How To Generate Leads With Email Marketing and Lead Nurturing

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Most salespeople are looking for ways to eliminate cold calling, and it can often help to send a pre-call letter or email. We have tested literally hundreds of different email formats. Here are 5 rules to think about when creating your pre-call email campaigns:

1. Avoid being self-promotional

You may think the purpose of a pre-call email is to educate the prospect about your company and services. It's not. Overly-promotional messages create anxiety with the prospect and sound like spam. Oftentimes, the less you say about yourself the more a prospect wants to talk to you.

2. Create familiarity in the messages

Instead of telling a prospect about your company, tell him what you know about his company or industry. Do you know about a trend or current challenge? Are you working with similar companies? If so, let them know in the first sentence of your email.

3. CC everyone involved

Your response rate will be 500% greater when you email more than one person inside the account. If you're targeting a CFO, cc other managers who may also be involved in the decision, such as a COO, CEO, or even VP of HR.

4. Send more than 1 email

Repetition is the key to success in email marketing and pre-call campaigns. In our testing, the first email a salesperson sends will achieve an open rate of about 20%. However, when we follow up with a second email 2 days later, this email has an open rate of 48%!

5. Have the right call-to-action (CTA)

Are you asking your prospect to schedule a meeting with you? Visit your website? Request a demo? There are several different CTAs we could ask for. Generally, you only want to ask for 1. More than this could confuse the prospect. You'll also want to test various CTAs to see which one generates the best response. For example, there are times when driving a prospect to an online demo before asking them for an appointment generates a better response than directly asking them for an appointment in an email.

Click Here for other Squidoo lenses about creating leads and eliminating cold calling.

If you're in sales, you may feel like you're trapped in a constant cat-and-mouse game with your prospects, forced to chase them around until they're ready to buy. This usually means that you need to make relentless follow-up phone calls so they won't forget about you.

But is there a better way to create Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) with prospects without investing so much time? The best solution is to create an automated email drip campaign, often referred to as a Lead Nurturing.

If you plan to use email to keep in touch with people, it's important that every email message creates value and earns their trust. This means that you'll want to avoid sending those marketing materials your company created. You'll also want to quit "checking in" to see if the prospect is ready to make a decision. These types of approaches are self-serving and worthless to the prospect.

It's time to start sending your prospects information and resources that are relevant and useful to them. You're probably wondering what kind of content to send. Here are my recommendations:

1. Blogs

Don't know what a blog is? Think of it as a journal filled with articles on a specific topic. For example, there are blogs about Internet Marketing, Elvis Presley Collectibles, Recruiting Strategies, and almost everything else you could imagine. While some of the blog articles are written by corporations, many of them are written by individuals who have a passion for the topic and provide a lot of great content. Do a google search for "blog: insert topic here" and see what you can find that would be relevant to your prospects.

Emailing people a link to a blog is a great idea because blogs are seen as an unbiased article. Bloggers also love it when you borrow their content and they'll often reward you by linking to your website or even featuring you in a future blog article.

2. Best Practices (How-to and Tips)

The odds are you have specific knowledge and insights that other people want. Find a niche and write about helpful tips and strategies that others can implement. Don't worry about giving away too much of your "secret sauce". Research has shown that even if you give away 90% of your ideas, people will still pay a premium for the remaining 10%. Best of all, sharing your knowledge will demonstrate your expertise and establish your credibility.

If you don't want to write the article, search online for other people who have written about a specific how-to topic.

3. White Papers

These could be written by you or by a third party. Did you conduct a study where you could share your results? Do you have a case study or success story from a client? White papers can be a great way to educate your audience and help them think differently about their needs (and your services).

4. Free Tools & Resources (ROI Calculators, Analysis Tools, etc)

Email your prospects a link to a great tool or resource they can use in their business. For example, I created a drip campaign for marketing managers, and one of my emails includes a link to a tool called Website Grader. Simply type in your website address and this tool will tell you how to improve the SEO of your site. Mortgage Brokers and Real Estate Agents offer their clients a Mortgage Calculator that will tell them what your monthly payments will be for a home. What kind of tools could you create for your prospects that they will find useful?

5. Top 10 Lists

People love Top 10 Lists, just like this article you are reading. David Letterman made a career out of his Top 10 Lists. Build such a list for your prospects. What about The Top 10 Trends In Your Industry? Or, The Top 10 Ways to Produce _______ Result?

6. Industry Surveys and Trends

You can find thousands of different surveys online that have been conducted on nearly every imaginable topic. Do a Google search and see what comes up. You could also create your own survey by reaching out to your customer base. People love to hear what their peers think. You could ask your prospect to participate in the survey and promise to share the results after the survey is complete.

7. Recorded Webinars

Webinars are a great way to promote your services while building value for your prospects. Best of all, it's easy to record them and then archive them on your website. Provide people a link to a recorded webinar. You could also ask people to submit their name and phone number before they have access to the recording.

8. Videos

Recent Research has shown that the popularity of videos is growing and the YouTube generation responds more to a video than to an article. Do a search on YouTube and find relevant videos you could send to your prospects. Better yet, create your own video. The good news: it doesn't need to be professionally produced. Today good content is more important that good video quality.

9. Humorous, Tasteful Cartoons

Humor can still be one of the best ways to break the ice. A Dilbert cartoon or even a video clip from the TV show "The Office" can be a great way to connect with prospects. However, make sure to show the cartoon to a few people you know to get their reaction before sending it to prospects.

10. News articles

Send your prospects industry news and recent events. It shows them that you're in touch with their industry and it's relevant to their business. An article is especially useful when it's about your prospect's competitor.

After you create a series of email messages, you'll need to have a system for scheduling when articles will be sent to each prospect. You could use a spreadsheet for this or I'd also recommend using Email Marketing Software. However you decide to manage your emails, you'll generally want to send a message to your prospects every 2-4 weeks. Remember, consistency is king.

Over the past several years, email has been one of the best tools I've used for B2B Lead Generation and follow-up. However, the problem with the emails that most salespeople send is that they all tend to resemble SPAM. Do away with generic sales messages and never email a brochure or marketing piece to a cold prospect.

While there are numerous times you can use email, I've found there are 4 key points in the sales process where I use it most:

Before contacting an executive, identify 1 or 2 other key executives who would influence him/her. Then create a message that leverages these people and any high-level info you have on their initiatives. Here's an example: "Hi John, I'm preparing to make an introductory call to Eric and Sue to discuss a few potential changes to your (recruiting process; payroll process; EAP program). I'd like to ask for a few minutes to discuss this over the phone with you. What is your availability on (date and time) for a 3-5 minute call?"

2. To gain access to key people

After making multiple attempts to reach an executive, I often find that I need to "humanize" my approach with a more personalized email like this: "Hi Betty, I realize that (you're very busy; you get a lot of calls; you have an existing relationship with another company). At this point, I certainly don't expect you to make any changes. All I'm asking for is 2 minutes on the phone with you. If this sounds fair enough, please let me know the best way for us to connect. Thank you for your time."

3. When they stop responding to my follow-up calls

After I've spoken to an executive, or even had an initial meeting it's not uncommon for him to get distracted and fail to respond to my follow-up attempts. This happens to all of us, and the key is to drive the sale by leveraging other contacts (refer back to point #1). Here's a typical email I'll send: "Hi Joe, as a next step in the process, I thought I'd call Mary to brief her on our discussion and talk about some of the potential changes that would take place. However, I also want to respect your role in this initiative and invite you to call me if you think my contacting Mary would be premature. Thanks again for your time."

4. As a last attempt

Hopefully you've moved the sale along and have closed it. However, if the prospect fails to respond after several attempts, I'll send one last email such as this: "Hi Sarah, I know we haven't been able to connect, which usually means that either you're too busy for us to talk or it's not the right timing. I want to respect your time, so please let me know how you'd like me to proceed."

One last thing: For the subject line in any email, always use something that will spark their curiosity. You could use a co-worker's name, such as "planning a call to Jane Doe" or something as simple as "Quick Question."