Lead Generation Top Tips: 12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

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Tips Sheet

Lead Generation Tips:

12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

Introduction: We’ve heard it happen so many times. A company wants to get in on the highly effective email marketing trend. They either invested in a high-end email marketing application that costs thousands per month or they outsourced to an agency that charges thousands per campaign. The company then tries to rapidly build their opt-in list with campaigns to rented email lists. Once the opt-in base begins to build they realize that only a very small segment of optins are viable prospects. Email marketing campaigns get limited to impersonal newsletters and announcements and the company soon realizes the ROI of email marketing is just not panning out. There is a better way to cultivate leads with email. After well over 5 years of launching email marketing campaigns for B2B companies we’d like to share some of our findings.

1. Tie Email into an Integrated Campaign Effort Getting through to high-level decision makers can be challenging. Getting a response from them is even more challenging. Carefully timed multi-touch campaigns are much more effective at generating B2B responses than isolated campaigns with just one or two marketing mediums. Some elusive prospects simply will not respond to direct mail or phone calls so it makes sense to try and reach them via email. When done correctly, a mass email campaign is an efficient way to prospect. Email can serve as a heads-up to future efforts and can quickly harvest the low hanging fruit in your prospecting base. However, too many B2B companies limit email marketing to mass email campaigns and forget to track individual email cultivation efforts. Prospects for high-end B2B products and services often receive over 20 emails before a sale is actually made -- and the majority of those emails come from the sales team instead of the marketing team. To improve integrated campaign efforts, this email activity should have some marketing input, be streamlined and closely tracked.

2. Save Time and Money Leave the Mass Email Campaigns to the Pros When you use email as a cultivation tool rather than a tool for massive information dissemination, it makes little sense to invest in a high-end email marketing application that cost thousands per month and drains internal resources. © 2003 LeadGenesys Inc. All rights reserved. 2

Lead Generation Tips:

12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

A single mistake in your email campaign can tarnish your image. There are too many pitfalls to avoid and best practices to keep up with. And unless you are constantly sending out mass email campaigns (at the risk of annoying your opt-in base) your expensive investment is essentially sitting idle. It’s far more cost effective to design templates and content that your relationship builders can use and just have the pros manage your occasional mass email campaigns. If they are advanced direct marketers they will help you leverage your profile data to optimize relevancy, personalization, timing and testing. They should have a comprehensive quality assurance checklist applied to each campaign before it gets launched. Your outsourced solution should give you access to real-time reporting and ideally enable the responses to be immediately cultivated by your sales team.

3. Get Tactical -- Empower Your Relationship Builders We at LeadGenesys suggest you supplement traditional efforts with more tactical ones. Keep sending out mass email campaigns, but make them much more personal. Invest in building profiles and getting to know your prospects – cost efficiently. Supplement those mass email campaigns with very relevant and timely messages directly from your sales and account management staff. Significant time savings and tracking occurs when sales teams use an email-based prospecting tool to combine their free-form messages with templated content. The marketers can rest assured that professional looking messages are being delivered. Sales reps will see what content generating the best results. And the senior sales and marketing staff can monitor the productivity of early stage lead cultivation.

4. Send Event-driven Emails Newsletters are a nice way to keep in touch with prospects and customers that are not that important to you. B2B companies with very valuable customers and prospects can’t afford to limit their email marketing to just newsletters and other periodic announcements. Relationship building requires a more personal and event-driven approach.

© 2003 LeadGenesys Inc. All rights reserved. 3

Lead Generation Tips:

12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

The marketing department is not the only department aware of key events that should be acknowledged and does not have the bandwidth and same incentive to send out “one-off” relationship-building emails. These emails can be sent in response to: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

An initial opt-in or phone call Inquiries to customer service or support Subscription or license renewals Upgrades or cross sells Anniversary dates Key customer dates Upcoming seasonal or other promotional efforts A sudden increase or decrease in contact history Drop offs or bursts of activities like product usage Seminar or webinar enrollments Attendance at key functions Customer attrition Invoicing events Survey completions

The list is only limited by your creativity. With custom designed content for these scenarios, relationship builders can send emails with very little effort. Tracking content templates helps you and your sales teams quickly build contact history profiles to foster even more intuitive communications.

5. Deliver Relevant, Personalized Content Response rates on mass email campaigns are dwindling due to a number of reasons – decreased relevancy being the most significant one. The best cultivation emails have a high degree of personalization and relevancy. As your profiles become more and more robust, make sure your email communication uses those profiles to deliver more intuitive messages. Relevancy should be conveyed immediately in the subject line and reinforced in the opening sentence. Personalize your email with information you’ve previously collected.

6. Focus on the Click-through Most high-end B2B sales take time and plenty of investigation on the part of the buyer. The consultative sale will not be made in an email so remember to focus more on the click-through than on the details of your product or service. Be brief and make the callto-action obvious. When lead cultivating with email you are creating interest -- not educating.

© 2003 LeadGenesys Inc. All rights reserved. 4

Lead Generation Tips:

12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

7. Optimize Your Landing Page A perfectly executed prospecting email program is only as good as the landing pages it drives traffic to. It’s important to know what your drop-off rate is from the landing page to the form page. And from the form page to acknowledgement page. Each time your visitor has to click onto another page, expect a significant drop-off rate. Incorporate branding and graphic elements that tie the landing page to the marketing source. Personalize the landing page for each visitor. This can be done with a unique URL. Response and lead capture rates often double when personalization is optimized. In instances where not much explanation is needed, try to get the introductory copy on the form page. Remember -- getting the profile is more important than having prospects read through a long explanation of why they should fill out the form. Make sure you always deliver on the offer that was promised. Falling short here will compromise future cultivation efforts. To mitigate drop-off rates, offer an added incentive to fill out the form. This can simply be more relevant information or a sweepstakes offer. Keep in mind that with sweepstakes offers, you’ll likely end up with some prospects that are more interested in the prize than in your company. Offering additional relevant information can also enable you to further qualify your prospect and assess their interests and needs. Limit click-off links on your landing page. This can be challenging to marketers that feel compelled to explain as many features and benefits as possible. If given the opportunity, many visitors will conduct exhaustive research which can result in not filling out the form. An exception to this guideline pertains to certain financial sales and services and/or landing pages that ask for a sale rather than just a profile. A few clickoff links are fine, but don’t make them prominent.

8. Optimize Your Form Your lead capture form should also be as brief as possible. Decision makers want to get the information and get out – quickly. Only ask for the most essential qualifying attributes on your initial profile form. Future communications can drive prospects back to needs assessment and other more detailed qualifying forms later. Your sales team can also fill in more profile information during phone follow-ups. For now, just focus on getting a basic profile. Only consider collecting more than a few qualification attributes when your forms are pre-populated with prospect information. This speeds the process along and increases form submission rates.

© 2003 LeadGenesys Inc. All rights reserved. 5

Lead Generation Tips:

12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

Ask for opt-in to future communications like a newsletter. When you offer multiple items to opt-in to, spell out the frequency of those communications and ideally let the prospect control the frequency of communication. Clearly indicate what you intend to do with their profile information. Your privacy policy should be as concise as possible. Legalese will only increase the reluctance to submit a profile.

9. Optimize Your Acknowledgment Page Once the profile is submitted, thank them for it on the acknowledgement page. Clearly spell out what any follow-up actions will be so the prospect knows what to expect. For instance, if the form is a registration form for an upcoming seminar or webinar, either display the directions or log-on information on the acknowledgment page or explain that they will soon receive an email or phone call with the details. Be sure to send a personal reminder email a week before and an hour or two before the actual event. Use any relevant information captured in the form to personalize the prospect’s experience on the acknowledgement page. Offer a link or a phone number to answer any immediate questions. At this point, it is OK to have prominent links on the page that enable the prospect to check out other portions of your site.

10. Continuously Build and Score Profiles Truly effective lead cultivators are disciplined and process-oriented. The best sales team members are excellent at prioritizing follow-up efforts. To accomplish this they need to have accurate, graded customer profiles that can automatically be re-graded as new profile data is collected. A grade should be assigned immediately when the first profile data is collected and corresponding grades should determine the appropriate follow-up actions. Email that drives prospects back to landing pages that score and grade profiles increases sales efficiency and enables you to instantly measure the quality of your responders.

11. Track Everything Successfully cultivating leads with email requires tracking of what is sent, opened, and clicked on -- and whether the responder filled out a form. Make sure you can track which specific email versions and content variables are generating the best response – and the best profile form submission rates. When you add grading to this tracking you’ll be able to identify your “sweet spots” much quicker. © 2003 LeadGenesys Inc. All rights reserved. 6

Lead Generation Tips:

12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

When you empower your sales and account management teams to send out eventtriggered, relevant email you should be able to track their productivity. Measuring individual emailing productivity also adds an additional level of insight to outbound calling activity. Reporting on early stage cultivation efforts can help management better forecast sales projections and control lead flow. Plus, it further develops the complete contact history profile.

12. Constantly Test and Refine As with direct mail marketing, the best way to improve campaign results is to learn from past efforts. Take the guesswork out of future campaign creation by isolating key variables such as content templates and subject lines. Focus on the items that will have the greatest impact on future campaigns without getting caught up in the minutia. With mass email campaigns, pay close attention to list performance and ensure your sample segments contain at least 5,000 records. When your list has several demographic and prospect-supplied attributes, consider analysis that may identify a sub segment that is particularly responsive. Don’t necessarily jump to conclusions based on one campaign. Measure results over time and periodically re-test conclusions that may have become outdated. Include a control group or benchmark in your mass email campaigns and document your findings. Testing requires commitment and effort – another reason to outsource mass email campaigns to the experts. A vendor specialized in lead generation via email should be able to manage this process for you. Look for a solution with robust real-time reporting to streamline the analysis of test cells. This cuts down your analysis time and also enables you to make adjustments much quicker.

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© 2003 LeadGenesys Inc. All rights reserved. 7

Lead Generation Tips:

12 Ways to Cultivate Leads with Email

About LeadGenesys: Founded in 2002, and led by seasoned experts, LeadGenesys Inc. provides high-quality leads and opt-ins via multi-touch direct marketing services. We consistently deliver superior lead generation results through experienced direct marketing consulting, uniquely personalized direct mail, email, telemarketing and online profile-capture pages. Our web-based LeadGenesys Platform™ reports real-time on campaign effectiveness, and scores and disseminates leads according to your specifications. This unique blend of direct marketing services and comprehensive campaign reporting offers our clients a solution that is far more cost effective than outsourcing campaign management to an agency, or attempting to manage multiple disjointed vendors with internal resources.

About the Author: Jeff Kostermans is a direct marketing veteran with over 12 years of experience managing lead generation and relationship marketing programs for companies ranging from technology and service start-ups to Fortune 100 firms. Mr. Kostermans acquired his expertise in database marketing, direct mail, telemarketing, and email marketing at DM agencies and point solution vendors. Prior to founding LeadGenesys, he served as the Marketing Director for Responsys, provider of the industry’s most advanced email marketing solution, the VP of Relationship Marketing at Wells Fargo’s Business Direct Division, and the Interactive Marketing Manager at Macromedia. He is author of the Email Marketing Imperatives and has written numerous other best practices papers. A graduate from UC Berkeley, Mr. Kostermans also worked at Coopers & Lybrand, and as an Army Reserve Psychological Operations Major, consults allied governments and militaries in target audience analysis and influence methods.

Integrated Direct Marketing and Lead Generation 1065 East Hillsdale Blvd., Suite 405 Foster City, CA 94404 www.leadgenesys.com 650-212-7200 © 2003 LeadGenesys Inc. All rights reserved. 8