10 steps to writing a great lead generation marketing email

Email marketing is nothing new; however when it comes to writing an email to generate leads, despite all the research, businesses still get it wrong. So how do you make sure it’s your email that’s read and not sent to the trash file without even being opened?

Lead generation email marketing is sending an email to a cold list of prospects with the view of monitoring open and click through rates and following up people who have interacted with the email.

Here are 10 steps to getting great results from your email marketing:

1. In general emails that work best look like they have been sent from a colleague, a plain text email that looks like it’s been sent from a colleague is more likely to be opened than one full of images that need downloading
2. Give something away for free – a free guide, paper or eBook. People aren’t interested in you or your organisation now – remember your goals – measuring open and click through rates, not getting enquiries at this stage
3. Target your email well – send different emails to different segments of your data if necessary; better to spend more time now and have higher open rates than blanket send and appeal to no-one
4. Send your email from a real person – business names appearing in inboxes when someone doesn’t know who you are is a big turn off
5. A good subject line – if this doesn’t spark an interest why would anyone open it? Subject lines can be split tested to a number of contacts to find out which results in a higher open rate. The best one can then be used for the remainder of your list. Use words such as ‘find out’ or ‘discover’ or use controversial or inquisitive subject lines
6. Be careful not to use words like ‘free’ or ‘win’ though as these will hit spam filters and bypass your prospect’s inbox completely
7. Start your email with ‘Hi firstname’ – anything too formal and spam filters will pick it up. Also if your contact is previewing their emails this will again make it look like it’s come from a colleague. The same applies to the end of your email – a common sign off such as ‘Kind regards’ is personal and spam filter friendly. Include your name, business, web address and contact details in a plain text signature
8. Put a hyperlink in the first paragraph – this is the point of your email; to get people to click through and find out more about your business. Put as many subsequent links in the text as you can without it looking overloaded and ‘spammy’
9. Keep it as short as it needs to be without diluting the message too much. No-one has time to read pages of text
10. Make sure you have just one call to action – don’t confuse your prospects by inserting links to more than one webpage

And there you have it, 10 steps to writing a good email. If you need any further advice on writing or sending marketing emails then do get in touch with us, we love sharing our knowledge.