Leads: how to handle them

I get about 40 or 50 mails per week that are not related to my personal or work interactions. Call them ‘macon’, mock bacon, or spam that I have signed up for. I am the sender’s lead. Mostly, I don’t open them, just delete them from time to time. Their subject lines or content fail to engage me enough to open them and transact but they are a learning curve.

The first step in using leads is to understand the needs of the audience. There can be for types of needs. The audience can need information. It can want the email as a route to the transaction. It can use the email to engage. It can also read the email for entertainment value.

Your interest in the reader will be to keep the flow of transactions moving. Here’s the important bit… Once the audience uses the mail to access the site, and begin using the functionality, you will be able to monitor and establish groups according to actions of the individual user.

If a user begins a transaction but doesn’t complete it, that user will be logged in a group. You can mail the user as part of a similar group and offer inducements to complete the transaction, be they support to complete the transaction, added value on completion of the transaction or finding out why the user did not complete the transaction?

If the user does not respond, you have the option to remind the user of the value contained in the offer, though circumspectly to avoid the connotation of being a spammer.

If the user completes the transaction, you have the opportunity to engage by providing supplementary information on product usage, information on how to handle queries and returns, or just a friendly word of thanks.

As you can tell, the transactional email is an incredibly valuable tool in selling. If you use it for non-transactional purposes, rather as a counter to churn (loss of customers), as a part of your lead tactics, it is equally valuable. So valuable is it, that it is almost impossible to open a website without being invited to sign up for a mail.

If your mail is not transactional, rather driven by presence and top-of-mind awareness, you will want to display a high degree of focus on the EEAT principles of experience, expertise, authority and trust. However, I am adding a caveat to this which is also to entertain with peripheral interests. For instance, if you are providing information on streaming entertainment, you need to ensure a healthy dose of entertainment articles.

To begin to use email effectively, you will need to develop a strategy and tactics to govern lead management. This will require both the human and functional project resources, and a deep understanding of the needs and behaviour of the market. What motivates them to open a mail and click on a link? How will the audience change and how will you replenish it with new users? Are you contributing to audience attrition with an unimaginative and repetitious strategy?

Given the changes in search algorithms – deprecation of third party cookies and uncertainty surrounding Google Topics ¬– your email engagement and lead strategy are the way of the future. And the new branding and marketing arms race. Treat this advice seriously and lay your groundwork today.