Shawn Elledge / June 23, 2017
In my business, we often talk about the best way to generate leads. This is, after all, how we get customers in the door and clamoring for our product or service. There are several ways to generate leads—inbound and outbound strategies, content creation, and social media. These all have their place in your marketing toolbox, but there’s a single cornerstone in your lead generation program—and that’s email marketing.
As far as marketing campaigns go, email marketing is what I would call an oldie but goodie. Marketing technologies have all the bells and whistles, but the latest research from the DMA UK estimates that for every $1 spent on email marketing you can expect to reap about $38 in returns. There are a couple of reasons for this:
While email is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing kit, it’s important to be aware that it has changed drastically over the years. We’re no longer at the stage of buying email lists and loading them into your customer relationship management program. In fact, with legislative initiatives such as CAN-SPAM and more sophisticated email filtering, doing those sorts of things will only get your IP address blocked.
Today’s B2B marketing requires a different approach—attracting leads and prospects through opt-ins and delivering engaging, high-quality content.
When we talk about lead generation, we need a working definition of what a lead is. In terms of email marketing, a lead is anyone who fills out a form on our website, downloads an e-book, or attends one of our webinars.
Here’s the rub: Oftentimes, these leads only download that e-book or attend that conference because they’re interested in the content. That individual or company might not have any interest in your product or service, at least not at this time. Some reports suggest only 25 percent of your leads will buy from you in year one while 75 percent will not buy until year two or three.
That’s where our job as B2B marketers comes in. We take that curiosity and nurture it, turning that first action into interest in your product or service. But how do we do that with thousands of potentially interested leads? The answer is a combination of email marketing and marketing automation, or MA.
MA software allows a marketing team to designate “tracks,” or a group of emails over time that are automatically sent on a pre-determined timeframe to a certain buyer type or area of interest in your product or service. Say, for example, you sell a considered purchase with an extended sales cycle. You might, in your email marketing campaign, have three different types of prospects—the end user, decision maker, and the financial authority. MA software allows you to create these emails ahead of time and schedule deliveries. When paired with engaging and relevant content for each persona, you gain client trust while establishing your own credibility.
We’ve established that email marketing is a cornerstone of your lead generation campaign. Observe some basic best practices:
Email marketing may not be the fanciest marketing technique out there, but it remains one of the most effective. Combine your email campaign with MA to segment your population and create targeted messages for everyone with a potential interest in your product or service. Use these best practices to engage leads or move them down the sales funnel, eventually creating loyal customers.
Photo Credit: Blog Ecossistema Digital Flickr via Compfight cc
This post was first published on Integrated Marketing Association.
