger-based mail sending; personalization of email subject lines featuring dynamic data, concise format, FOMO or exclusivity, focusing on individual needs, offering tailored recommendations, etc can be really effective.

Compatibility with Mobile

Reports show that recipients read 65% of their mail on mobile devices, which have small screens. The email as well as the sign-up form must fit fully on it. If they are not compatible with mobile screens, then it is very likely that senders will lose attention and leads.

A/B Testing

Send 2 different types of emails to 2 different groups and estimate which one worked better. It will help you make more accurate decisions in the future. But make sure that you are clear about your goal and only test one variable at a time. Your test run must be long enough and finally assess the outcomes critically.

Consistent Sending Schedule

Timing or scheduling is also very important for leads. Analyze engagement metrics for past campaigns, define the frequency of sending, and use automation for scheduling. Creating a content calendar can be a good initiative.

Also, optimize email sending time based on historical data analysis and time zone segmentation. It may vary based on industry and audience. You can experiment with sending times to compare outcomes.

List Hygiene Maintenance

Make sure that your list hygiene is maintained. Monitor and manage your email list on a regular basis and get rid of unnecessary, fake, or spam. Otherwise, you may fall victim to hard bounces, low engagement rates, spam complaints, or blacklisting risks. To make sure, you can go for tasks like removal of inactive subscribers, verification of email addresses, elimination of duplicates, etc.

What are Common Lead Generation Mistakes?

Purchased Email List: This is one of those shortcuts that many businesses initially go for, but later they fall victim to. This is the list that will only make your mailing list bulky but completely useless. They will ignore you and may mark you as spam.

Forms asking too much Information: Only the name and email address are enough. Asking for too much information, including phone number, job title, etc would only decrease the chance for most people to sign up.

Focusing only on Sales: When you just focus on sales, your audience will get bothered and may even mute you. You can share some helpful tips, interesting stories, and useful content with them to keep them interested in you.

Incompatibility with Mobiles: 65% of the emails are read by the recipients on mobile devices. If your mail or sign-up forms are incompatible with small screens (mobile devices), you will lose many leads for sure.

Inconsistency: Suppose you didn’t send a mail within a few months and then keep sending continuous emails within a few days; that will actually annoy recipients. Consistency is very important to keep people engaged and to make them trust you.

FAQs

How to improve lead gen?

You can improve lead generation through irresistible website content, simple opt-in forms, strong landing pages, advertising and re-targeting, and marketing across all relevant platforms.

How can I get email leads?

You can get email leads by offering a free, valuable item. It can be an e-book or a discount on a website form in exchange for a person’s contact information.

Can you buy email leads?

Yes, you can buy email leads from third-party data providers. But! We don’t encourage you to do so. Why? Because it may make you a victim of high bounce rates, damaged sender reputations, and potential violations of anti-spam laws like GDPR or CAN-SPAM.