Email marketing is a great, cost-effective way to generate leads and build relationships with clients. It’s also a great way to get your name in front of your target audience on a regular basis without having to fight through the clutter in social media. However, you need to have a strong email contact list to create a highly effective campaign, and generating quality leads isn’t always easy.
First of all, you need to make sure that you have permission to email your contacts. Make sure that you are familiar with CAN-SPAM regulations and that your email service provider has the proper requirements in place. If you are flagged too many times or have a large amount of unsubscribes at once, you could get banned from your email service provider or even an email provider like Hotmail. Always include an opt-in box during your lead generation or check out process so you can easily obtain permission to send commercial emails.
Building a good list takes time, and multiple sources of lead generation are often required. For online retail companies, one of the easiest ways to obtain email leads is during the website registration or an online purchasing process. Although these are high-quality leads, it requires the consumer to be aware of your company and active on your website.
If you want to find consumers who were previously unfamiliar with your company, you can generate fresh leads by offering something in exchange for their email address. This might include tips, recipes, or how-to videos in a monthly newsletter. Sometimes companies need to offer a more valuable item such as an e-book. Either way, an exchange has to take place, so make sure when they opt-in, they know what they are getting. You’ll also want to make sure that it’s easy to opt-in via a form on a landing page. Ask for a minimal amount of information because each question you add will likely decrease your conversion rate. You can always discover more information from the lead in future requests or via their email activity.
Now that you have a great offer and a solid landing page, you’ll need to promote the page and drive people to opt-in to your email list. This could be done via Facebook promotion, Google Ad Words, third party websites, or other online marketing tools. There are even ways to incorporate email opt-ins into offline marketing. The key is to be strategic about what you are asking of your consumers and to track conversion rates.
Once you have a quality email marketing list, personalizing your emails will make your efforts more effective. In order to do that, you’ll need to have your prospects divided up in your database based on certain criteria. You can split them up by profession, location, business size, demographics, purchase history, or email activity. At a minimum, you’ll want to split up clients from prospects because you won’t want to send the same message to both groups. You can tailor your email messaging to each audience and even personalize the email with the lead’s name in the message. Statistics show that increased customization leads to higher open and click-through rates.
Your contact list can be one of the most valuable tools you have for marketing purposes, so filling it with quality leads and developing a customized messaging approach is essential. Let us navigate the waters of CAN-SPAM compliance and lead generation.
