How to ramp up your email marketing and generate more leads for your business

List. Is. Life.

When we refer to your email database – or your “list” as most marketers affectionately call it – we’re talking about the contact information you have for anyone who’s given you permission to send them information, news or promotions from your company.

How you get that permission is a whole other story, and more on that another time.

In an ideal world, on your list you’d have email addresses, names and even postal addresses, but this isn’t an ideal world and a nameless email address can still get you far.

You see, there’s a very simple rule in email marketing, and it’s one that can work regardless of whether you have a contact name, date of birth, address – whatever. For this rule to work, all you need is an email address to talk to, because…

The more you talk to your list, the more likely you are to sell.

Why use email?

Gah, so many reasons. The Direct Marketing Association reckons that email marketing creates an average 4,300% ROI for American businesses you know, and it’s the same story over here in the UK. But why?

For starters, email’s personal, getting you straight into a user’s inbox, which they’ll likely be checking multiple times a day. Your relationship is built in the private domain; not on public social media platforms for the world to see, but somewhere you can build connection and trust, and where users should eventually feel able to respond to you privately with confidence, if that’s the sort of action you’re looking for.

Email’s incredibly useful for targeting too. If you’ve done lead generation right, your list has probably already shown an interest in whatever it is you’re offering. Which means that you know what they like, and can offer them more of the same using email.

And if someone’s bothered to fill in a form to get onto your list, they’re likely to be receptive to similar messages from you.

Finally, unlike with other platforms, you don’t play to the tune of someone else’s algorithms when you use email to market. Rely solely on social media or Google and you might need to redouble your efforts next time they change a policy. But with email marketing, you own your email list, so what you do with it is up to you.

You’re probably catching our vibe by now that email’s a pretty good thing for marketing. Thankfully, marketing software like Keap exists to make talking to your list via email not just a walk in the park, but a full-on lounge on the sofa. But how do you pull the leads in in the first place?

So what’s this lead generation stuff?

So hopefully you’ve got the picture: your email list is a crucial tool to marketing your wares and making more money. But what do you do if you don’t have a list? Or if you want to grow your list and open up your opportunities to sell?

You need to generate some leads, my friend. Email lead generation means collecting leads by using an email opt-in form with a lead magnet. You’ll have seen the sort of thing: a “fill in your email address to receive our latest report” here, an “enter your details to find out your score” there.

The point is to dangle something attractive that’ll allow you to gather info on people who might end up buying from you, namely their name and email address.

It means you can target your customer avatar and boost awareness of your brand, and you should bag yourself more customers too.

If you don’t create an effective system to gather leads, you’ll struggle to grow your customer base and never make as many sales as you could. But with the right plan and systems for generating leads and carefully nurturing them, you’ll run a much greater chance of converting people into paying customers and earning more income.

Again, you won’t be surprised to hear us peddling the power of Keap to make the entire process super slick from top to toe – but let’s talk more about how you can use lead generation to increase your sales.

What can you do to generate more leads?

Landing pages on your website that feature data capture forms and an opt-in at the end of every blog (see below) are a good way to start, but if you’re serious about generating plenty more leads for your business, it’s time to get creative. Here are five ideas to get you started…

1. Customer incentives

This is a simple idea, but a smart one. Your customer list is a powerful tool, not just for making repeat purchases, but for widening your prospects list too. And the beauty of this technique is that you can generate more leads and reaffirm your relationship with your customers at the same time without having to awkwardly ask your list to refer a friend to purchase something from you.

Simply create some form of genuinely useful lead magnet (a webinar, an e-book, a report – whatever) and then ask your customers to share it with their own contacts who they think would find it useful too. Offer them a reward for doing so (perhaps an enticing discount or an invitation to a special one-off online event), and watch as the leads pour in!

2. Content upgrades

Again, this is simple but effective. In an exchange for their email address, users can upgrade whatever they’re consuming on your website to receive greater impact – all for free! For example, if you’ve got a great blog about how to write effective copy for onboarding new customers, create a downloadable email template that they can use immediately – as long as they give you their email address.

3. Sales systems

There are always going to be times when you, your sales squad or your customer service team talk to prospects who aren’t already on your email list. It only takes a moment to ask for an email address over the phone and if you make it part of the sales script to do so, you’ll end up with more prospects on your list to market to.

4. Online webinars

Not only can you use your own free, online webinar as a telecommuting-friendly lead magnet to collect email addresses, but you can also get clever with the way you attend other webinars or face-to-face networking events.

Look for opportunities to network with people who might be looking for something you offer, or who face's similar challenges to those of your previous customers. During discussion times, tell whoever’s listening that you’ve actually written an e-book or some blogs about the solution to their problem and offer to add anyone who’s interested to your mailing list, as a favour to them.  

5. Pure, simple, useful content

You can try the fanciest lead generation tricks in the trade but the one most important thing to remember to make it work is that you’ve got to offer stuff that people actually want to consume.

Whether it’s a targeted e-book, a credible white paper or a weekly email newsletter that provides the latest updates in your area, people won’t want it unless it will really benefit them.

Look at what your audience’s pain points are and create content that tackles them head-on, with enticing titles so your prospects know exactly what they’ll be getting, and why it’ll be handy for them.

What do you do with your leads once you’ve nabbed ‘em?

Like we said before, the most important thing you can do as your list grows is to keep talking to it.

But first and foremost, you’ll want to set up an automated set of emails that run to a new lead starting from the moment they take a spot on your list. Using tools like Keap, you can create a series of friendly and useful welcome-style emails that reaffirm to your new prospect that this is a list they want to be on. And, of course, if they’ve signed up expecting to receive some sort of PDF, don’t forget to attach it to the welcome emails that follow.

Then continue to deliver the value that they’re expecting going forwards. See your promises through too; if they signed up for a monthly newsletter, send it, brimming with valuable content and reasons for your prospects to keep consuming your stuff.

Communication is key and you won’t believe just how powerful a simple, regular email can be.

Use concise emails that look as plain as you can bear to communicate with your list regularly. Intriguing subject lines, meaningful content and clear calls to action are the name of the game in email marketing, and the more sophisticated you get with your emailing systems, the more of those leads you’ll see converted into customers.

Not only does Keap give you an excellent safe house in which to automatically deposit the leads you generate, but it provides you with so many options for communicating with your list from then on in too. Automated sequences, weekly emails, monthly newsletters and responsive email marketing are all super simple to set up in Keap, but the most important thing is committing to making it happen.

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