ReportWire

Tag: Cold Email

  • 3 Lead-Generating Strategies To Implement In Your Sales Process | Entrepreneur

    3 Lead-Generating Strategies To Implement In Your Sales Process | Entrepreneur

    [ad_1]

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As one of my first mentors said: “In business, sales solves all.” This reigns true in the majority of cases. When you make a sale, you can re-invest that into a new employee, advertising campaign, software, marketing, etc. You get the point. The problem with lead generation and sales for most SMEs, however, is that they depend solely on one channel — which, more often than not, is inbound leads or referrals.

    While these are arguably the best forms of lead generation, as the prospect is “warm” & they already know, like and trust you, these methods are the least scalable. Why? Because you’re putting your fate in other people’s hands and not taking a proactive approach to growth.

    Now more than ever, it is essential to diversify your approach to lead generation, leveraging different strategies that work best for your business and target market. In this article, I’ll break down three automated outbound lead generation strategies we use with great success and how you can use them to drum up more business and, more importantly, epic client case studies.

    Related: 5 Ways Businesses Can Get Traffic and Generate Leads

    1. Cold email

    With advertising costs on the rise, companies are looking for more cost-effective ways to generate attention and leads. Now, before you think, “Cold emails are for spammers and scammers,“ — please read this with an open mind. A cold email has become one of the hottest topics in the B2B marketing space, with many new tech and SaaS startups emerging in the cold email automation space to fill these needs.

    All seasoned cold emailers understand that it provides unparalleled scalability for the cost. That said, don’t expect to start emailing today and drumming up new business immediately. It takes time to tweak, refine and improve upon your process. It took us four months of trial and error before we found an email that really hit the mark.

    And just a word of warning — no matter what, you will get people that dislike your email and will respond with criticism. Understanding that this is part of the game will help you persevere and succeed. The best resources I’ve come across and used to learn the A-Z of cold email are Alex Berman’s YouTube channel. Some baseline metrics to aim for in your B2B cold email campaigns are a 75% open rate, 10% reply rate and 2.5% meeting book rate. Review your cold emails every week to ensure you’re constantly improving and hitting these baseline numbers.

    2. LinkedIn outbound

    To be completely honest, I slept on LinkedIn for a long time. While it isn’t my preferred place to consume content, it has been tremendous for us in terms of lead generation. It also has some incredible automation abilities and will produce epic results when done right.

    Where I see most people go wrong on LinkedIn is primarily a basic lack of understanding of people. Who in their right mind will respond to a 7-paragraph, 800-word introductory message? Don’t worry, at some stage, pretty much everyone has been there (myself included).

    Why I believe LinkedIn is far superior to other social networks for B2B lead generation is 3-fold.

    Firstly, it’s a business platform. People expect to be doing business there. Secondly, it has a sales navigator tool. A way to get directly into people’s inboxes without even connecting. Thirdly, it has a lot of automation capability — we use a Walaaxy for this.

    This allows you to import a list of your ideal customers automatically and then automatically connect with them, sending them an invitation message and even a follow-up message sequence, which you can use to explore potential meetings or synergies. Again, the messaging sequence here needs to be short and sweet — as I mentioned, there’s nothing worse than an unsolicited four paragraphs from a stranger trying to get you onto their “free webinar.”

    Related: How to Get High Quality Leads From LinkedIn At No Cost

    3. Twitter outbound

    Twitter has quickly become my favorite social media platform — it is a no-BS place, and people don’t have time for fluff. With that in mind, that’s why it’s such a fun platform to try and crack the challenge of outbound. It’s not uncommon for people to screenshot a bad DM they receive and shamelessly post it to their thousands of followers, causing public embarrassment to the person who sent the DM.

    That’s why it’s so challenging. You need a unique approach. The approach that we have used, which works incredibly well, is a purely value-based message. We essentially offer our services for free — no strings attached. Doing so builds a relationship, an audience and a network of influential people. Believe me, when I say you will be shocked at the kind of connections and relationships you can build. I was even shocked at how I immediately received referrals and people wanting to do more business with us.

    Final thoughts

    If I haven’t convinced you yet to implement these strategies, the fact that it costs me five times less to acquire a customer with these strategies compared to paid advertising says everything you need to know.

    Forget manually sending 100 emails, DM’s, and messages per day. Leverage automation to do the heavy lifting for you, then take over to complete the process. Remember always to constantly tweak and optimize your processes to make micro-improvements throughout all stages of your sales process.

    If you implement all these strategies effectively, watch your pipeline and sales skyrocket this year.

    [ad_2]

    Lewis Schenk

    Source link

  • 5 Surprising Ways to Increase the Conversion Rate of Your Emails

    5 Surprising Ways to Increase the Conversion Rate of Your Emails

    [ad_1]

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Did you know that 20% of a brand’s emails will never reach the customer at all? This, coupled with an email provider’s desire to provide the best user experience within the inbox, means that many more are going straight to spam or promotions.

    As email matures as a direct-to-consumer marketing channel, more and more businesses engage in the practice, meaning consumers are more overwhelmed with email marketing than ever before.

    As a natural result, consumers pay less attention to their emails.

    Related: Why Email Marketing Is Better for Your Business Than Social Media

    Marketers and brands work really hard and spend a lot of money to build their email lists, so it’s no big surprise they’re let down when they see open rates between 15% and 25%. Because owning a strong email list can be one of the most important assets for your business, we need to find ways to ensure that emails serve us well.

    Here are five surprising ways you can increase not only your open rates but the conversion rates of your marketing emails as well.

    1. Resend emails to unopens

    For an email to convert, it must first be opened, but most of the emails you send will never be opened.

    In the age of marketing automation, it’s really easy to set up your email sends and then simply let the software do its thing. However, one of the easiest ways to get more opens on your emails is to go in manually and resend them to anyone who didn’t open them at least 24 after the initial send.

    Think about why your email may have been overlooked. Was it sent at an inopportune time of day? Was the subject line less than appealing? Was the sender line too vague?

    The average consumer is inundated with emails spending roughly 5 hours a day in an inbox between work and personal accounts. With all that noise, a great subject line is the best way to capture their attention.

    Very simply, an effective subject line will be short, provide value, express urgency and steer clear of buzzwords. You may not be able to accomplish all this with just a few words, but keep these tips as your north star when crafting a subject line.

    This isn’t something you need to or should be doing for every email you send, but when used strategically, updating and resending your email campaigns will help you to reach more of your list.

    Related: Inbox Zero Is a Fantasy. I’m Trying for Calendar Zero Instead.

    2. Optimize for mobile

    Consumers spend more time on their phones than ever before, which means they’re doing many inbox check-ins on mobile devices. According to Hubspot, most email views (41%) come from mobile devices. Shockingly, 80% of emails being sent are not optimized for mobile.

    Most email providers have a quick and easy function that lets you see how your email will appear on mobile devices as you craft it. You can also send yourself a test email to be sure.

    Use these tools to ensure that your emails look good and load quickly on mobile before you send them.

    Related: 3 Steps to Maximize Your Mobile Email Marketing

    3. Clean your list

    There will come a point when your email list isn’t serving you anymore because a large portion of your audience is either fatigued by your emails or never getting them in the first place. You can expect your email list to depreciate by 22.5% per year.

    Two to four times a year, you should identify the people who never open your emails and remove them from your list to ensure that only those interested in hearing from you are receiving your communications.

    This will dramatically increase your deliverability, open rates and click-through rates. Bonus: It will decrease the cost of your email marketing software.

    4. Build your list

    Because the value of your list is decreasing over time, one of the best ways to increase your emails’ conversion rate is to actively bring in new, engaged leads.

    The most simple and effective way to do this is to create a strong offer, or lead magnet that you know is valuable to your target demographic. Start driving traffic to this offer through paid social ads, brand partnerships and even in-person events.

    Related: How To Start An Email List And Succeed From Day 1

    5. Ask your customers what they want

    As marketers and brand leaders, we often develop our content around what we think our customers should have instead of simply asking them what they want. One of the most simple and effective ways to get more opens and create conversions from your emails is to ask the right questions.

    In addition to asking what kinds of emails they’re most interested in, you can also ask what kind of new product they’d like to see, what their favorite social media platforms and podcasts are, or even what kind of sales they enjoy most.

    All these data points will help inform your product development and marketing strategy in a way that will make a huge difference in your business.

    You can make these customer surveys work for you even further by offering a coupon or discount to anyone who participates — and now you’ve got great data and incentivized your customer to make a new purchase.

    Email marketing has gotten more difficult over the years, but it’s far from ineffective. It’s 40x more effective than social media—and that’s a number no business today can afford to ignore.

    With the right strategies in place, you can use your emails to convert subscribers and generate more revenue for your business.

    [ad_2]

    Shauna Armitage

    Source link