Email marketing lead generation: Benefits, best practices, software, and tools in 2024

Generating leads is a constant that you can never ignore.

You need a results-driven strategy for lead generation to let your business flourish forever with more leads and increase sales opportunities.

Here, we’ve discussed the most powerful way of lead generation through email marketing. 

You will get 12 practically proven tactics to drive more lead generation with a minimal cost investment.

Before we dive deeper into the techniques of email marketing lead generation, let’s quickly understand what an email lead is, how to generate it, and why an email lead generation strategy is crucial for businesses.

What is an email lead?

An email lead is a potential customer who has shown interest in a brand, product, or service and is willing to receive marketing emails about their business.

What is email marketing lead generation?

Email marketing lead generation is a method used to collect the information of potential customers for a business with the help of an email opt-in model. 

The main objective is to gather relevant details such as names, phone numbers, and email ids of their prospect to further nurture turning them into your buyers.

5 Benefits of email marketing lead generation

Check out the most enticing benefits of email marketing lead generation.

1. Cost-effective

Email marketing lead generation started in 1978 with the first email marketing blast.

Email marketing is a cost-effective approach and prevents you from spending too much money on advertising, postage, or any traditional marketing practices. It only requires managing employed resources.

Although various lead generation mediums came into existence with time, email lead generation remained the most preferred one among all due to its exceptionally low-cost and high ROI compared to other mediums.

Email marketing offers everything at a minimal cost, such as targeting the right audience, conversating with them, driving sales whenever possible, etc.

2. Lead segmentation

Email marketing enables you to segment your online marketing leads to target with customized and valuable content that promises maximum engagement.

You can segment your leads on the basis of their industry, company, job title, country, etc.

Sending generic content to your potential audience will not give any outcome. With the correct segmentation, you can enhance engagement and respond quickly. 

Segment leads in your style and execute highly personalized campaigns!

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3. Always be there in your inbox

Email lead generation practices offer more visibility, unlike PPC ads, social media, display ads, etc., which get vanished once their budget is over or the customer signed off.

On the contrary, emails remain in your inbox so that your target audience can leverage the product/service whenever they need it. Your customer is required to open their email in their free time or when in need to get all the details.

You can redirect towards your landing page or website for brand awareness, trust-building, lead nurturing, improving customer relationships, etc.

4. Helps increase brand awareness 

Email marketing lead generation supports brand awareness as the updates sent about the offer related to your product or services will help to create awareness about your brand’s identity. 

Businesses can trigger their audiences during email lead generation if they plan strategically, like providing value with the content, exciting offers, etc.

5. Improve email campaigns with tracking 

Useful data such as open rates, delivery rates, subscriber retention rate, engaging time, and various other email marketing KPIs can help to identify the campaign’s success during the email lead generation process.

This valuable data enables marketers/salespeople to understand prospects’ interests and behavior.

Why are email lead generation strategies crucial for businesses in 2024?

Email leads are the most important element of a sales process, and for email lead generation, businesses must have a strategy to execute that process! 

Make sure you have a defined email lead generation strategy to boost your customer base and achieve maximum sales.

All your efforts, time, and money will get wasted if you do not have a planned strategy for your email lead generation. Also, your business will struggle for revenue and growth. 

As per the survey summary report by Ascend2, 48% of marketers have faith that lead generation through email marketing is the most effective online strategy. 

Still, thinking about how the right plan for lead generation through email marketing can do wonders?

Well, a great email lead generation strategy can help you in the following ways: 

• You can target your desired potential customers.
• Helps in nurturing your audience.
• Support in boosting brand awareness. 
• Influence them to turn into your paying customers.
• Can generate more leads which will give you more sales.

You must be wondering, how is it possible to generate leads with the help of email marketing? Well, we’ve got you covered! Keep on reading to find out the process of executing lead generation through email marketing.

How to do lead generation through email marketing? 

 Below we have provided various steps through which you can generate leads for your business.

1. Check the status of your email list

You need to have emails for lead generation through email marketing. 

So, do you have enough email addresses? If not, then don’t worry; there are various techniques to generate an email list for your business.

Some of the most trending email list-generating practices are given below: 

• Marketing techniques such as content marketing and social media engagement. 
• By adding web forms to your emails.
• Take the help of email finder tools.
• Trial sign ups options.
• Through newsletter subscriber option.

Once you have the email list with you, the foremost step toward email lead generation is to track your email performance.

Those people who opened your email and performed the CTA are likely to become your potential buyers.

Hence, if you have an email list, you need to sort it through email marketing, and then you can use it further targeting for sales. All the insights of the email lead generation campaign are crucial for the marketers/salespeople.

2. Prepare a clear and concise email to shoot  

For email lead generation, you must know how to write an effective email to shoot. The content mainly depends on the campaign’s motive.

Above every criterion, when you are writing an email for lead generation, your prime focus should be your audience, not your product.  

A perfect email in the eyes of your customer should be helpful, give awareness, provide solutions, or add value in any way to the prospect’s life.  

Focus on the following details when writing an email for lead generation:

Subject line

Subject lines are the most paramount element for email lead generation as it is the first thing seen by recipients. So, your subject line should be creative, catchy, and convincing enough to evoke the reader.

Studies have shown that personalization enhances the open rates by 26%.

The best way to personalize the subject line is to include the following two things – a sense of urgency and personal touch.

Email introduction

Once your target audience has opened your email, they should have something captivating to engage with, and here comes your intro. 

To compliment your recipients, you can mention their personal or professional achievements (if any). Any specific detail about their interest or aspiration in the intro line can drive engagement.

If you don’t find anything, you can simply start with a greeting phrase along with their name.

Email body  

Once your customer is allured with the email intro. Now, it’s time to convince with the email body content.

If you want to engage your readers with your email, then try to write a crisp and compelling email copy. You can follow the following tips.

• The short and clear message. 
• Simple yet appealing design.
• Use white spaces.

No reader likes to invest much time in reading long text, so ensure your email copy doesn’t drag as it will increase the chances of losing your lead.

CTA  

The main objective of any email marketing lead generation is that your reader performs the necessary CTA so that you can proceed further with your sales pipeline funnel. 

The elements to create an unignorable and evoking CTA can be designed by following the simple tips below: 

• It should motivate your readers to act: ‘Get a 15-day Free trial’. 
• Create a sense of scarcity or urgency: ‘Only 1 is left’ or ‘Don’t be late.’ 
• Keep it clear: A 5-year kid can also understand it. 
• Keep it short: This can be shown in a button form. 

Work on your email CTA copy, as this will help to accomplish your goal with the lead generation process.

Signature  

Though a strong subject line and intro can enhance engagement, still don’t underestimate the impact of a powerful ending.

If you’re writing a signature for your email lead generation campaign, then it must have the following components.

• Your name and photo 
• Your designation 
• Name of your company 
• The official contact information
• Website URL

3. Find and choose reliable email lead generation software and tools 

Email marketing lead generation is not achievable without the help of a reliable email lead generation tool!

As a customer, you must find a tool that offers powerful features, and it is cost-effective.

The best email lead generation tool must have the following key factors that enable you to generate more leads –

• Ease of use: Any marketer or salesperson can use it without much stress. 
• Seamless integration: To leverage the lead for your business to draw sales. 
• Analytics: To analyze data to improve customer interaction and brand value. 
• Scalability: When you grow, your software should be able to support with the same efficiency. 

Your reliable email lead generation tool is just a signup away!

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We have discussed and provided the best 7 email lead generation tools at the end of this article, so don’t forget to check them out. 

First, let’s take a look at the most effective lead generation techniques you can implement.  

So, let’s dive deeper into it!

12 best email lead generation techniques to 10x sales in 2024

For generating quality leads, you need to implement certain tactics in your email marketing strategy.

1. Power up with personalization  

Customers are enticed by personalization, so you should identify your target audience and gather relevant information.

Customer data such as their name, interests, brand interaction, demographics, what they like about your brand, their buying frequency, etc., can be a great source for email personalization.

There are numerous ways to smartly personalize your email during lead generation. You can send delightful offers on your customer’s birthday and special occasions to engage better.

2. Invest in good email copywriting  

Effective email lead generation demands extremely impressive copywriting with a smart presentation. Clear, concise, and coherent email copy works best.  

There are other ways to make the email body more effective, and we have mentioned all the best practices for you.

• Use templates: They should be simple and not flashy. Also, it must support highlighting the text. 
• Plain fonts: For easy to read.
• Text formatting: Spotlighting the important information, concise wordings, and using well-space. 
• CTA: A clearly visible call to action text presented in a button form is quite responsive on all digital devices.

3. Send emails at the right time

The importance of the right timing for a lead generation campaign is a not worthy point of email marketing strategy. It varies from audience to audience and business to business.

Understanding customers, behavior, preferences, choices, and habits can help decide the right time for executing your email campaigns.

4. Emojis and Gifs are an option

Sometimes right emojis and Gifs can greatly support explaining the context. So, if your copywriter comes up with such an element in the email body, observe it as a reader.

5. Never use a no-reply email address

Using a no-reply email address is a mistake to be saved from while doing an email lead generation campaign. It is the wrong practice if you want to establish a brand, build trust and nurture future customer interaction.

It creates an image among your customers that you will not be there in case of any query or complaint. Also, your subscribers do not trust such emails and are likely to mark them as spam.

6. Scale with email automation

Lead generation through email marketing is chosen due to the automation features that leverage you to send bulk or mass emails, ultimately scaling your outcomes.

It saves time by removing the manual work to send emails timely as you can set automated email with email lead generation software. Not only this, you can send personalized automated emails that enhance the lead generation campaign results.

7. Leverage A/B testing

Split testing has made email marketing a more reliable platform as you can optimize it to drive better results. You can test with experiment with subject lines and email copy and discover the best-responsive emails to improve your lead generation success rate.

Once you’ve finalized the element for testing, you can set A/B testing with the help of email lead generation tools. 

8. Incentivize your existing customers with referral bonuses  

The smart way for lead generation is when your existing customers work to give you leads. It can be achieved by offering undeniably exciting rewards to your subscriber, from referring to friends to getting more leads.

You have encountered such practices in your day-to-day life when you get triggered with coupons to refer a friend. Brands do follow this strategy extensively as it provides a more qualified lead.

9. Power up with lead scoring

The tough nut to crack is finding the right –

– Audience 
– Message 
– Time

Here comes lead scoring that can enable you to capture high-quality leads. It is a model that helps in sorting and prioritizing your leads.

 There are various criteria helpful in lead scoring, and the important ones include: 

• Source of traffic: It discusses where your audience is coming from and their engagement product/services/sources. 
• Lead attributes: Data such as customer demographics, firmographic and psychographic, etc.
• Engagement Metrics: This talks about how your visitors interact with your landing pages, emails, websites, or other communication platforms. 

If a target customer recently visited your product page, then there are high possibilities to convert him into a paying prospect. To meet this, you can target with an offer like 25% off on the product if he buys it today. 

10. Link & create high-performing landing pages 

Linking the email with a relevant business landing page is a smart tactic used by marketers or business development executives for lead generation. 

Sometimes, companies create high-performing landing pages to target their prospect for lead generation. It has the potential to boost email marketing campaigns by increasing conversions or meeting calls to action.

11. Leverage the power of CRM  

All your efforts in lead generation will be effective for your business if your sales team timely nurtures them to convert.

Business is not about lead generation but actually about how you convert those inbound leads. For example, if you are an agency, CRM plays a crucial role in managing and converting your leads effectively.

A robust agency CRM offers extensive support to the sales teams in revenue generation and driving more sales. 

We highly recommend you a CRM system that will help you to manage, nurture and convert them into customers.  

Manage, nurture and convert leads into customers!

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12. Mobile optimization 

As per research, about 53% of emails are checked via phone; hence this encourages a need for mobile responsive emails. 

So, ensure your emails are optimized well to be visible clearly on every mobile device. 

Is cold email marketing lead generation effective in 2024?

Yes, cold email marketing lead generation is effective if done with the right strategy. In-depth knowledge of the target audience and business objectives can help your business leverage the cold emailing tactic.

What if your cold outreach is not driving results?

Then you should look for other options for lead generation.

An argumentative question that comes along with the cold emailing concept is; should you buy email lists?  

Some businesses at their initial stage buy or rent email lists for lead generation to maximize reach and scalability. 

As per ethical standards, it is advisable not to buy an email list for your business. Also, such lists enhance spam complaints and increase the unsubscribe rate. So, in a concise way, it is better not to buy an email list. 

Now, it is time to find and pick up the best email lead generation software. We have listed the top 7 email lead generation software in the market that are capable of generating highly qualified leads. 

7 best email lead generation software and tools in 2024

Software is the real-time saver in 2024 when doing lead generation through email marketing. Let’s discuss the key features one by one. 

1. Salesmate 

Salesmate is one of the best CRM for lead generation that helps businesses grow. It offers powerful features such as lead management, email automation, sequences, live chat, web forms, and chatbot options to capture qualified leads and grow revenue and relationships. 

With affordability, Salesmate provides powerful email marketing and automation support. Marketers can send bulk/mass emails, set up automated campaigns, perform A/B testing, and track email performance such as (CTR)click-through rates, open rates, unsubscribe rates, and many more.

Key features

• You can send bulk emails 
• Segment email lists
• Easy drag-and-drop email builder
• Personalized and customizable email templates
• Lead management & automation
• A/B testing
• Lead scoring
• Email tracking
• Third-party integrations

Pricing – Salesmate has four plans: Basic ($23), Pro ($39), Business ($63), and Enterprise (Custom).

If you have a growing business, then you must take a 15-day free trial now! 

2. OptinMonster  

OptinMonster is a lead generation tool extensively used by small businesses, marketing agencies, bloggers, and eCommerce websites. You can create targeted campaigns, easily craft emails with drag and drop builder, and do much more!

Key features 

• Drag n drop builder 
• Campaign triggers 
• Seamless integration 
• Actionable insights 

Pricing: It has four plans Basic ($9), Plus ($19), Pro ($29), and Growth ($45). 

3. Constant Contact  

Constant Contact is a powerful email marketing tool that helps to set email campaigns with its intuitive features. It’s an all-inclusive platform that enables you to manage and execute your entire marketing campaign.

Key features 

• Email marketing 
• Email templates 
• Real-time reporting 
• Automated emails

Pricing: It has two plans, Core ($9.99) and Plus ($45).  

4. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a smart and intuitive email lead generation platform for growing businesses with useful marketing tools. With robust features such as email marketing, marketing automation, chat, and Team Inbox, you can streamline your entire lead generation process.

Key features 

• Email designs 
• A/B testing 
• Smart statistics 
• Landing pages

Pricing: It has four plans Free ($0), Lite ($19.09), Premium ($49.26) and Enterprise(contact). 

4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the best email marketing software for lead generation as it leverages business with features like campaign scheduling, split testing, reports, and many more. With Mailchimp, you can automate different marketing processes and generate leads faster. 

Key features

• Advanced segmentation 
• A/B testing
• Time send optimization 
• Email and landing page templates 
• Comparative reporting

 Pricing: It has four plans Free ($0), Essentials ($9.74), Standard ($14.54), and Premium ($290.82). 

5. SendX

SendX is an easy-to-use email marketing tool through which you can build your list, set campaigns, and automate your marketing efforts. With features such as tagging, segmentation, advanced automation, landing pages, and A/B testing, you can easily manage your entire email marketing campaign. 

Key features 

• Email campaigns 
• Segmentation 
• AB split testing 
• Email web forms 
• Automation 

Pricing: It has only one business plan of $7.49 per month. 

6. ConvertKit  

ConvertKit is also known as ago-to marketing hub among creators. It enables the business to grow with its lead generation support. It’s one of the most preferred email marketing lead generation tools as it offers various features and is easy to use.

Features 

• Email marketing 
• Email designer 
• Audience tagging and segmentation 
• Stats on every email 
• A/B testing 

 Pricing: It has three plans Free ($0), Creator ($9), and Creator Pro ($25). 

Bottomline 

About 90% of marketers rely on emails as a prior medium for lead generation. So, you can imagine the importance of email marketing for lead generation. Nowadays, businesses want versatile software to assist them throughout their sales process. 

Software like Salesmate is a sustainable platform for every business to perform tasks from lead generation to its conversion. Take a 15-day free trial now!