In the mid-90s, email became a major way for people to connect with their loved ones. The hit movie You’ve Got Mail highlights this perfectly as a story of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan falling in love with each other through their inboxes.
Email is faster and more accessible now than ever before, making email marketing a golden opportunity to connect with potential customers in your target market.
Email lead generation is a proven way for SDRs and marketing teams to build relationships and share valuable content with company decision-makers until they’re ready to take the next steps in the buyer’s journey. In this blog, we’ll cover:
- What Is Email Lead Generation?
- Why Is Having an Email Marketing Campaign Important?
- How To Practice Lead Generation Through Email Marketing
- When To Consider Implementing a Lead Generation Email Marketing Sequence
What Is Email Lead Generation?
Email lead generation is a sales and marketing strategy that growing companies use to build their sales pipeline and generate new business opportunities.
One of the unique things about email lead generation is that it’s both an outbound and inbound lead generation strategy. Many B2B companies practice outbound lead generation to introduce decision-makers in their target market to their products or services.
On the other hand, inbound email lead generation is when a business collects leads through digital marketing efforts. To receive inbound email lead generation assets from your company, users must fill out an opt-in form with their contact information.
Why Is Having an Email Marketing Campaign Important?
Even with the rise of social media marketing, email lead generation still reigns as the leader in sales development. Think about it; whenever you sign up for anything online, what do they always require you to do? Enter your email address. That’s because email is a convenient way to get the information you need for your account.
Additionally, subscribing to an inbound email marketing campaign means the interested user has expressed consent to receive additional sales and marketing assets. This allows the company to send you valuable content and introduce users to new product or service offerings.
Implementing both an inbound and outbound email marketing strategy is essential for growing businesses because it empowers sales and marketing teams to:
Share Targeted and Personalized Content
An email marketing campaign is essential for sustainable business growth because you can use personalization to reel in potential buyers and convert them from leads to customers. Once you see how particular leads are engaging with your content, you can use this data to better target leads and ensure you only send content that resonates with them and their pain points.
Establish Better Brand Recognition
When your sales and marketing specialists use sales email templates to build campaigns, you can establish better company recognition. These sales email templates should align with your logo, theme, and voice so recipients don’t get mixed messages from your email assets.
If potential buyers see consistency in your email lead generation efforts, they’re more likely to trust that they’ll see consistency in your company’s products or services.
Build Stronger Relationships With Potential Buyers
Whether it’s potential or ongoing customers, an email lead generation strategy enables growing businesses to build stronger relationships over time. Many SDR and marketing teams use email marketing campaigns to send leads and customers valuable content related to their product or service interests. Rather than making a quick call to follow up, they can send a lead nurturing email to look at on their own time.
Optimize Your Time and Budget
SDR teams typically have a lot on their plate. From calling each lead in the sales pipeline to connecting with decision-makers on LinkedIn, it can be hard to juggle it all without onboarding more sales experts—which can harm your company’s bottom line. Email lead generation is an excellent addition to your sales development efforts because it can be automated while still being personalized to each potential buyer.
Email automation is a true game-changer for your business growth efforts. Automating email campaigns saves your sales reps time because they can prioritize warm calling leads who are closer to the end of the sales cycle. Additionally, many email automation systems do lead scoring for the SDRs, so they know which leads are more likely to convert.
Boost Website Traffic
A well-thought-out email marketing strategy increases the amount of traffic directed to your website. When crafting sales lead emails, you need to include content from your company website like service pages and blog posts that may pique the interest of potential buyers. This encourages decision-makers to browse through your website to see what value you have to offer them.
Learn What Decision-Makers Are Engaging With
Email lead generation is a great market research tool because your SDRs can evaluate metrics to see what decision-makers are engaging with, and they can incorporate that into their other business growth efforts.
Let’s say you’re a commercial cleaning company looking to generate leads through cold email campaigns. If your SDRs look at the metrics of these email campaigns and see that more people are clicking on a section that highlights disinfection services over ongoing cleaning, this indicates that potential buyers are more interested in disinfection over ongoing services. From here, your SDRs can adjust their phone call pitches to get more sales appointments.
How To Practice Lead Generation Through Email Marketing
Like with any other lead generation strategy, you must start your email marketing efforts by identifying your target audience. Depending on your industry, some decision-makers are more likely to respond to emails than answer a call from someone they don’t know. Once you know the buyer personas of your target audience, you can craft sales emails they’re more likely to open.
To practice lead generation through email marketing, it’s essential that you:
Build Your Sales Lead Email List
First thing’s first: where do you get email leads? Well, that depends on whether you’re practicing outbound or inbound email marketing.
With outbound email marketing, there are many ways to get sales email leads. If you already have a sales pipeline, you can integrate your email lead generation efforts into the lead’s account on your CRM so they can start receiving emails as soon as possible.
If you’re just getting started with your outbound sales pipeline, you can find prospects through LinkedIn Sales Navigator or collaborate with a lead generation email marketing service provider. These companies often already have a list of prospects your SDR team can send emails to; these lists are also routinely updated by their sales teams to give you the best decision-makers for your sales pipeline.
If you’re practicing inbound email lead generation, build your email list by gathering all the leads generated through your digital marketing efforts. If a potential buyer sees the value in what you have to offer through your social media platforms or website, they can opt-in to receive sales and marketing emails from your company.
Send Your First Lead Generation Email Marketing Sequence
The time has come to craft the first email of your lead generation email sequence. This sales lead email is the most important one because it’s the first impression a potential buyer has of your company. Therefore, your sales and marketing experts need to put a lot of thought into how recipients will look at it and how it represents your company.
As you write your first lead generation email, it’s vital that you:
- Craft a lead generation email subject line that piques interest
- Make an exclusive offer the reader can’t turn down
- Include information that’s relevant to the reader and their product or service needs
- Direct readers to your company website for maximum engagement
See What Email Recipients Are Engaging With
After you send your first lead generation email, you need to find out what recipients engage with the most. As mentioned earlier, the way recipients engage with your emails indicates how you should target your messaging and promotional content.
If most decision-makers are engaging with one section of the email over another, it may be beneficial for your next email to expand more on that specific section to ensure you get the most engagement possible. This can lead to a higher open rate and more conversions from prospects into leads.
Run Email Drip Campaigns To Build a Rapport
Lead nurturing is a crucial part of any business growth strategy. Email drip campaigns are a lead nurturing strategy that ensures each lead makes it through each sales funnel stage, starting at awareness and ending at the decision phase.
Email drip campaigns should build rapport and establish your company as the leading solution to the prospect’s pain points. With data from the initial sales email, you can better understand what potential buyers are looking for in a product or service provider. This allows you to craft sales emails that align with their wants, needs, and interests.
Measure the Results of Your Email Lead Generation Strategy
Analyzing the results of your lead gen email campaigns is essential for getting the most out of your business growth efforts. Here are some of the metrics you need to look at when measuring the effectiveness of your lead generation email sequence:
- Clickthrough rate
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- List growth rate
- Email sharing
- Open rate
- Unsubscribe rate
For further insight on these email marketing metrics, check out our blog here.
It’s also important to find the best time to send out an email campaign. As an email marketing best practice, research shows that the best time to distribute a campaign is in the morning between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. However, this is a general best practice, so it’s crucial to consider the industry you serve and the buyer personas of your target audience.
With the right email lead generation software, your SDR and marketing teams can easily access the email metrics you need to measure the outcome of your campaigns.
Make Adjustments and Repeat the Process
Email lead generation programs take a lot of trial and error, no matter how advanced your sales and marketing teams are. Every company, industry, and region is different, so no two email lead generation practices are the same.
After a month of business growth efforts, it’s time to look at how your email campaigns are performing. Examine what’s successful and where there might be gaps in the process. This allows you to adjust your approach as needed to build a better email lead generation strategy.
When To Consider Implementing a Lead Generation Email Marketing Sequence
Email lead generation may not be for every business in every industry. As mentioned earlier, the success of your lead generation strategy depends on the region you serve and the buyer personas of your target audience.
However, it may be worth implementing a lead generation email marketing sequence if:
You’re Not Getting an ROI From Other Lead Gen Strategies
While cold and warm calling decision-makers is a great way to generate leads, it’s not the only way. If you’re not getting the ROI you want from phone calls alone, it’s worth considering lead generation email marketing. Taking advantage of both calling and emailing allows sales reps to catch the right leads at the right time.
Your SDRs Don’t Have Time To Warm Call Leads
From prospecting to setting sales appointments with qualified leads, SDRs are responsible for building and maintaining your sales pipeline. When they get too caught up with all their tasks, they don’t have time to make all the follow-up calls they need to. Automating email lead generation empowers SDRs to nurture relationships with leads through another communication platform.
You Don’t Have the Money To Hire a Full SDR Team
Lead gen email marketing campaigns are ideal for businesses that want an entire SDR team without the costs. Email automation can be used as an additional lead generator. With it, SDRs can prioritize responding to emails from potential buyers without having to craft and send the perfect sales lead emails. This allows them to spend more time building relationships than sending emails.
Key Takeaways
While email is a great way for loved ones to connect, it’s also a crucial lead generation strategy for growing businesses. Email lead generation is vital for growth because it allows companies to:
- Share targeted and personalized content
- Establish better brand recognition
- Build stronger relationships with potential buyers
- Optimize their time and budget
- Boost website traffic
- Learn what decision-makers are engaging with
At Sapper Consulting, we craft lead-gen email marketing campaigns for B2B clients so they get the best leads for their sales pipeline. Our email lead generation efforts set up high-quality virtual sales appointments with decision-makers ready to make a purchase.
If you’re looking for an outsourced email lead generation strategy that yields results, contact the email marketing specialists at Sapper!
