In today’s economy, you have probably had your budget cut. Meanwhile, you’re being asked to generate more revenue than last year. But there’s good news. A lot of your sales and lead generation efforts could be automated, saving you both time and money.
Here are some of the ways you could use email to create an automated lead generation machine for your organization:
Create A Lead Capture Form On Your Website
You probably have a “contact us” page on your website, but there are better ways to gather contact information from your web visitors. Give them the option to download a free white paper, recorded webinar or ebook in exchange for their contact info. Once they submit their info, you can use an Email Marketing System to automatically send follow-up email over the next several weeks. These follow-up messages should provide more tips and tools that they’ll find useful.
Qualify Prospects Who Attended Trade Shows or Webinars
As a follow-up to an event you hosted, pre-write a series of emails and then use a marketing automation tool to send them out over the next several weeks. You could also email the attendees a survey or poll to find out their level of interest in your services.
Create A Lead Nurturing Campaign
Identify the inactive leads that your sales force has given up on calling. Create a series of “value-added” emails you can send over the next 12-18 months. Each email should include articles, white papers, industry trends or other information that the prospects will find useful. This type of campaign is generally more conversational and less formal than a typical company newsletter. After every set of 3-4 emails, you can also include a promotional message about your services or a success story about another client.
Create a Cross-Selling Campaign
Your existing clients may be your best source of revenue right now. Create a cross selling campaign by segmenting your clients into groups based on the types of products or services they currently buy from you. Then, create a series of emails that show them how to get the most out of those services. In each message you can also mention other services they may find useful.
Develop An Online Training Program
Regardless of what you sell, you have knowledge and insights that could benefit your prospects and clients. Package that knowledge into some sort of free training program. Create a sequence of email messages that each contain a useful tip or idea. Schedule each email to go out daily. Then, offer this free course on your website and allow people to sign up by submitting their contact information. Your email marketing system will automatically send them each email course over the next several days. At the end of the course, the last email could ask them if they would like to schedule a call with a Sales Rep.