A new year brings a fresh start. It’s the perfect time to evaluate marketing plans, lead generation strategy and advertising budgets. A new year gives you a great reason to take a cold, hard look at last year and see what worked, what didn’t, and where you can improve. So, in the spirit of new year’s resolutions and improving lead generation, we offer three lead generation resolutions to put into practice in 2019.
The shoppers are coming. Is your email list ready? There’s still time to build a broader database and increase the leads you can market to. The internet is flooded with online shoppers and holiday planners browsing bargains, recipes and more this time of year. Make the most of it with an opt-in campaign that utilizes third-party sites to generate leads without landing pages on the content your potential leads are already browsing.
Lead generation can be downright scary, if you make some of these mistakes. Read on for cautionary tales to scare you this Halloween. And whatever you do…don’t turn off the opt-in!
On a dark and stormy night, a skeleton salesman set out to create a lead generation campaign. He built a complex landing page designed to obtain all the information he needed to build the perfect skeleton exactly to his client’s specifications. The form was long and detailed, including fill-in answers, drop-downs and radio buttons. Multiple buttons and clicks were required to advance and submit the final form. He cackled as he launched the lead generation campaign and sat back to watch the thunder and lightning roar outside.
You’ve got a solid email list. And a great email marketing strategy for turning sends into sales. But every email list could be bigger. And every unsubscribe list could be smaller. The key is to put those unsubscribed email addresses to work for you with a campaign to win back unsubscribers. The catch? You can’t email someone who already opted out of your list. So you’re going to need to reach them another way. But once you do, your email marketing strategy will be working twice as hard for you.
Opt-in advertising isn’t exactly a new concept. In many industries it has become so standard that it’s not often mentioned, simply running along in the background, quietly supplying quality leads. Targeting and delivery capabilities have evolved with technology, but opt-in advertising has continued to be the standard in lead generation. And it’s a workhorse that delivers powerful results. But now more than ever it can and should be an integral part of your lead generation strategy. Here are three reasons opt-in advertising matters now more than ever.
The reality of GDPR has made data privacy a hot topic these days. California will soon implement similar policies, and it’s likely other states will follow. So how do you make the most of the data you have, while still safeguarding the privacy of your customers and leads? Opt-in advertising for lead generation. The key lies in encryption and the use of hashed data to build an efficient email list. It’s a win-win: you keep your customer data safe and secure, and in doing so, provide yourself with a method of lead generation that’s more efficient and cost-effective than anything else out there. Here’s how opt-in advertising for lead generation works:
Everyone has an unsubscribe list. Customers get tired of a full inbox and conduct a “spring cleaning” of their email subscriptions, or they sign up for a seasonal reason and opt-out after. Perhaps they think they can simply search for content or offers online and haven’t seen the value of staying on your email list. Whatever the reason, you’ve got a list of unsubscribes you can’t do anything with. Or can you? With opt-in advertising, you can win those subscribers back and resubscibe email addresses to your list.
GDPR has come into effect, and with it, far-reaching implications for email marketers around the world. While the General Data Protection Regulation may technically only apply to European Union citizens, most have adopted its principles on a global level to ensure full compliance. When it comes to email marketing, this means a sender must have proof of consent for every address they include in their distribution. Didn’t keep your original opt-in records, or maybe used some not-so-white-hat tactics a long time ago? Your email list could have just gotten a lot smaller. Here’s how to rebuild your email list with opt-in advertising.
Leads. Everybody needs them, whether you’re selling a product, service, or just straight up content. A quality email database of qualified leads can be hard to come by, and even harder to create at scale. That’s why we’ll often hear lead generation horror stories of huge email lists full of bogus email addresses or unqualified leads. This can happen for a number of reasons, including email list buying, bulk email additions or poorly targeted lead generation. So, do you know where your leads are coming from?
Facebook Lead Ads sound like the holy grail of opt-in advertising: they’re completely self-contained ad units available on one of the most widely used websites. They even have existing user data to prefill form field, making it incredibly easy for a user to opt-in and move on. This should keep CPLs low and sign-ups high, but that’s not always the case with Facebook Lead Ads. If you’ve found the lead quality on Facebook to be low, or the cost per lead high, there are other opt-in advertising alternatives that can provide quality leads at scale.