How to Create an Engaging Email Campaign for New Leads

Email marketing has stood the test of time as a potent marketing tool, so much so that it is now one of the best ways to engage an audience. According to recent statistics, 74% of customers like to receive marketing messages via email.

Moreover, emails are also capable of generating an ROI of a staggering 4,300%. This makes it a leading contender in marketing tactics for nurturing the very fragile new leads that companies spend mounds to acquire. So, how can you use email marketing to engage your business’ leads? Here are a few tips to help you get started:

Use segmentation to design pertinent emails

Emails give you access to your customers’ inbox; a space moulded in its entirety to fit their tastes and preferences. This access into your customer’s private lives presents marketers with an unmatched opportunity as well as a challenge.

While, on one hand, customers may gladly open and focus their attention on emails that they find engaging; on the other hand, they can easily forever sentence unappealing emails to their junk or spam folders.

So, if you wish to use email marketing to your advantage, it is imperative that you ensure that your email fits in well with the personality and preferences of your customers.

To do this, you need to segment your customers into actionable and definable groups based on their demographics, buying patterns and browsing history, among other things. This practice of segmentation is supposedly the most lucrative tactic deployed for email marketing.

According to Marketo’s Engagement Score, segmentation can be used to explain 23% of an email’s engagement quotient.

In addition to this, short and deeply segmented emails are reportedly the most effective in nurturing leads. Via segmentation, you can also track the activities of your newly acquired leads and then use this information to place them into various customer personas.

Furthermore, you can capitalize on your customers’ location and time information to push out your emails at the best possible time. For instance, you may choose any time between 9 and 10 am as this time slot is identified as the ideal time for sharing marketing emails.

Or, you can track your customers’ email opening patterns to identify time slots when they are the most active. All these measures will help you nurture your leads and will bring you one step closer to improving your conversion rate.

Tailor-fit your content

We are past the age of generalized adverts that catered to all customer segments simultaneously. Nowadays, it’s all about providing your customers with exactly what they want. So, how can you tailor-fit your content according to the needs and preferences of your customers?

The answer is simple, you request the customers to guide you about their preferences much like a retail sales agent who is looking to close a sale. Then, you can use this collected information to craft pertinent emails that will encourage your customers to visit landing pages that you have designed specifically for that segment of customers.

A crucial thing to remember here is that your emails and landing pages should all have similar content, aesthetics and CTAs so that your customers know that they are receiving a personalized and integrated email experience.

Outsource your work to technology

Lead nurturing is a demanding endeavour that requires constant attention, effort, monitoring and modification. This, however, can get cumbersome when you also need to undertake all other marketing functions as well.

It is, therefore, imperative that you capitalize on marketing automation to take over many of your tasks so that you can focus your efforts on areas where the use and intelligence of the human mind are mandatory.

In addition to relieving your workload, marketing automation tools like sales pipeline templates, and cloud-based CRM software also work to boost your personalization efforts. You can use email lists to swiftly send out welcome messages, cross-selling or up-selling pitches as well as updates about your latest offerings.

The key lies in perfection

In addition to personalization, you also need to abide by the best practices of email writing so that you are able to effectively and tactfully nurture and convert your leads.

Here are some crucial considerations to bear in mind while designing lead nurturing emails:

Well-thought-out subject lines are the cornerstones of effective emails as they are what lure your customers to open them. To do this in the best way possible, you can use the Four U’s of subject lines which hold that all subject lines need the following aspects in order to be effective:

Useful – the message conveyed should add value to the user’s life
Ultra-specific – the reader should know exactly what’s being promised
Unique – the message should be remarkable and captivating
Urgent – the reader should feel to the urge of opening the email immediately

The content within the email should be carefully placed so that it gives the reader that final nudge to undertake a Call To Action. Experts believe that emails should be concise, intriguing, actionable and should be consumed within 30 seconds.

Here are a few more pointers that will help you develop winning emails:

Make sure that your email body is up to 600px at the most
Bear in mind that rich media content such as JavaScript and Flash won’t function in an HTML email
Place your focus on the content that will appear above the fold in the recipient’s screen
You can use bulletproof buttons that resemble images but are CAST and HTML code. The reason for this is that one should download images before they become visible. Therefore, if a recipient does not download them; all that they will see will be ‘before images’ which will ultimately disrupt the overall email experience. Marketo has found that the use of bulletproof points leads to a 20% increase in click-to-open rates.

Email marketing campaigns provide ample space for marketers to engage their leads in an effective manner; all that is required is creativity and a keen insight into what your customers truly want.