Email marketing is still one of the most powerful promotional tools at your disposal. However, if you aren’t targeting the right audience, sending out emails can be a waste of time. How can you gain more qualified leads through email marketing?
According to Statista, 4.03 billion global users still utilize email, with a projected growth to 4.6 billion by 2025. Email should be a significant part of your marketing strategy. How you utilize email can make a difference in how successful your attempts to grow revenue are.
So, how can you ensure the leads you collect are reliable and plentiful? Here are our favorite strategies for better prospects.
1. Offer a Lead Magnet
The item you offer to entice users to sign up for your newsletter can make a huge difference in the quality of your leads. Your lead magnet must be something your buyer personas find valuable.
Spend time developing your personas so you know the needs of your audience. Once you have an idea of their pain points, you can develop content solving one of their issues, such as a seminar, ebook or podcast. Offer the solution as a magnet driving the correct audience to sign up for your list.
2. Hone Your Welcome Email
Welcome email open rates are much higher than other types of emails. Some experts say open rates are around 90%, but others believe around 50%. Your results likely fall somewhere in the middle of those two figures.
Your welcome email is an opportunity to engage your leads and share a one-time offer. Use your initial greeting to guide them to additional content.
3. Segment Your Audience
Move your leads into groups. For example, you may serve both consumers and businesses. Create two segments to your audience, so your emails are targeted to their very specific needs. The better you segment your audience, the more adept your personalization will be.
4. Choose a Mobile Friendly Format
According to information by Datareportal, around 92.1% of people use mobile devices to go online at least some of the time. If your emails aren’t responsive to smaller screens, you risk losing a big portion of your reading audience.
Your leads may check their email while on the run. Ensuring they can read your message no matter what device they use is just smart business sense. You’ll reach more leads by going mobile.
5. Remember CTAs
Your calls to action (CTAs) urge the user to do something. Always include a CTA in any email you send out, even if it is just a button leading to additional information.
Test and try different colors, placement and language on your email CTAs. You may find buttons work best on your website, while text links are more effective in emails. You won’t know what works best with your target audience until you crunch the numbers.
6. Automate Your Campaigns
When people first sign up for your newsletter, they should receive a series of emails via autoresponder. Your welcome series should work to inform a prospective customer of what you can do for them.
On the other hand, you want to send different messages to someone who already read the welcome emails but hasn’t converted into a customer. You must think through their potential objections and overcome them with a different approach and offers.
You’ll save time and effort when you automate the emails and send out a series based on former engagement and how you’ve segmented your audience.
7. Re-engage the Inactive
Did someone sign up for your lead magnet, open all your emails and then fade away? These people may never open another email if you don’t do something to reel them back in.
Start by looking at your competition. What are they offering you aren’t? What is your unique value proposition (UVP) and how can you utilize your strengths to convince the inactive leads to talk to you?
Start by sending an email that you notice they haven’t opened a message in a while but you have a helpful video or unique offer for them to check out. Tweak your subject line to entice them to open the email.
Be Persistent
There’s a fine line between persistence and annoyance. Reach out to people who showed an interest but don’t send multiple emails every day and irritate them into unsubscribing. You must offer value to your subscribers if you want them to listen to what you have to say. Keep trying new strategies and you should gain more leads who are highly qualified for what you sell.
Eleanor is editor of Designerly Magazine. Eleanor was the creative director and occasional blog writer at a prominent digital marketing agency before becoming her own boss in 2018. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog, Bear.
