Not every email that lands in a target viewer’s inbox logically ends up with a cartful of purchases at your brand’s virtual checkout. In fact, depending on your motives and business prospects, there are plenty of scenarios where this goal isn’t even the point of the outreach process in the first place.What is universal across the email marketing landscape is the need for companies and organizations to generate leads. From eBook downloads to garnering attendees for your upcoming webinar, leads come in a seemingly endless variety of shapes and sizes across virtually every industry.With this in mind, we’d like for you to join us as we look into exactly what it takes to build a better connection between email marketing and lead generation. This way, you’ll have all the tips and tactics you need to harvest more leads than ever before during your next outreach campaign.
Incorporate “Action” Phrases and Words into Your CTAs
As far as boosting the raw lead generation potential of your emails goes, the HubSpot Blog’s Jonathan Pavoni explains that few inclusions compare to a great call-to-action (CTA.) However, not just any plain CTA will do; you need to incorporate phrases and words that stir your audience to action.Pavoni notes that the following “action” phrases and words serve as prime examples of this approach:
- “Attend”
- “Try now”
- “Register”
- “Read”
- “Download”
Naturally, which inclusions you add into your email CTAs will vary based on the situation and your audience. The big key here is that even if you deviate from this quick list of examples, you still need to find a way to clearly and concisely request an action or response from your reader – all while showing them the benefits that come with your highlighted eBook, case study, webinar, video, etc.
Embrace a “Divide and Conquer” Mentality
Not all lead generation tactics are created equal; this is just a fact of life in the world of email marketing. So does this mean you’re stuck using only the same CTAs, images, subject lines, and other key components across each segment of your inbox audience? Absolutely not.Business 2 Community’s Joel Goldstein notes that personalized and appropriately individualized emails are 15 percent more likely to be opened, so take the time to put your consumer data to good use. Breaking up your emails and adding in special touches for the various segments and demographics within your contact list ensures that the lead generation potential for each of these categories remains at, or near, peak levels. In other words, don’t be afraid to “divide and conquer” each portion of your email marketing audience with multiple specialized iterations of the same promotional message.
Keep Your Facts on the Straight and Narrow
Goldstein goes on to point out that misleading people is about as big a mistake as a brand can commit in today’s inbox. Even the smallest fib or white lie in the subject line or content can completely ruin your company’s credibility and lead to some seriously stiff backlash on social media and other channels.A better course of action is to skip anything intentionally misleading or aimed at generating a cheap click. If possible, get straight to the point with accurate, concise, and brief content. The more direct and engaging you can be while crafting subject lines and body copy, the higher your odds of scoring a meaningful click and converting this initial interest into a fully-fledged lead.
Keep the Good Vibes Rolling with a Winning Landing Page
The final tactic needed to build a better bond between your email marketing operation and lead generation prospects doesn’t actually have anything to do with what happens in the inbox. Instead, this piece of the puzzle focuses on backing up all of your hard work with a winning landing page experience.To overcome the pitfalls of poor landing page offerings and keep the good vibes you generated in the inbox flowing, Target Marketing magazine’s K.C. Motamedy suggests building content that gets straight to the point with relevant information about the offer or content of the related email. Don’t just dump the user onto your homepage or stuff a bunch of generic content onto an improperly structured landing page.If you’re able to embrace this concept – and incorporate the rest of what you’ve learned here – then there’s no reason why your brand can’t take its lead generation capabilities to previously unimaginable levels. The only question left to answer now is whether or not you’re ready to put this newfound insight into the email marketing process to good use.
