Lead Generation

A good lead is the life blood of a business. Any business in any market is always looking for a ‘good’ lead. Good as a word is as clichéd as can be… but ‘good lead’ as a phrase will have value till eternity.

Why?

Because each and every business wants a good lead.

What is a lead?

Lead is a bit of information about a potential customer who has stated his interest in buying a product/service. The emphasis on a good lead is because there a number of ‘purported’ prospects who say they are interested but their interest is not qualified i.e. he/she turns out to be a non-serious prospect.

What information do we need to capture for to be termed as a lead? This depends completely on the product/service being marketed. If one is looking to create a list to email information on a regular basis, Name and email id would constitute a lead. A debt management company would , on the other hand, require more information –

Name

Email id

Mobile number

Landline number

At least 3 qualifying debts

Minimum unsecured debt to be US $ 5k

Must have regular income

Must be paying at least $ 200 per month toward qualifying debt

Quite a list isn’t it?

Clearly, generating a name and email id is fairly straightforward – in terms of ability of generate ‘quantity’ of leads as well as the sources these leads come from. Unless the product/service is very ‘niche’, the wider the spread of leads the better.

Generating a lead for a debt management company is more involved. Publishers with whom the campaign is to run need to be carefully selected. Publisher demographic needs to be carefully studied before being included in the campaign.

Co-registration ( discussed in one of my earlier articles) lends itself to the former type of lead generation campaign. But the latter type of lead generation would call for a Run of site campaign that is carefully optimized and monitored on a day-to-day basis.

Pitfalls of online lead generation

Incentivized v/s non-incentivized leads – Any lead generation exercise which has a lolly of a free gift is fraught with risk, especially if it is a matter of providing minimal information like name and email id. People will freely register to get the free gift. There is something irresistible about getting something free. An up-front incentive is a recipe for a bagful of infructuous leads. An incentive payable after a user has contracted to a service could , on the other hand, work wonders.

Fake Leads – If a network is running a CPL campaign, it could very well get a host of people to enter their details and submit a lead. Such leads only shore up the statistics on the campaign, with poor end results.

Bottom line is that if a lead generation campaign has a stated and clear goals, good processes to monitor the campaign there is no reason why it should be able to generate fairly high quality leads.

Email marketing

Email marketing is very much on the rise. Statistics have it that volume of emails has overtaken direct mail marketing by a long shot.

In this article I’ll talk about email marketing and how it make it a meaningful exercise.

Firstly, it is important to be clear about where the email campaign fits in an overall context. Is it an email shot to an opt-in list? Or is it a part of an overall strategy. In other words, is it a cog in the wheel or is it the wheel itself?

Some of the questions one need to ask are similar to those you ask in context of any other campaign –

What CTRs would you expect? Do you have any precedents to go by?

What kind of ROI would be reasonable on the campaign?

If it is a part of a wider strategy, what is the expectation of the email campaign?

Once these objectives are clear, we need to get the nitty-gritty of the email campaign out of the way –

Cleaning databases and emailing lists

Ensure you have requisite permissions to email

If the campaign is outsourced, ensure that a bonafide company has been selected for the purpose

Decide the number of emails that need to go out and how often they need to be emailed

Benefits of email marketing

Better value for money

Cost of delivery is relatively lower as there are no costs involved in creating the message ( printing) and delivering the message ( postage).

Usage

Email is clearly the most used application on the internet

Speed

Emails are very quickly created and sent. And delivered in a jiffy. To add to this, you can also ask for ‘delivery receipts’ for emails using many of the popular email editors like MS Outlook etc

Response

Email advertising elicits a response of upto 15 % which is much higher than display advertising

Quickness of response

Response are usually received within 3 days of the email shot.

Targeting

With reference to opt-in databases especially, very focused targeting is possible using email marketing.

Scope of optimization

A similarity with online advertising is that one can measure results quickly. If the results are not upto expectations, one can quickly change/refine the message and re-launch the campaign.

Having iterated the benefits, let’s look at some pitfalls as well.

A campaign has to be well thought thru’ in terms of its ‘technicals’ so that it can bypass filters set up by the user

It may not work very well with everyone… For example, time and time again it has been proved that the over 55s rarely respond to email marketing messages

In conclusion, let me say that we need to ensure that email is a good way to get across to the prospective customer, the right kind of database is ready and available and ensure that we have a compelling message to get across. If these important factors are considered, we should have a potentially effective email campaign on our hands.