Email marketing leads are where all email marketing campaigns begin. Without a solid collection of leads, you have no one to send your campaign to. Gathering email leads takes effort and can be time-consuming, but it is a worthy activity. Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective methods of outreach and can deliver some of the best results.
In this article, we’ll share methods you can employ to collect email marketing leads. You’ll also learn some best practices you should employ throughout the process.
What Are Email Marketing Leads?
When a prospect shares their email address with you, they become an email marketing lead. Typically, businesses hold collections of leads in their email marketing lists. These lists can be held manually using software such as Excel, but the majority of businesses now use third-party management software such as Instantly.
These leads are collected through a number of different means, and we’ll share them later. Once a list is formed, marketing teams can use it to send outreach and build user-specific segmented campaigns. Email lists are at their best when used in collaboration with user-specific data.
Following successful data enrichment, you’ll find considerable opportunities for a personalized email marketing campaign. The more relevant and specific your campaign, the greater the chance it will be successful.
Campaigns come in many forms. Brand new email marketing leads are often sent a nurturing campaign. The best nurturing campaigns will be varied. They will be based on how the lead was acquired, the product they are interested in, and other demographic info. Done correctly, nurturing can lead to a significant number of eventual conversions.
Gathering Email Marketing Leads
There’s more than one way to collect email marketing leads and build an email list. These are among the most popular methods.
B2B Lead Finder Tools
One of the easiest ways to build your lead database is to leverage the vast databases that are already out there. You access them through a web portal and then search using sophisticated filters. Find leads and contact information for people that you’d like to target, save the information, and add it to your list.
The Instantly B2B lead finder has over 160 million contacts and uses AI-powered systems to deliver the most relevant leads. As you search and save leads, you can rest assured that you’re not wasting your money, as you’ll only ever pay for leads that are verified.
With a successful search in place, you can then leverage the lookalike feature to find leads that feel like clones of your best options. That includes searching by domain.
As your email list begins to populate, starting a campaign takes just one click if you’re using Instantly’s email marketing platform. The synergy is incredibly intuitive and saves a huge amount of administrative time.
PPC Advertising
Running a PPC campaign is an effective albeit potentially expensive way of capturing email marketing leads. Showing ads alone won’t be enough to collect prospect data. You need to have a landing page that encourages them to part with their email address.
The beauty of PPC is that you can run the ads whenever you’d like, for as long as you like. This is helpful when you first launch a new email list and want to collect emails quickly. Both search engine and social media advertising work well. The choice comes down to where your targeted audience tends to engage.
Website Lead Magnets
Your website is one of the best places to collect email marketing leads. If you can offer the right lead magnets, people will be drawn to them and part with their email addresses. These often come in the form of eBooks, online courses, webinars, or reports.
Successful lead magnets offer a small piece of value with a very low cost to the lead. They should feel that they’re getting a great deal. Not least because this massages the principle of persuasion, reciprocity. If they’re getting a great deal for a low price, they’ll feel naturally indebted to you and will be more likely to convert down the line.
Webinars
If you have educational content that you can share, a webinar is a great way to engage with your audience and offer some value. Most people will expect to proffer their email address in exchange for a free webinar ticket. A decent percentage of them will then accept marketing from you and can be added to your email list.
Webinars don’t always have to be live, either. You can prerecord them, host them on your website, and gate access to them until someone gives you their email address. The most important thing is to ensure you have something valuable to offer. Don’t waste your audience’s time.
Contests
Many businesses run contests where to enter users simply need to share their email address with you. It stands to reason that the more valuable the prize, the more entries you’ll get. Just be wary that contests attract everyone. This includes people who are not truly interested in your products or services. It’s important that you complete a process of data cleansing regularly to ensure your list is effective.
Key Takeaways
For any email campaign to be successful, you need a quality collection of email marketing leads. With the right set, you’ll be able to target prospects with relevant and specific content that best suits their needs.
- Don’t be tempted to ever buy an email marketing list. There’s no way of knowing if they’re relevant to your business.
- A smaller, higher-quality set of email marketing leads is far better than a huge list that isn’t verified.
- Using third-party platforms makes list management far easier.
Once your email marketing leads are in hand, you need a powerful email marketing tool to launch your campaign. Instantly is that tool. Starting with AI-powered account warmup through to automated sequencing Instantly delivers email marketing at the highest level. Get started today.
