6 Tips for Generating More Leads from Mailing Campaigns
E-mailings are a cost-effective, important, and highly effective tool for acquiring new customers and maintaining your existing customer base. Although a significant amount of junk mail arrives in electronic inboxes every day, email remains one of the most important communication channels. But why is it that one email is read and receives a response, while a hundred others are deleted unread or marked as junk?
Here are six of the most important steps you can take to improve your response rate.
1. Become a Trend Scout
In every industry, there are always buzzwords and trending topics that receive a high level of public attention. Whether it is media hype, staged by lobbyists, promoted by competitors, or brought into focus by changes in legislation, it doesn’t really matter. Much more important is the energy that is already there, which you don’t have to generate yourself, but can simply utilize – ride the wave.
For example, currently:
Trending topic: Digitalization in the EU / Digital Single Market / Wifi4EU
2. Never underestimate the subject line
Do you enjoy writing subject lines? Most marketers don’t – and that is exactly your opportunity! If you dedicate time and creativity to it, you already distinguish yourself from the majority of your competitors – giving you a significant advantage.
Headlines and subject lines are crucial text elements – they determine whether your mailing is read or deleted. Therefore, beware of banalities like “Important Info” or “News from XY.”
Instead, formulate creatively, ask questions, be provocative, or even make jokes within the bounds of good taste – but in any case, rely on the reader’s curiosity.
Examples for our trending topic:
Are your citizens offline? – EU money: for you too? – EU pays for WiFi in [Place Name]
The same applies to headlines / bullet points:
Germany / Austria has catching up to do: WiFi hotspots too few and far between
WiFi: Often faster and more stable than mobile networks
WiFi hotspot as a public service – now with EU funding
New funding for WiFi infrastructure – are you in?
3. Target Customers Specifically
You have surely experienced this: you receive offers to marry Eastern European women, but you are a woman yourself and also happily married. Or you are offered medication for menstrual cramps, even though you are a man.
What is commonplace in the consumer market happens far too often in the B2B sector: offers are shot aimlessly into the void, even though it would not be difficult to research that an internet marketing agency does not need SEO help for its own website.
The most important and sustainable success factor in the B2B sector, and even more so in the field of services and value-added services, is a good customer relationship. In marketing, everything revolves around consistently working on building and expanding the relationship. A good start is to get to know your customer as well as possible. Therefore, research thoroughly online to identify which customers might have a need for the services offered.
Segment the addresses accordingly and send targeted information. If possible, personalize the salutation. You make the approach personal and engaging, showing that you are serious about your offer.
Most word processing programs have been able to do this effortlessly for a long time, yet many providers limit themselves to a generic “Dear Customer…”. But not you. You ensure that the offer is at least theoretically interesting, and you also present yourself as a partner for whom the customer is not just a number.
If the customer is already supplied elsewhere or has no interest for other reasons, that is not a problem. At the very least, they will notice that you took the time to understand them and their industry. Perhaps they will remember you at another time, and that time can come at any moment. Renovations, extensions, new buildings, a falling out with a previous partner, a new requirement that the predecessor cannot cover – if you stay close to the customer, it will pay off for you sooner or later.
4. Provide Added Information Value
You know this from your own inbox: you don’t read blunt advertising emails that simply praise a product, promote a discount, or boast about their own service.
However, if you avoid this overly direct promotion, you often end up with unexciting messages like “We are specialists for… and are happy to help if you ever have a need.” Hardly anyone reads these either. Yet you receive an incredible number of them. Who actually sends these?
Apparently, people who don’t think as much about their campaigns as you do. Because you offer high-quality content, research a topic, and provide your customers with an overview.
Research various information sources and cite them. Filter what might interest your customer and present it as concentrated and crisp information. This again distinguishes you from at least 80% of your competitors.
You are well-informed about a trending topic and not only provide your target customers with relevant information they enjoy reading, but also position yourself as an expert. It is then legitimate to mention that you have the right offer available – and your customer will trust you more if they perceive you as an expert.
Examples of information sources for our trending topic:
https://www.pcwelt.de/ratgeber/Ueber-das-Handy-surfen-7322440.html
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/wifi4eu-free-wi-fi-for-europeans
5. VELVET – The Effective Approach
So, you have segmented your addresses cleanly, researched information, and prepared high-quality content – now it’s about the packaging, an effective initial approach.
Formulate according to the VELVET principle:
Ideally, you address Verstand (Intellect), Emotion, Logic, and Verantwortung (Responsibility) in this order, thereby creating Einverständnis (Agreement), which you can use as a Trigger for further interaction with your customer.
The intellect loves facts and figures, emotion is particularly receptive to feelings but also fears, logic understands what is clearly obvious, and responsibility is a moral core value that is almost automatically agreed upon in our culture. Addressed in this way, the whole person can almost only feel and signal agreement. You then use this trigger to bring the customer on board and place your Call to Action (more on this in point 6).
What does a text look like that takes all of this into account?
Here is a suitable example for our topic:
New Customers:
Did you know that you can obtain funding for up to 100% of the costs for setting up a WiFi hotspot infrastructure? The EU awards up to 20,000 euros per project to public institutions.
As a system integrator established for [NUMBER] years, we have already set up [NUMBER] hotspots, and our [NUMBER] customers can feel securely and competently supported by our trained experts. One thing is very clear: we see it as our responsibility to always advise you competently and effectively and to provide you with only the best offers.
We would be happy to contact you in the next few days to discuss the extent to which you have a need.
Existing Customers:
Did you know that you can obtain funding for up to 100% of the costs for setting up a WiFi hotspot infrastructure? The EU awards up to 20,000 euros per project to public institutions.
As our customer for [NUMBER] years, you have already seen for yourself that you can always feel securely and competently supported by our trained experts. Let us state one thing very clearly: we see it as our responsibility to advise you competently and effectively in all matters and to inform you about the best offers that suit you.
We would be happy to contact you in the next few days to clarify the extent to which you have a need.
6. Never forget the Call to Action!
You have put a lot of energy into presenting your initial approach and placed your offer well, so that some of your recipients have actually read the email. Now it’s about closing the deal and turning the reader into a lead.
It is amazing how often this is simply forgotten. Yet everyone knows how impatient people are today, how quickly they click through offers and websites, and how rapidly they give up if it isn’t entirely clear what to do next. As a reminder: a lead is only a lead if the recipient of a campaign has qualified themselves through some action – they have expressed their interest in a measurable form – clicked a link, written an email, or filled out a contact form.
TELL the customer clearly and unmistakably what to do. This could look something like this:
Would you like to know more? Simply contact us by phone at…
Or: Fill out this form. We will get in touch with you immediately.
Or: Leave your phone number here. Your consultant will contact you shortly.
It is important that the Call to Action is formulated unambiguously, clearly, and concisely. Additional navigation or choices on landing pages, ambiguous requests like “Call us or send us an email,” should be avoided, as should complicated forms with too many mandatory fields.
Low-threshold requests, such as mailto links with pre-formulated messages, a simple click of a “Yes, contact me” button, or similar, always prove to be much more effective.
With these 6 tips, you should be able to significantly increase the success of your mailings. Be sure to track this and document the success. This allows you to understand successful measures and apply the experience to future campaigns.
Here you will find helpful tips on the topic of new customer acquisition and existing customers:
6 tips for successful new acquisition
Hunting for new customers with telephone acquisition
6 tips for more revenue with existing customers