How to Use Email Marketing for B2B Lead Generation

Email marketing is an often overlooked method for generating leads. Most lead-generation strategies focus on collecting email addresses before moving those leads into a lead nurturing campaign.

What role does email play in the initial point of contact, and how can you help your emails make a more significant impact?

We’ll answer those questions and more in our insider look at email marketing for B2B lead generation.

Benefits of B2B Email Marketing for Lead Generation

B2B email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing channels because you have direct contact with your recipient. You aren’t waiting for them to come to you, but you’re going to them where they are.

Due to this greater control, you have more knowledge of who you are contacting, what they might need, and how you can help them. Therefore, you can curate your emails around that information for more engaging communication.

Half of B2B marketers say email is their most impactful marketing channel. In addition, 73% use email newsletters as part of their marketing.

B2B email marketing also has a higher click rate than B2C email marketing, showing stronger potential returns from launching a B2B lead generation campaign. The average email marketing return is $36 for every dollar spent.

How to Use Email Marketing for Lead Generation

There are four primary ways to use email marketing for lead generation.

Capturing New Leads

If your emails promise valuable insights and insider industry knowledge, you can use them to generate new leads within your industry. A newsletter sign-up effectively generates new leads who are interested in what you share through your emails.

To use your emails as a lead magnet, you will want to market your email’s value irresistibly. You might share some insights for your readers, promote exclusive offers, or share solutions they resonate with.

If your email newsletter appeals to website visitors, you will soon see a steady stream of new leads from the newsletter sign-up.

Connecting with New Leads

Emails can connect you with new leads whose information you just received. For example, welcome emails or introduction emails begin a correspondence with the contact. If the contact responds, you can move them into your database as a new lead to start the nurturing process as active and engaged leads.

Sending Broad Emails

There are times when you may receive an extensive email list. For instance, if you participate in a workshop or conference, you may receive a list of contacts from that event.

When you receive large email lists from contacts or events, not everyone on the list is necessarily a lead. You must first identify those who are interested in your brand or products.

A group email with a follow-up action can help identify the most interested leads. For instance, you might encourage the contacts to download your eBook for more information. Those from the list who downloaded the book have identified themselves as new leads.

Qualifying New Contacts

When you perform B2B marketing, you need to be pickier about your leads. Most of your marketing strategies require more time and effort so you won’t market to all leads the same way a B2C marketer might.

Instead, you will want to qualify any new contact in your system. By qualifying the contact, you can identify their interest level and whether they have purchase power. Those who match the required criteria then become the lead.

Using a system like Hushly allows you to track new leads based on their behavior to help you better understand how well they match your criteria for a lead.

You can also use a system of lead scoring to qualify leads. Through lead scoring, you identify actions that suggest an interest in your products. When leads perform enough of those actions, their score becomes high enough to qualify as a marketing-qualified lead and officially enter your database for nurturing.

B2B Email Marketing Best Practices

For lead-generation emails to be effective, they must stand out from all the spam and irrelevant emails. Remember, your job is much more challenging than nurturing a current lead. A current lead already knows you and trusts your brand.

When you use email for lead generation, there is little to no pre-existing trust. You’re starting from the beginning.

Here are a few tips to build trust with new contacts and convert them into leads.

Personalize Your Correspondence

Personalization is the most effective email tactic, according to 36% of marketers. Once the recipient feels like the email was intended specifically for them, they’re much more likely to click on it and read what you have to say.

To personalize emails, you must know enough about contacts to include personal details like names. You may also consider breaking up groups of recipients into smaller groups based on similar interests or shared experiences so you can connect with them over those shared experiences.

Image from Finances Online

Optimize Your Email Preview

What appears in an inbox is your first impression. It may be one of the most essential parts of your email because it is how recipients decide whether or not to open the email and read more.

There are several parts to the email preview:

• To/From Line: Who an email comes from and who it is to let the recipient know whether it’s from someone they know or potential spam. Customize these lines with their name and your name rather than an unknown email address.
• Subject Line: Acts as a title for your email. It gives an idea of what might be inside an email through a question, fact, or startling remark that captures the recipient’s curiosity.
• Preview Text: A few lines of the email body that give recipients a sneak peek inside the email. While the default preview text is the first few sentences of the email, you can customize it to make it more enticing to the recipient.

Optimize Your Email Schedule

When you send emails can have as much of an impact as what you send. Sending too often may annoy recipients, while not sending enough may lead to recipients losing interest. Once a week or once a month tends to be the sweet spot.

The time and day of the week you send emails can also impact how likely your recipients are to open your email.

The most effective way to optimize your email schedule is to A/B test different days and times of the day to find what relates best to your audience. For example, weekdays usually have better open rates than weekends, with Tuesdays seeing the highest response. In addition, morning emails also tend to have a higher open rate than late afternoon or night emails.

Understand your recipient’s schedules and try to send emails based on that schedule.

Transform Your Email Marketing B2B Lead Generation Strategies

Stand out this year by using email marketing for your B2B lead generation strategy. Use it to connect with new contacts in a fresh new way and promote your business directly in their inbox.

Hushly can help you build an automated B2B lead generation campaign that improves efficiency and offers unparalleled personalization options.

Schedule a demo to explore the email marketing tools Hushly has to offer.

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