Email marketing is the most effective marketing strategy, despite the presence of several other options. On average, it generates an ROI of 4400%, meaning that you get S$44 for every S$1 you invest.
Most consumers are comfortable and familiar with promotional email messages. However, this does not mean that you should send such messages to random addresses. If you follow that approach, you risk having your ISP blocked and being barred from sending emails.
The best approach is gradually building opt-in lists of prospects and leads who are interested in your brand and products. After getting these emails, all you need is to send valuable content regularly.
This article describes how you should run an email marketing campaign in Singapore. It also shows how to use the strategy to generate and nurture new leads.
How to Generate More Leads using Email Marketing
Before you use email marketing for lead generation, you need to understand what a lead is. Many marketers in Singapore define a lead as someone who fills forms on their websites, downloads their e-books or attends their webinars. This is wrong.
The reality is that a visitor might download your resource because they are solely interested in its contents. It is difficult to tell if such a person has an interest in your business and your products.
As a marketer, you should look to capitalise on such opportunities and nurture your web traffic over time until they become interested in what you offer. This is called lead generation, and email marketing is a proven method of achieving it.
The biggest problem of b2b lead generation using emails is how to engage with many people who are at different phases of the buying cycle. You also have to make sure that the messages are relevant, timely, and consistent, without appearing intrusive to the recipient.
If you want to run a lead generation campaign without such challenges, it is advisable to use marketing automation tools.
How to Generate More Leads with Marketing Automation Tools
Marketing automation tools are useful for creating effective email marketing campaigns. They achieve this by building marketing tracks, which are collections of emails sent over time to a specific target audience. The audiences are segmented according to interest, location, gender, and so forth.
For instance, if you are a marketer working for a software development company, you can create marketing tracks for the end-user, the financial buyer and the technical buyer. You can also build tracks for topics relevant to your business, such as data security, cloud computing, systems backups, and scalable infrastructure, and so on.
Once you have the marketing tracks, the next step involves adding people either manually or relying on their behavioural data. The latter approach is more effective because it is data-driven.
When you send valuable messages consistently, you build trust and credibility between your company and its leads. As a result, your brand becomes the first resort when such individuals are ready to make a purchase.
How to Design Emails for Lead Generation
You should consider a few design elements when creating messages to send through your email marketing tracks. These include;
- Subject line
- Brevity
- Imagery
- Social integration
- Call-to-action
Best Strategies for B2B Lead Generation
The following are the tactics you should implement if you want to get leads using your email marketing campaign.
Subject Line
The first thing a recipient sees in their email inbox is the subject line. It plays a significant role in deciding whether they will open the email or not. For this reason, you should take time to craft a subject line that is likely to appeal to the reader.
For example, you could create a subject line that addresses the challenges faced by your audience. You could also make it personal or use an actionable statement such as ‘attend our upcoming live event.’
Brevity
When sending emails, keep in mind that your prospects and leads have engagements elsewhere. They probably receive hundreds of emails every day, all of which they must read. Keep your message concise and relevant.
Also, long messages are annoying to read. On the other hand, brief messages are engaging.
Imagery
The human brain has a higher perception of visual content than written text. According to studies, the brain can understand images up to 60,000 times faster than plain text.
By using images in your marketing emails, you boost the effectiveness of your campaign. Your audience will understand the message faster and are more likely to complete the desired action.
Additionally, images make it easier to present complex data, especially when you use infographics. Your audience will find it easier to digest statistical information if you include infographics in your message. On the contrary, if you present it in text format, it is hard to comprehend, which lowers the engagement rates.
Social Integration
Almost everybody who uses the internet regularly has a social media account. If your promotional messages can reach any of the leading social networks, you will benefit with more brand awareness and potentially more leads.
The best way of ensuring that your leads share your content to social media is by integrating sharing links or buttons in your emails. Since every recipient has their own favourite social media platform, you should include links to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. You should also include an option to share to WhatsApp.
Call-to-action
The ultimate objective of any email marketing campaign is to drive leads into your sales funnel. The best way of doing this is by educating them about your products and services.
If you want your audience to know about your business, ensure that they consume your content. Your emails should feature eBooks, slideshows, case studies, and videos. Also, you should hold occasional webinars so that you engage directly with your leads.
However, learning about your content is only the first step to conversion. Your emails should plainly state what you want the reader to do. Your emails should have a clear and compelling call-to-action statement.
A proper CTA uses actionable words such as attend, download, sign up, try now, and subscribe, and so on. It should state the desired action, such as registering for an upcoming live event or subscribing to a particular service.
Conclusion
Email marketing is not as intricate as other marketing strategies, but it is the most effective. If done correctly, it can get you leads and drive them into your sales funnel.
If you have many leads, you can manage them effectively using a marketing automation tool. The automation tools will assist you in creating marketing tracks. These tracks are useful for engaging in conversations with your leads.
Lastly, you should observe the following best practices when creating email messages for marketing purposes.
- Create an engaging subject line that will encourage the reader to open the email.
- The message should be short and straightforward. Nobody has the time to read lengthy blocks of text.
- Use relevant images to increase engagement and makes complex data easier to understand.
- Integrate social links to make it easy to share the message to social platforms. Ensure that there is a button for each of the major social networks.
- Include a compelling call-to-action. It should be short and clearly state what you want the reader to do.
If you implement these strategies in your email marketing campaign, you will get more leads and significantly improve your sales.
Get in touch with us for more tips on how to do email marketing in Singapore. Our team will help you set up everything from ideal email copies to templates and distribution to the target audience.
