Analysing Lead Generation Through Email Marketing

Analysing Lead Generation Through Email Marketing

 

Email is a powerful channel that can be used for lead generation by capturing users at different stages of the buying cycle. It helps to establish and nurture the relationship with the customer and encourage them to visit a website or landing page for more information or purchase. Here are some of the methods that can be used to capture leads via email:

Lead Generation Through Email Marketing

We can separate recipients into three categories:

  1. New customer: a new customer is typically a person becoming aware of their need for a product and service and interested in a number of different options, including your service or product.

2. The existing customer: who has considered their options and solutions and decided to purchase your service or product.

3. An evangelist: Not just a regular existing customer, they have effectively become an advocate or evangelist for your product or service.

We will now look at how to capture data on each of these three types of email recipients.

 

Data Capture

By capturing information on new leads and potential customers you can tailor your email marketing campaigns to them which will help turn these users into customers. Some places where you can collect information about these users include:

  • Company blog posts: you can gate content on your blog by requiring the user to give their email address which you will send the post or guide to.
  • Company website: if a user who is visiting your website is interested in what you offer, make it easy for the user to subscribe on almost every page.
  • Social media: here you can promote an offer, an eBook or a free resource that requires an email address to redeem. Also, let your followers know that you offer great information/deals/discounts through email and provide a link where they can quickly subscribe.
  • Partners and affiliates: run a promotion on a partners website or email that requires registration to enter. This gives you access to a new audience who might be interested in what you offer also.
  • Referrals: provide your current subscribers a way to share your email and add a ‘Refer a friend’ link to all your marketing emails.

Once a user becomes a customer you will want to keep them interested and stay connected to your brand. By capturing data on existing customers you can provide them with up-to-date and relevant information.

Sources of data collection that provide information on existing customers are:

  • Opt-in form data upon list signup: when a user is signing up to your email list you can provide extra form fields to capture more information about the user
  • Purchase data including location and user preferences: when a user makes a purchase they provide a lot of information such as location, currency or types of products they are interested in
  • Social media information: check to see if the user follow you on social media and if they engage with your content.

Brand Evangelists

Brand evangelists are users with whom your brand has an established relationship. They promote your brand and products on a regular basis. Potential customers will often trust the opinion of an evangelist over traditional marketing messages, so it is important to capture as much information on your evangelists as possible.

You can capture information on your brand evangelists from:

  • Email campaign metrics: how often the user opens, clicks, or shares your email can show you how interested they are
  • Site visits and logins: how regularly the user is visiting your website and what pages they visit
  • Social media likes, retweets, following: how regularly the user is engaging with your social media content
  • Purchase history: shows what types of products they are interested in and how often buy from you.

Contact Database

The more subscribers you have, the more potential customers you can reach.

You should note that list building gives context to the experience recipients have with a company and how this contributes to managing a solid contact database. There are a couple of different types of email lists but the main ones you should be concerned with are Opt-in and Opt-Out.

Ideally, you should never buy or rent an email list, as these contacts did not willingly signup to your email list. This form of opt-in is illegal in many countries, and ISPs (Internet Service Providers) will detect this, meaning your emails will end up in spam folders.

 

  • Opt-in: include users who have signed up to your email list. This is only good if the contact has opted-in to YOUR company.
  • Opt-out: includes users who no longer wish to receive your emails and you must remove them from future email campaigns.
  • Purchased: you can purchase a list of names and email address from a certain demographic but remember these users did NOT signup to receive emails from you.
  • Rented: similar to buying an email list, you can rent a list. This means you pay for a certain number of users of a demographic but you don’t get their email address. The company you rent the list from will perform the email sent. Because you never owned the contact list, you can’t see the email addresses.

 

Building a Subscriber list

You should always be growing your subscriber list and adding new contacts. Here are some of the best practices for building a subscriber list:

Blog signups

One of the best ways to add new subscribers. When a user has visited your blog, they have shown an interest in your content. Here you can prompt them to sign up to your email list where they can get the content delivered to them directly.

Social media signups

By running paid promotions on your social media pages you can drive users to the signup form, or also regularly promote the content you share in the email to generate signups organically.

 

Offline events

You can collect emails at offline events or trade shows and then add them to your email list during or after the event. Be sure to welcome them to the list once you add them.

Partners

By partnering with another company’s website or email newsletter, you get your content in front of a new audience who might be interested in signing up for your emails.

 

Opt-in media

You can offer the user free content, such as an eBook, in exchange for their email address which is a win-win for both parties.

Referrals

Encourage your current email subscribers to share or forward the email by adding social media icons or an  ‘Email to a friend’ link.

List segmentation

It contributes to the growth and management of a contact database by keeping information about contacts (leads, subscribers, customers, partners, competitors, employees) up to date and accurate.

Without list segmentation, you would only have one email list that all users were added to and it would be difficult to tell who is who and what message to send. When segmentation is put in place, you can easily see the breakdown of your audience and tailor each message accordingly.

Additionally, if the information isn’t kept up to date then you may be sending the wrong message to the wrong user. For example, a user who signs up to your email list as a lead, and you correctly put them into a segment for leads, but then a few weeks later this lead becomes a customer. If you don’t keep users’ information or your segments updated, you could end up sending emails that are no longer relevant which will ultimately have a negative effect on your list growth.

 

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