There are hundreds of tactics and strategies for attracting prospective customers and clients to your business. Creating real demand and driving lead conversion is a “must-do” if you want to create sustainable revenue in the long run.
This year, email automation and nurturing continue to be core drivers for lead generation and conversion. Almost 99% of email users check their inboxes daily, often logging in over 10 times throughout the day. This means that your audience is primed and ready to hear from you.
In this post, we’ll uncover what you need to know about email marketing automation in order to make it an effective conversion point for your business. With the right optimization, you can effectively leverage email marketing for lead generation.
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What is Email Marketing Automation?
Email marketing automation is the process of sending targeted messages to the right people (at the right time) on autopilot. It involves work up front to collect contact information and segment the right audiences. After that, it’s all about finetuning your copy to hit the mark and convert new business opportunities.
According to Mailchimp, one of the leading email platforms and service providers on the market, email marketing involves “the use of predefined trigger email messages to personalize your messages based on specific actions customers take—or don’t take.”
So while the automated aspect reduces your manual effort later on, you still need a keen awareness of which future customers you want to reach and what you have to offer them.
Email Marketing for Lead Generation
In particular, email marketing for lead generation involves sending out specific and customized messages when prospects take certain actions. To break this down practically, you might use email for lead generation when you build sequences for any of the following scenarios.
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A prospective customer signs up for your newsletter (an action from your homepage)
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A lead submits your company’s demo request form
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A prospect signs up for a virtual event or webinar
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Your new customer makes an initial “freemium” purchase (and you want to maintain contact for future nurturing and upsell opportunities)
In these examples, you’re consistently taking the lead’s information and continuing the relationship in hopes of creating further opportunities. With email automation, however, you’re removing some of the manual efforts that’s associated with traditional outbound sales activities.
As you might be able to guess—this frees up time, resources, and money throughout your business operations.
3 Tips for Establishing Email Automation Workflows
Creating relevant and timely email automation workflows requires diligence and thorough market research. Undoubtedly, there are many common mistakes that you’ll want to avoid to generate the greatest impact on your leads and prospects.
If you’re new to email automation for lead generation, we’ve selected the tips below to help you construct a solid foundation. When you invest time in the initial process, you’ll be more equipped to create a system that converts new leads sustainably and predictably.
Tip 1: Create Helpful Content and Nurturing Campaigns
Don’t waste the opportunity to get in front of your ideal customers and target market. When you send new email messages—make them count. This involves personalizing your messaging and crafting subject lines that are attention-grabbing and highly clickable.
What is the purpose of each new email you send to leads? How does each message fit seamlessly into your overall email strategy? These are questions you must answer before you can experience results from your email workflow.
When forming the body copy of your emails, speak directly to your customer’s greatest questions or points of concern. By sharing this information, you’ll be preemptively heading off buying objections from the start.
Tip 2: Protect and Respect Lead and Prospect Data
Even if you’ve successfully created an email automation sequence that works for your business, there’s work on the backend to secure your lead data.
Data privacy is a big deal for compliance, particularly at a time when legislation like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar rulings dictate how businesses can legally engage with potential customers.
This means doing your part to protect and respect the personal data that your leads share with you. You can accomplish this by taking the following steps.
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Add disclaimers or intent notices to any lead intake form on your website
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Have a clear and transparent opt-in policy for new contacts
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Set basic expectations for how often you’ll send new email messaging
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Cleanse your list occasionally to remove low and unengaged segments
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Provide a clear and visible opt-out option for when subscribers want to be removed from your active list
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Tip 3: Avoid Being “Spammy”
If your leads and prospects share their contact information with you, remember that they expect tangible value in return. Even in a digital age with millions of incoming messages, personal contact information is still highly valuable
You can avoid being overly promotional by generating a healthy mixup of educational, conversational, and sales-focused emails. If your audience only ever receives new offers and upsell content, they might be less likely to click through, or they might opt out altogether.
The goal of email automation should be scalable growth. You simply can’t achieve this if you’re constantly taking advantage of your list and only trying to get them to purchase.
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Grow Your Business with Email Automation
Email automation for lead generation can be an enormously successful way to grow and scale your business. Additionally, it can scale your base audience so that you’re more in tune with potential customers, even as your product or service evolves.
At The Orange Box Agency, we understand the power of driving new leads as a way to create sales opportunities and drive higher ROI. We’ll be your growth partner as you transform your traffic into something more meaningful.
