Grow your email list by 225% with just 4 hours of work!

ariel lim consulting

Email Marketing

9 Email Marketing Tactics You Can Implement Today

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If you want to be successful with email marketing, applying any one of these tactics will get you ahead of the curve immediately.

These tactics can be applied ala carte, but they work best when combined together with a holistic strategy as the foundation.

9 Tactics You Can Do Today to Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns

1. Share Your Story

Developing relationships with your email list means one thing: thinking about what is best for them.

People don’t use products/services because they want it nor need it. They use them for the benefits. They use them because it solves a problem or a pain point.

Action point: don’t hit the send button in your next promotion disguised as a newsletter.

Share a story instead. Talk about industry trends. Share an insider opinion on a recent strategic move. Anything except mentioning your products/services.

If you used to send 1 promotional email a week, cut that down to once a month. Substitute the 3 emails with educational content.

If you want to stick with 1 promotional email a week, add in 3 to 4 more educational emails for the week.

Take note, however, that this frequency of email sends is already considered spammy behavior.

2. Apply Basic Segmentation

Segmenting your list is one of the easiest way to increase your engagement — opens and clicks.

Segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns. Click-throughs are 100.95% higher in segmented email campaigns than non-segmented campaigns.

Action point: don’t reinvent the wheel. Start with these basic segmentation.

  1. Geographic
    • Address (e.g. city, barangay)
    • Language
    • Climate
    • Area
  2. Demographics
    • Birthdays
    • Age
    • Other Dates
    • Gender
    • Education
    • Social Status (e.g. single, married)
    • Family
    • Occupation
    • Role
    • Industry
    • Income
  3. Psychographics
    • Persona
    • Lifestyle
    • Concerns
    • Personality
    • Values
    • Attitudes
  4. Behavioral
    • Products/Services Availed
    • Products/Services Interested
    • Intent
    • Buyer Stage
    • Frequency of Purchase
    • Engagement Level
    • Content Topic Interests
    • Content Format
    • Buying Behavior

This is not an exhaustive list, but merely a starting point. Depending on the nature of your organization, some will be applicable while some won’t make sense. The important takeaway is to start segmenting right now.

3. Create Educational Content for Each Segment

Educational content is a type of content that doesn’t mention any product/service or prices.

The main objective of this type of content is to either generate awareness or inform. Generating awareness means making the reader realize they have a problem, need, or want. Informing means letting the reader know about a solution or a topic.

Still struggling? Use the 5 stages of awareness to help you create your next content.

Action point: think about the problems your product/service is solving, then create content about that problem without mentioning your product/service.

For example, you’re an accountant and you prepare tax returns. Create content about the different taxes, what they mean, what forms to use, and what the due dates are.

If you’re a cafe, instead of talking about your one-of-a-kind coffee or your delectable cakes, create content about coffee — everything from planting, sourcing, coffee cherries, processing of the beans, different types of grinds, etc.

In both examples, you’re talking about your industry and what you do without talking about yourself. You’re merely sharing your expertise. You’re telling the whole world that you know what you’re talking about.

4. Send Targeted Content

Generic content is ineffective. It’s the biggest reason why, despite a lot of content are created daily, only a few of them stand out.

Once you create educational content, the next logical step is to distribute it. This can be done in two ways: organically and through paid channels.

Action point: group your educational content together to create a series called a lead nurturing campaigns

Continuing from the previous example of a cafe, you can create a series called “from bean to cup.”

In this email series, you can start with the planting season, perfect altitudes for growing coffee, etc. Then the next email can be about taking care of the coffee tree and the time it takes for it to start bearing coffee cherries (around 5 years). Your next email can be about picking the cherries, the different methods of processing, etc.

5. Send from Your Email Address

Sending from your email address says a lot about your organization — whether you’re personable or not.

The biggest benefit of using this tactic is it increases your chance of engagement with your customers. Take note, though, that the biggest downside of this tactic is you’ll start receiving a lot of email replies from them — both good and bad.

Action point: Pick one person to represent the organization. Use his/her name in the “from name” in your email marketing software.

Most organizations have a hard time choosing a person to represent them publicly. For small businesses and startups, this is usually the founder. For others, choosing one might involve a couple of discussions.

One criteria that must be considered here is the risk of turnover. Sending from a “person” allows the recipients to develop a relationship with the organization. They can put a face behind your organization. If the sender keeps on changing, this will be difficult to achieve.

Lastly, it doesn’t really matter if the email was written by the sender (i.e. founder, or someone else). What matters more is the people behind it are aligned and aiming for a common goal.

6. Use Automation to Your Advantage

Most email marketing software have automation built in it. This allows you to do more with less.

The demands for the modern marketer is increasing. You simply can’t spend all your time in the office nor take your work home every day. It’s not sustainable.

The only option is to achieve the results you need by using technology to speed things up and perform the repetitive tasks.

Action point: Determine specific trigger actions and/or behaviors that would signify the start of your email automation series.

For example, you can create an email course about the different grinds of coffee. The specific trigger, i.e. the action that would start the automation, is a signup for the email course. So, once they filled-up a specific form and/or page on your website, the automation starts. They immediately receive email #1. After a predetermined time period, for example, after 3 days, they’d receive email #2, and the next email until they reach the end.

7. Get Content Ideas from Other Departments

Successful email marketers don’t create content by themselves. In fact, it’s far easier to get content from other departments.

In most cases, marketers aren’t the only ones who interact with their customers. So, it’s only natural that you get other people’s point of view — sales, IT, operations, etc.

Action point: Ask the other departments what customers say or complain about. Or, an even better option, is to spend time shadowing what they do so you get first-hand feedback on what’s really happening.

For example, you’re Starbucks. Instead of shutting yourself inside your office, go to one (or more) of the stores. Spend time behind the counter. Ask the customers themselves.

Are people asking or ordering the daily offerings? What are their comments about it? Is it too sweet? Just right? What about the tumblers, are people looking at them but not buying? Why?

You can’t find the answers to these questions with reports alone. Nor can you get them inside the office. Go out and engage with your customers and other departments.

8. Add Variety to Your Email Sends

There are 12 different types of marketing emails you can send from. Most organizations only use one — the promotional newsletter.

If you’re one of those organizations, you’re only harnessing less than 10% of email marketing’s full potential.

Action point: Learn the different types of marketing emails and start using them. One of the most powerful one was already tackled in a separate tactic — lead nurturing.

If you’re continuously creating content and publishing them on your blog, you can compile them into a real newsletter and send that out.

9. Use Marketing Offers

Marketing offers are significant pieces of content that people are willing to gain access to in exchange for their contact information. It’s also known as lead magnets, trip wires, and content upgrades. Regardless of what term you use, the most important thing to remember is that they are used to collect information that you can use later on.

Email marketing without a way to generate new leads is doomed to fail from the start. Email lists naturally decay at 22.5% per year. Without a way to replenish your list, you won’t get any significant results from your email marketing.

Creating marketing offers is the only proven way of generating new leads in today’s world.

Action point: The most common marketing offer is a newsletter signup. However, most organizations only have that as their sole offer — their only lead generation tactic. It’s simply not effective.

Marketing offers can be webinars, PDF reports, eBooks, email courses, brochure downloads, how-to guides, etc.

Think of how you can create different marketing offers for your organization. Use that to build your email list.

Conclusion

Email marketing remains one of the most effective activities marketers can implement. It has the highest ROI across other channels. It also is the most preferred medium of business communications.

I shared 9 different tactics you can apply today to grow your email list. You can. Use them ala carte, but you’ll get better results if you combine them together.

Now, you can implement an email marketing campaigns with a solid strategic foundation that brings in results.

Did I miss any email marketing tactics? If so, just let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear what you think of them as well.

4 Reasons Why Marketers Continue Implementing Ineffective Strategies

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scrolling on laptop

Digital marketing is a relatively fast-paced industry. It’s continuously changing. Strategies and tactics that have worked 3-5 years ago will most likely not work today.

But there are ways to make sure everything you do today won’t go to waste tomorrow—focus on your customers. Unfortunately, that’s not what most marketers are doing.

They stick with their guns. They continue to use their old-school strategies and tactics that worked last decade, but the rest of the industry have moved on since.

Here are 4 primary reasons why marketers continue doing what they do despite knowing they are ineffective.

4 Reasons Marketers Continues Using Ineffective Tactics

1. Don’t Know Any Better

Digital marketing is a relatively new field. It is growing and constantly changing. Most marketers learn from schools and by observing other organizations.

However, the people teaching marketing in schools are used to the traditional ways of marketing. These are successful marketers in their time.

But the internet has changed the way people buy. The traditional way of marketing, which is to interrupt people, no longer works.

Yes, there is a movement for being “creative” and applying “experiential marketing,” but these are still a form of interruption. They catch people’s attention and that’s it. It’s also not sustainable.

Organizations no longer control the buying process. By the time people talk to your organization, they are already 70% done with the buying process.

The best way to approach modern marketing is to be part of that buying process organically. How?

Create content and address the different stages of the experience cycle. Use the 5 stages of awareness to come up with different content so you can target a bigger audience that those who are already familiar with you.

2. Use the Wrong Examples

One of the best attribute humans have is their ability to learn from others without experiencing/doing that same thing.

In digital marketing, this involves learning from other organizations. But, what they do does not necessarily mean it will be successful for you. Why?

Because of two primary reasons: first, that organization you’re looking up to probably also doesn’t know any better.

The other reason, and why they seem successful to you, is most of the time they are a known, bigger brand than you. That means they have immediate brand recognition and bigger budgets to execute these kinds of things.

You don’t have access to their internal data. So, you think that what they are doing is bringing in great results for them, but in reality, they are in the same boat as you — groping in the dark.

It just seems successful from your perspective because a big brand is doing it.

If you’re a small business or have limited budgets and you start thinking of doing all these grandiose things, you’ll just end up in frustration.

If you want to learn from other organizations, look at those in a similar industry and size and offering as you are. Don’t simply copy what big brands do.

3. Need to Increase Sales

Organizations that use email marketing are mostly B2C organizations. In recent years, they become mostly the eCommerce ones.

eCommerce organizations don’t have traditional sales teams. That business function is assumed by the marketing team.

So, on top of their regular “marketing” activities, they now need to meet sales quotas.

The added sales responsibilities is one of the biggest reasons why marketers only send out promotional emails disguised as newsletters in order to achieve their results.

In addition, managers in eCommerce roles do not spend time on the ground. They only want to increase revenues and don’t look at developing relationships as a viable strategy.

Developing relationships with customers is deemed as a long-term strategy only suitable for big brands with big budgets.

However, study after study have shown that taking care of your customers and nurturing a great relationship with them have great benefits — both short- and long-term.

It’s a known fact that it’s easier to get additional revenues from existing customers than from a new one. But a lot of organizations don’t spend time developing relationships with their existing customers.

Instead, they spend an enormous amount of time and money acquiring new customers yet they spend almost zero time with their existing ones. These new customers eventually leave the organization — resulting to a high customer churn rate — because they are taken for granted. According to a Bain and Company study, 60-80% of customers who describe themselves as satisfied do not go back to do more business with the company that initially satisfied them.

If you don’t spend time developing relationships with your customers, and continue sending promotional items, you’re only sending a signal that you don’t care about them. They’ll soon realize that all you care about is their money.

4. Don’t Know What Tools to Use

Most marketers enter their organizations and get handed down a set of usernames and passwords.

They don’t get the luxury to go-through the selection and buying process. For bigger organizations, IT (wrongly) does this for them.

This results to a lot of marketers not knowing what tools are available in the market.

If they do know, they are only familiar with the known-brands which cost an arm and a leg. They, then, remove it from their list since it is out of their budget.

But apart from the availability of tools, a bigger problem marketers face is they are not familiar with what to look for.

These features are very important to know since not all email marketing software are the same. Some offer automation while some don’t. Some have the ability to edit the code manually, while some don’t.

The only way to get through this hurdle is to stay updated with what is happening in the industry.

Over to You

Digital marketing is a fast-paced industry. The only way you can keep producing results is to always read up on what’s happening and the developments in the industry.

Also, make sure that you actually practice and test these strategies/tactics.

If you blindly implement them, you could end up wasting a lot of resources for your business or clients. Then again, as long as these are directed and focused towards end-users and customers, these strategies would most likely give you great results in the long-run.

So again, focus on your customers. Make sure you are adding value to their lives. That will ensure that whatever investments you make today will still matter tomorrow.

What strategies and tactics to you think will still work this decade? Which ones won’t? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

5 Strategies to Grow Your Email List

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woman using phone

Email is the most effective marketing channel and most preferred medium of business communication. This is why it’s imperative that your organization is collecting email addresses if you want to grow and succeed.

Let’s face it—compared to social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, email seems old, antiquated, and irrelevant.

But, when you step back from the glitter of social media and focus on what’s best for your organization in the long-run, you’d realize that email is better. Why?

Because email marketing has higher ROI, more people are using it, and even expected when dealing with businesses. Take a look at these statistics on email marketing to find out why it’s still better than social media.

But that’s if you’re talking about a zero-sum game. Honestly, if you’re looking at growing your business, you have to use them together to get better results. Here are five strategies for how you can grow your email list.

Top 5 Strategies to Grow Your Email List

1. Actively Build Your List

Email marketing databases naturally degrade by about 22.5% every year. This means that about every 4 years, your current email list will have become useless.

If you don’t have a strategy to make up for these lost contacts, the performance of your email marketing campaigns will naturally decline.

Some marketers compensate for this natural decay by buying lists (or similar activities like getting the list from a colleague, or a sister company, etc).

This is one of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever do as a marketer. Not only will this hurt your analytics, it will eventually create animosity for your brand.

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect last May 2018, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica controversy, and many more — acquiring data from 3rd parties are quickly becoming less viable options.

2. Categorize Your Email

56% of email users unsubscribe from a business or nonprofit email subscription because the content is no longer relevant to them.

These people joined your list willingly at some point because they found value in the emails they receive. But because you keep sending irrelevant messages, they unsubscribe.

This happens when there is a mismatch of expectations.

A person who subscribed to your blog is expecting emails about content from your blog, but is not expecting emails about your upcoming promos.

Someone who recently bought an item from your eCommerce store may expect some emails about warranties, product-related content (like tutorials, how-to’s, FAQs), or even some feedback survey.

But surely, they won’t appreciate receiving more promotional offers, or worse, getting a discount offer for the same product they just purchased at a full price.

3. Segment Your List

Think of your email list as a big database. Not everyone got in it for the same reasons, nor do they have the same problems. Some are leads while some are customers. There are some who will never buy from you.

All these are examples of segments within your email list. It’s a way of grouping people together based on similarities and/or differences.

If you’re like most organizations, your email marketing activities only revolve around sending a newsletter to everyone in your list.

And if you’re sending that email to everyone in your list, you might as well call what you’re doing spamming.

As an added note, the GDPR clearly forbids this type of behavior. If they signed up for product updates, then you send them a promotional sale, that already violates the use of their data.

4. Use a Real Person When Sending an Email

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

All these examples are email addresses marketers typically use when sending newsletters. However, studies show that adding a face behind your organization can improve open and click-through rates.

When you receive an email from a person, you’re more inclined to open it, read it, and take action.

Compare that when receiving an email from an organization— an entity you know nothing about; where you haven’t built any relationships.

There are pros and cons to this approach. But the benefits outweigh the costs every single time.

5. Work with Other Departments

Email marketing works best when all departments that “talk” to prospects and customers are involved.

Prospects and customers only see one entity — your organization. They don’t see separate departments such as marketing, sales, customer service, and IT.

But, most of the time, email marketing is solely handled by the marketing department.

Instead of getting the information your customers need at the right time, they have to actively look for it — which means more work for them.

This results to poor customer experience.

And when they contact your organization, they get passed around from one person to another.

This is something that you’re familiar with and probably experienced yourself. Now that you’re in the position to effect change, why not change it?

So, What Are You Going to Do Next?

Email marketing remains one of the most effective activities marketers can implement. It has the highest ROI across other channels. It also is the most preferred medium of business communications.

If you aren’t taking advantage of email, you are missing out a lot of potential growth in your business. Learn how you can increase your email traffic by creating marketing offers and sending different types of email.

If you need help with your email marketing, or have questions about how you can implement these strategies, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment below.

Email Traffic: Why It’s Important (+9 Tips)

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what is email traffic and how to increase email traffic

Email traffic in digital marketing is the kind of traffic that comes from your email marketing campaigns. It’s one of the most valuable sources of traffic to your website because it comes from existing leads and customers.

Take note that not all links in your emails go to this traffic. To make sure it appears properly under this channel grouping, you have to integrate your email marketing software with Google Analytics or manually tag your links with UTM parameters — and make sure the medium parameter is exactly “email.”

If neither one of those two options is met, the link will be tagged under direct traffic. Also, UTM tags are case-sensitive. So use “email” without the quotes as small case.

Importance of Email Traffic

Traffic coming from your email campaigns is one of the most valuable traffic you can get.

Why?

Because this traffic comes from your existing leads and/or customers. After all, they would’t receive any emails from you if they didn’t opt in your email list, right?

These people behave differently than cold traffic primarily because they are further along the buyer’s journey.

They are more invested in you and your company. They know you more than people who are hearing from you for the first time.

This is the main reason why email marketing remains the favorite channel among marketers — it brings the highest ROI across different channels.

Uses of Email Traffic

Email traffic tells you how engaged your current leads and customers are.

It’s a great indication of which messaging is working in your email marketing.

If you are using different marketing emails and tracking them properly, you can see the performance of them in your Google Analytics account.

As you already know, there are two primary metrics to look at when it comes to email marketing: open rate and click-through rate (CTR).

Open rate indicates your subject line convinced your reader to open it; while CTR tells whether your copy/messaging itself is relevant and compelling for the reader to take action — click the link and do whatever you want them to do.

How to Increase Email Traffic

Below are some tips to increase your email traffic. While this list is not exhaustive, these should be enough to get you started.

1. Continuously build your email list

Email lists naturally decay at ~22.5% per year. What that means is a contact in your email list will be practically useless in 4 years.

This could be for a number of reasons. People change jobs and with that change, their email addresses. Your content might become irrelevant to them for no fault of your own. And many more.

Make sure that you continuously generate new leads so you replenish your email list. Here’s a simple 7-step process to generate leads online.

2. Don’t rely on newsletter signups as your lead generation

First, email marketing is not limited to newsletters.

Newsletters are the worst kind of lead generation tactic you can use on your website.

Why?

Because it doesn’t add any value to your readers. They don’t benefit from it. Most businesses only use this to continuously send discounts and promos.

Sample marketing offer to increase email traffic

Instead, create marketing offers. Distribute them on social media and use them in ads to reach a wider audience (like the image above).

3. Use a lead management strategy

As part of the 3 pillars of email marketing, a lead management strategy allows you to segment your email list allowing you to personalize your messaging later on.

Segmentation is what separates successful marketers from the annoying ones.

4. Send relevant email

This builds on the lead management strategy above. What this means is once you are able to segment people coming in your list, send only relevant email to those people.

For example, in my own lead management strategy, I determine if the person coming in my email list is a business owner, a marketer, or others.

Sample email for persona segmentation

Once I know who they are, they follow the next tip…

5. Create lead nurturing campaigns per segment

I create lead nurturing campaigns per segment. This way, I only send them relevant emails.

Let’s go back to my example in the previous point.

When people tell me they are a business owner, they are enrolled in a ‘business owner nurturing campaign’ and if they tell me they are a marketer, they enter a ‘marketer nurturing campaign.’

This can be as simple or as complicated you like. You can start with only one lead nurturing campaign. Then, once you build that out, create another one. This way, future leads will then enter nurturing campaign A and some will enter nurturing campaign B.

lead management and segmentation

I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to create your own lead nurturing campaign here.

Feel free to bookmark that page as I’m sure you’re going to go back to it a couple of times.

6. Don’t forget to add UTM tags

As I mentioned above, don’t forget to add the proper UTM tags in the links in your email. Otherwise, when people click on links to it, they will not be tracked under email traffic.

If your email marketing software has an integration with Google Analytics, use that. This ensures all links you are using are tagged automatically.

But if not, you can use the URL Campaign Builder by Google. You fill out the fields then copy the link it provides.

Google's Campaign URL Builder

7. Add links to your email

While this may seem natural, there are some people I’ve spoken with who don’t include links in their email.

And make sure they are working, too!

If you’re sending a simple blog article summary/roundup, that email usually has two things: copy and an image.

For example, here’s Pocket’s daily digest email…

Pocket Email with Links

For each blog article, there are 3 links to it: the image, the title, and the save to pocket.

Bottomline: Add links wherever you can.

8. Include links to your articles in your email signature

One other tactic you can use is to add the links to your website in the email signature.

If your marketing and sales teams are aligned, this can be the campaign priority for the quarter. Or maybe a big event coming up soon.

What will happen is all your marketing and sales team’s email signature use the same copy and link to the registration page.

Just make sure you add the proper UTM tags so they get tagged under Email Traffic in Google Analytics. Of course, this can be easily done through an email signature manager, but if you don’t have one, it’s best to create a template then send it out to the rest of the team. That way, they just copy and paste it instead of re-creating it themselves.

9. Link to your articles in 1:1 email conversations

You use email every day to communicate with your customers, vendors and suppliers, contractors, and many more.

If your company is truly creating helpful content, you shouldn’t hesitate to link to them and include them in your email communications.

It’s as simple as, “hey, we recently published a an article on lead nurturing. I remember that you mentioned you were having trouble creating a lead nurturing campaign a few weeks ago. Hope this helps. (Insert link here)”

So, What Are You Going to Do Next

Your email list is one of your most valuable assets. It’s the only one you actually own (vs Facebook or any other social media).

Increasing your email traffic gives you a high chance of succeeding because it’s an indication of a highly engaged audience.

A highly engaged audience is more likely to buy from you. And that means sales for you so you can grow, expand, and deliver more value for them.

Are you using any of these tips? Let me know in the comments below.

What Is Lead Nurturing: How to Stop Selling Yet Get Amazing Results

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What is Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of sending automated emails to people in your email list that meets certain conditions with the main goal of making them take action.

Lead nurturing comes after lead generation. It’s part of the second pillar of effective email marketing, which is lead management.

What is Lead Nurturing? 

Lead nurturing in digital marketing is a tactic where you send automated, but highly-relevant, emails (or other forms of communication) with the end goal of making influencing them to take an action. 

With modern technology, this is actually not limited to emails anymore. Some organizations use chatbots, SMS, and other messaging tools to nurture their leads. For the purpose of this article, I’ll just use email; but whatever you can do with email, you can do with other types of communication channel.

If you ever bought something online, or subscribed to a newsletter, or signed up for a course or content download, you have probably experienced lead nurturing yourself — whether or not it was effective, that’s another topic.

The Current State of Lead Nurturing and It Needs to Change

When you gave your email address (along with other information) to these companies, what was the first email you receive? Most probably, it’s some sort of a thank you email.

But then, the next email you receive is all about them — about how great they are and how they start selling you things right away.

This is the biggest reason why a lot of marketers fail at email marketing. They don’t know how to nurture the leads properly. Sure, some people will buy right now. But most won’t.

Related: Biggest Reason Digital Marketing Campaigns Fail

If your organization is doing this exact same thing, don’t worry. You’re normal. Because 99% of organizations are like this, it’s so easy to stand out.

Just stop selling.

That’s right. Do not sell.

I went through this issue in detail when I discussed the buyer’s journey. If you’re not familiar with the topic, read it until you understand it. Mastering the buyer’s journey is probably one of the things that separate mediocre marketers from the great ones. Another great resource is the different stages of awareness to understand why you should not sell to people right away.

What People Are Actually Looking For

Your customers are looking for something to solve a problem/need/want. While you may think your products/services are the greatest and can actually help them, your customers don’t think of you that way.

From their perspective, if you don’t add value and just ask for their money, that’s what they’re going to think of you — that you only care about their money.

Not them. Just their money.

It’s worth reading that paragraph again.

Ask yourself this question: “Would you want to do business with someone who only wants your money?”

And if you think that you’re the only choice out there, just remember that no industry is safe from competition. While your customers “might not” have any choice now, the moment a new competitor offers a similar product, they’ll just switch over in the blink of an eye.

So, What Are You Going to Do Next?

Implement a lead nurturing sequence that is educational in nature. Stop selling. Add value. After you do that, then and only then will you have the right to sell to them.

And if your prospects and leads don’t buy now, you don’t stop with the lead nurturing emails. Continue adding value to their lives. This is the basics of the online conversion path.

Here are 3 lead nurturing examples from companies you can copy. I broke down that they did great and what they can further improve on.

In addition, you might want to review your arsenal as a digital marketer. Did you know that there are 12 different types of marketing email you can send?

Since majority of companies start selling right away, it’s so easy to stand out.

Do you need help with creating lead nurturing campaigns for your company? Let me know in the comments below.

What Is Lead Generation

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What is lead nurturing

Lead generation is the process of gathering contact information of potential customers. In digital marketing, this is usually done through form submissions.

It is the first pillar of email marketing. Meaning, without an effective lead generation strategy, your email marketing will not succeed.

Lead generation is also one of the most overlooked strategy in digital marketing. Most organizations have poor lead generation execution.

This is especially true for most ecommerce sites. They don’t think it’s important. That’s why the only way for them to generate leads on their website is a newsletter subscription.

And we all know where that leads to right? Spammy and unsolicited messages. So why continue using it?

Other marketers also refer to lead generation as list building because most of the time, an email address is collected. This is called an email list and is the primary data inside your email marketing software.

Want to grow your email list by 225% with just 4 hours of work? Get your copy of my proven 5-step process here.

Lead Generation Analogy

You can think of lead generation as buying anything — food, water, a new iPhone or gadget.

You won’t hand over your money for something so overpriced. You will, however, do it if you feel that there is an equivalent exchange in value — whether real or perceived.

Imagine buying a Mocha Frappucino at Starbucks. If it’s priced at 550 per cup, will you buy one?

Most probably not.

You’d think that the value of a single cup of coffee mixed in with chocolate, syrup and cream doesn’t cost that much.

It’s the same for lead generation.

When you ask for contact information (like email, address, phone number) from your prospects, they will associate that personal information with some value.

If what they are getting is not equal or better than what you are asking for, they will not hand it over.

Using the same Starbucks analogy, they won’t pay for your overpriced Frappe.

Why Your Website Doesn’t Give You Leads

This brings us to the biggest problem most websites have — one newsletter signup form asking for a person’s email address.

For most organizations, this is the single, biggest lead generation form they have on the website.

The form asks for an email address in exchange for promo updates.

Is that an equivalent exchange?

Will you willingly give up your private information to someone who will just send you emails you will not even read?

And i’m not even mentioning that promos and discounts aren’t newsletters.

If you want to generate more leads, stop doing what everyone is doing. Don’t ask for email subscriptions to newsletters that contain promos and discounts.

Newsletter subscriptions are for blog updates. Content. Articles. Nothing else.

Here’s How You Generate Leads

If you want to generate more leads, offer something of value to your prospects and customers.

  1. Create an eBook that solves for their problem.
  2. Design a simple checklist about a process they encounter daily.
  3. Publish an email or video series exclusively for people who opted in.
  4. Give them special behind-the-scenes access to your latest project.

These are just samples of what you can do to generate more leads.

All these take effort and time.

But if you’re willing to do the hard work, you’ll definitely see the payoff in your efforts.

You can read more about how to generate more leads in 7 easy steps!

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