Best Practices to Generate Leads Through Email Marketing For Your Business
When it comes to lead generation, over and over again, it’s been proved that email marketing is the best bet. With the right strategy and practices, emails can turn out to be your ideal lead generating tool. However, any drastic change in results doesn’t happen overnight. Even email marketing requires the right contacts, approach, and techniques to yield a positive outcome. The process of lead generation is a continuous one, and gradually, it takes momentum. Following the practices we discussed above, marketers can surely boost their lead generation through emails and even increase their revenue generation through quality lead conversions.
The success rate of email marketing in generating responses from customers has been tremendous. That is why most of the businesses today, be it healthcare or technology-specific, employ emails as their medium for communication, promotions, and relationship building. The quality of leads generated through emails is higher than any other marketing channel.
Even 73% of today’s millennials prefer email for receiving business communication, which indicates the popularity of emails among users of all ages. If you are a novice entrepreneur trying luck with email marketing or someone who is unsure of how to use email to get qualified leads, then this informative piece will undoubtedly be an ideal resource.
Let’s have a look at the email marketing best practices that can double your lead count.
Shorten your email content and keep it precise.
In today’s fast-paced life, the reader doesn’t have time to read lengthy emails. Your customers prefer going through crisp and short emails that can be read on the go. Instead of content, you can include more visuals or images as readers get attracted more towards visuals than long and generic texts.
Moreover, make sure that the content of your email is interesting enough to engage the audience and help you generate quality leads in the form of subscriptions or calls from the customer showing interest in your brand and its products. Try to deliver value in every email message so that you can amaze your audience with useful and relevant content.
Grab attention with catchy email subject lines.
Subject line is the significant part of an email that influences people to click and open the email. A catchy subject line like ‘20% discount on purchase today’ can grab your lead’s attention immediately. To turn your email marketing into lead generating machine, ensure that the email subject line is concise and short. It should reflect the purpose of the email and create a sense of urgency by including words such as ‘limited period offer,’ ‘exclusive deal for today,’ etc. A decent email subject line should be of 30-50 characters.
You can transform your boring subject line into engaging one just by adding verbs and adjectives. Remember it is the subject line that encourages the email receiver to open it and read what’s inside. So, you must pay attention and time on crafting the best subject line for your email marketing
Keep your email list clean and updated
An accurate and updated email list can help you reach the right customer. Sending emails to interested customers can only generate leads that will eventually turn into buyer. That is why it is essential for every business to keep their list of email contacts clean and updated, free from old, irrelevant, and incomplete information.
There are many email list providers whom you can trust with data cleansing services as well as can avail an updated list from them to ensure your email communications never reach the spam folder or get ignored on reaching the wrong email address. Though some may say buying email list is expensive but the ends it meet is worth every dollar spent.
Do not use ‘no-Reply’ email address.
The way some businesses may flood customer’s inbox with too many promotional emails. Similarly, the vice versa may also happen. It means that there are times when even the customer may bombard the brand’s inbox with reply back emails consisting of unnecessary responses from them. To prevent such scenarios, many brands use no-reply email format such as noreply@domain.com to send marketing or transactional emails.
However, the practice of sending no-reply emails is considered wrong. If you want to build trust and establish a bond with the customer, then do not use No-Reply email address. This is because the email receiver doesn’t trust such emails and may even mark them as spam or send it to the delete folder. As ‘no-answer’ emails disable the reader’s chance to respond and react, they lose interest in them as a whole. The result may cause loss of potential leads, which no brand would like.
Set automated campaigns to stay in touch.
Automation simplifies the act of sending email campaigns. The task of sending emails to each and every individual customer can be a challenging manual task. Not only it incurs a lot of time, but it also reduces efficiency. However, with email marketing tools, marketers can send automated campaigns to the targeted audience from the email database.
Your email marketing strategy can turn into a lead generation strategy if you automate the process of sending emails, taking the help of email automation software. It will help you to send emails to a particular segment of customers from your list at the time and at the frequency that you decide. There will not be any need to type email addresses to send email marketing campaigns manually. Considering the many benefits of email automation, about 49% of businesses today use some form of email automation.
Link your emails to landing pages.
If the purpose behind your email marketing campaign is to drive traffic to your website, then link your email with a landing page that matches the theme, visuals, content, and headlines of the email. More than linking blogs or websites, it’s better to link a particular page where visitors will find relevant information and don’t have to keep navigating your site unnecessarily. Deliver to the point solution through your email, and for that, link it to a relevant landing page. This will trigger lead generation and boost conversions through your email marketing campaigns.
Also, make sure that you use the right tracking tools to keep a watch on how your emails and landing pages are performing in terms of lead generation. Driving traffic to website or blog may distract the visitor, and they may struggle to find out what they need. So, avoid unnecessary diversions and guide customers to the right path through your emails.
Take help of existing email subscribers by incentivizing referrals.
Referrals always work. You can ask your existing email subscribers to refer to others. When a friend or a relative suggests a brand, people tend to trust them without any second thought. Taking advantage of loyal subscribers who know your business in and out, you can grow your email subscribers list and leads count as a whole.
But, don’t forget to incentivize your customer for the referral. You can offer a small discount or a voucher in return for their reference. Provide some encouragement for the energy and time your subscribers might spend on promoting your email list.
Send emails at the right time.
Not all days of the week are suitable for sending email marketing campaigns that can generate B2B leads for your business. While some consider ‘Tuesday’ is the best, others think Thursday to send emails that get clicked and opened. Following statistics blindly is not right always.
Every business has its set of targeted audience whose preferences, habits, and choices differ. Hence, what may work for your business, the same may lead to the opposite result for another company. So, study your customers and identify the right time and day when sending emails would help fetch results in the form of leads. However, when it comes to time, as per coschedule, the right time to send emails is at 10 a.m.
Mention clear call-to-action.
You must not forget to include Call-to-Actions (CTA) in your email marketing campaign. It is using the CTA button that the reader will reach out to you to express their interest in your offering. Mention the CTA button clearly so that visitors can quickly notice it. This will help in efficient lead generation from your email campaigns.
Optimize emails for mobile.
According to Campaign Monitor, around 53% of emails are opened on mobiles. Stats like this indicate the growing popularity of mobile devices among users. More than desktop or laptops, people today prefer reading emails or any content on their tablets and smartphones. Hence, your emails should be optimized well for all kinds of mobile devices.
Keeping in mind the screen size and other user aspects, you need to design your email template and place buttons in a way that the entire content is visible on the mobile screen and doesn’t get cut or hidden anywhere.
Test email campaigns and analyze results.
Lastly, the important thing to do on your part is testing your email campaign before hitting the send button. It is necessary to run A/B testing on your email campaign and check its performance. Be it color change or allocation of CTA button or any content errors, test will help you identify the loopholes and correct it before reaching the audience. A well-created and strategized email marketing campaign can help you fetch desired lead counts.