How To Easily Generate Warm Leads For Email Marketing Through Lead Generation: A Step-By-Step Guide

Email marketing is highly effective: 68% of millennials say promotional emails have influenced their purchase decisions, and the return on investment for email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent.

Many businesses struggle to get this part of their marketing strategy right, so let’s look at a few email marketing ideas to generate fresh email leads for your next marketing campaign.

What Are Email Leads?

An email lead is a prospective customer who has given you their email address in exchange for valuable content (a “lead magnet”).

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Successful email marketing requires a steady pipeline of leads. Email leads have typically given you explicit consent to contact them about your products and services. This relationship should be nurtured over time to build loyalty and drive sales.

Each lead typically includes the following information:

1. Full name
2. Phone number
3. Email address (ideally a business email address)

Depending on your business, you might need extra information such as:

1. Postal address
2. Physical address (plus zip code)

Having this information allows you to segment your lists and send relevant content to each group of prospects.

5 Types of Email Leads

Below are 5 types of email leads available to marketers:

1. Subscribers: They’ve signed up for your email list, podcast, webinar, or e-book.
2. Hot/warm leads: They’ve shown an active interest in learning more about your offering, perhaps by reaching out via email or telephone.
3. Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): They’ve come through search or content marketing (inbound) and have yet to interact with the sales team.
4. Sales qualified leads (SQLs): They’ve been screened by the sales team for budget, capacity, interest, and authority to buy.
5. (Previous) Customers: They’ve bought from you and can be gently retargeted for future advertising.

Knowing what type of lead you’re dealing with helps you craft your lead magnets accordingly. Let’s explore different ways you can generate fresh leads.

Best Types of Lead Magnets: How to Generate Email Leads the Right Way

You can generate fresh leads by doing the following:

• Answering a question: Stoke curiosity through surveys and quizzes and deliver results via email.
• Giving something away: Contests or giveaways attract interested prospects who then hand over their contact info to stand a chance to win.
• Providing walkthroughs: An e-book with step by step instructions on a certain topic makes for a great lead magnet.
• Summarizing information: Condense your latest report into a short e-book delivered via email.
• Offering a free trial or demo: Your customer gets a taste of your product and you get their information for future marketing.
• Showing and telling, or teaching: A webinar or online course provides more intimate engagement with your prospects. Signing up for one keeps them updated on the event or course and provides you with their contact details.

DOs and DON’Ts of email lead generation

There are certain things you should and shouldn’t do when it comes to generating email leads. Below is a handy list of the dos and don’ts of email lead generation.

DON’Ts

1. Don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach: what works on social media may not work on your blog. Approach each channel with a distinct strategy for generating leads.
2. Don’t lump them all into one group: those at the top of your funnel need more nurturing emails than those close to buying. Segment them appropriately.
3. Don’t buy random bulk email lists: apart from them likely being irrelevant to your business, you cannot verify if they’ve gotten consent to receive marketing emails from you. If enough of them report you as spam, you could have your domain blacklisted.
4. Don’t ignore them once you’ve collected their email addresses: make sure you send a welcome email and let them know what to expect over the next few days or weeks.

DOs

1. Do offer something valuable: this can be as simple as an article converted into a PDF for offline reading or the results of a quiz around a brand-related topic.
2. Do get explicit consent to send more marketing emails: this keeps you abreast of anti-spam laws and builds trust with your customer.
3. Do use lead generation forms on your most popular content: entry and exit pop-ups can help drive up the number of leads you collect from your website. Test different types of lead-gen forms, colors, calls to action, and images to see what works.
4. Do use social media to generate leads: Facebook and LinkedIn let you create lead generation forms and other platforms can be used to drive traffic to your landing page (where a lead form awaits).

Wrap up

Email marketing is a powerful way of driving sales and nurturing customer relationships. Use the tips in this guide to generate warm leads for your next email marketing campaign.

Need an email marketing sequence for your next campaign? Contact Mo Shé Media today.

Mohammed Shehu

Mohammed Shehu writes on marketing, content, and tech for B2B clients in the US and EMEA regions. You can find him online @shehuphd everywhere.