12 Email Lead Generation Techniques and Strategies for B2B

Every business practice has its own merit in growing your company. However, it all boils down to sales. Without selling what you’re offering, you’ll be pushed out of the market. It’s that simple. So, you need to ensure a constant flow of qualified leads.

Of course, not all leads will be instantly qualified as SQLs (sales leads). You must be careful with your messaging depending on your audience, or it’ll actually do more harm than good. 

Check out our ultimate lead generation guide if you want to learn more about the concept overall.

For now, let’s get into the 12 best email marketing tactics. Remember that you don’t have to apply them yourself if you don’t want to. At X27, we’re pros at getting you B2B leads fast.

The Basics of an Email Lead Generation Strategy

Email lead generation is considered one of the top channels when you’re looking to drive conversions. For example, a study by one of the leading B2B research companies found that email outreach is effective in 48% of cases.

And yes, that’s a really big percentage! 

Numerically, it means that about half of the people that you reach by email are going to turn into a lead. Of course, only if your emailing strategy is up to standards and well-made. You can’t throw together an email in 5 minutes and expect it to perform.

By planning your strategic approach, you can attract leads. Then, you qualify them for marketing or sales. 

After getting carefully nurtured by your directed efforts, you can guide them towards the greatest of conversions: from a mere prospect, to a paying customer.

It’s also recommended to pair email with other lead generation channels, such as SEO & content, PPC and social media. The broader your approach, the wider the pool of prospects. 

In a few words, you should have a lead generation strategy because:

• It lets you reach the right audience through targeted efforts.
• It increases awareness of your brand. Word-of-Mouth marketing is one of the most credible channels for prospects.
• You get more leads, which means a higher chance for more customers. 

What is Email Lead Generation?

Lead generation is all about getting more prospects aware of your business. Once they show real interest in your services or practices (even by just requesting a free ebook), they’re a lead. The chances of converting them to a client are now better.

In practical terms, for email, this means 2 things: 

1. Reaching out to prospects directly by manually searching for their contact details (use Uplead for this). This is email outreach.
2. Letting them voluntarily submit their contact information through a manner of opt-in form (lead magnet). This is email marketing.

Whichever way you got an email address, you must now nurture that person. It is harder for outreach, as they most likely have no idea who you are, but both ways have their merits.

If you do your email outreach right, the journey from prospect to customer will be faster than that of a lead to customer in email marketing.

How to Generate Leads Through Email (12 Tactics)

Now that you have a better grasp of what’s what, we should get into the details. As you can tell, there are different ways to handle email lead generation. The end goal is sales for both, but you might see better success with one option or another.

It depends on your niche, what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and the level of renown that your business has. The more reputable you are, the easier it gets. 

Here are 12 tactics to add to your skillset.

1. Design Catchy Emails

Keep it short and to the point. Each email should be seen as a business transaction. So, it has to sound good, and look good. 

Your phrases should be short, and the email must look “clean”. Excessive graphics and colors can easily distract leads from the message. 

The above mostly applies to email marketing though. When you’re reaching out to a new prospect, you’ll want to use a plain looking email. Black on white, nothing fancy. Keep it professional and emphasize what you want to say.

Here a few “tricks” for email outreach:

• Usual fonts: Easy to read text, nothing out of the ordinary.
• Reading-friendly formatting: Space out your paragraphs. Bold the most important aspects. Spotlight the information that you want to make sure gets across. 
• Proven templates: When you see that a certain order of information is working for your outreach, keep doing it. Emails that lead to conversions are the good ones, simple as that.
• Simple CTA: You must end your emails towards prospects and leads with a call-to-action. Think along the lines of “when are you available for a call?”, or “get in touch right now”.

2. Create a Connection

No one wants to see spammy content in their inbox. In the B2B world, there’s a good chance that executives and other decision-driving personnel are contacted daily by a lot of people. 

You don’t want to be listed as “just another company” that tried to get their attention. Spend an extra 15 minutes around their website. Get to know who they are as a company, and what their most probable pain points are.

Use that intro paragraph in your email to highlight that you’re familiar with what they’re doing, that you’ve followed their journey as a business.  However, note that depending on how good your email is overall, this isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, a great message is all it takes, even if it isn’t bespoke.

Show that you care, and that the solutions/products you provide are actually a good fit for them and their needs.

It’s not about what you want to sell. It’s about what they would want to buy.

3. Grab Attention Straight Away

The first thing you see about an email is their subject line. You should be creative with your own emails, so that you can inspire curiosity or urgency. Sometimes, it’s also adequate to add emojis in the subject.

This tactic will make or break your email lead generation. There’s a 0% chance someone converts if they don’t even open your emails. 

For example, let’s say you’re selling a project management SaaS. Your email marketing could include newsletters with headlines such as “This is How You’ll Allocate Tasks Better”. 

Work around what you’re selling, and work it into what you’re saying.

At X27 Marketing, we make it a priority to customize the strategies for all of our clients. No B2B email ever gets sent if the messaging hasn’t been tailored to the party that’ll receive it.

4. Use Lead Scoring

Lead generation becomes worthless quickly if you’re not planning your approach. You want to reach a lot of people, sure, but you have to reach the right people. Scoring your leads is a system through which you’ll gradually attract better prospects from the start.

It’s really what it sounds like. Depending on the level of interest a lead shows, or how they’re interacting with your business, you give them a different score. 

If a lead hasn’t interacted with your email or any links you sent in your last 3 emails, chances are they’re not going to start either. So, in this case, you have to define another audience. Use another message. 

However, if they’ve constantly checked all of your references towards PPC strategies, it’s time to hit them with a sales email about your marketing services.

You should also pay attention to how many links you’re using in your email outreach. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, it might actually be better for you to not add links.

Lead scoring helps you stop wasting time with people that are clearly uninterested. This is less important for email marketing, since they sign up for it themselves, but really crucial for email outreach.

5. Promote Special Offers

This doesn’t necessarily mean a price reduction. Some leads are only MQLs (marketing qualified), so they’re not interested in buying from you yet anyway. But, you can still nurture them.

A special offer could be even just gated content. A study, ebook, report or whatever else that the leads only get access to because they’re on your mailing list. This way, you create inherent value for them for just maintaining communication with your brand.

As leads qualify more and more towards customers, you can offer product trials, special demo sessions, etc.

6. Triple Check Everything

The worst thing that can happen if a prospect shows interest in your business is for the email links to be broken, or for a word to be missing or be misspelled. 

You’ve just placed your business in a shining light, as the provider of that service. If a prospect is curious and wants to check out that link on your website, but it’s a 404, that’s the end of that.

It’s the same logic for incorrect contact information, typos, and improper grammar. You’ll never stand out as trustworthy if your messaging isn’t impeccable from a technical standpoint too.

7. Emphasize Urgency

Email lead generation must focus on the “here and now”. You must get across that the prospect (or lead) could be significantly increasing one aspect or another of their business if they just use your service.

The more rare and exclusive it sounds, the higher the chances for a reply. Similarly, you could underline that the more a decision is delayed, the greater it’ll impact the growth potential and scalability of their business.

It’s the same rule for your CTAs. Use “today”, “now”, “ASAP”. “At your earliest convenience” could mean in 2 months time too. You don’t want to wait that long.

8. Focus on Previous Success

If you already have a customer base that’s satisfied with what you’re selling, use that. In your emails to other prospects, include that other companies in that industry have already seen success thanks to you. 

Feel free (and encouraged) to bring statistics into the mix. Mention that thanks to your efforts, your previous clients have tripled efficiency in just X weeks; you get the idea. But above all, use only real facts!

No embellishments or “from a certain standpoint”. Stick to reality, and you’ll always promise just what’s plausible. 

9. Be Clear and Concise

Or in other words, get to the point! Your target group doesn’t have any more time than you do. This scarcity of time causes snap decisions, short attention spans and being on the lookout for “the next big thing”. 

Let prospects and leads evaluate your propositions/viewpoints fast and easy. 3 rules to follow:

• Put takeaways in a bullet list. Help prospects easily highlight what’s most important.
• Don’t distract from the desired action. Never use multiple CTAs in the email, such as “let’s hop on a call”, but also “visit our website” and “check out our case studies”. That’s confusing for the prospect.
• Don’t get into the details. Showcase just enough information to get the prospect’s attention. They’ll actually take it from there themselves. Huge walls of text without any breaking into sections equals instant “mark as spam”. 

10. Accept Refusals

Sometimes, you’ll just get refused. No two ways about it. Don’t keep pressing on at that point, as you’ll infuriate the prospect or lead. Besides, you’d be wasting time better spent on other leads which have a promising score.

If someone doesn’t want what you’re offering, but was otherwise interested at first, simply let them know you’re always available for a call down the line if something changes, and you can of course check in after some time has passed.

11. Use AND Avoid Automation

If you’re doing email marketing, automation is a must. All automation tools worth their salt will allow you to set targeting parameters and custom fields in the email. 

You’ll also be able to set who gets sent what email, when, why, and based on what logic.

Automation frees up your time so you can focus on other strategies. If you set it up the right way from the start, you’ll only have to do some maintenance work. See what’s working, what’s converting, and what’s not.

Automation will serve those leads that were “inbound”. The people who used a lead magnet willingly, or otherwise gave their email address themselves.

However, things are different for email outreach. The last thing that you want to do is group everyone in the same bowl. Like we’ve said previously, a customized message is key. 

You are looking to sell, and sales are tightly knit with the quality of the relationship you have with your lead. Show them you’re not another faceless business out for profit. You must be a provider that caters to their specific needs.

12. It’s Not About You…

…it’s about what you bring to the table. Prospects and leads will be interested in what they have to gain. The years of experience you have and extensive expertise are details to be left for a sales call.

First and foremost, you must draw in people. It doesn’t matter who you are in your business, or what you know how to do. It matters that you show a genuine interest in that prospect’s business in your email. 

It matters that you’re able to prove that based on what they are doing, your company can help them do it better.

Want to Increase Your Conversion Rate?

We’ve already generated over $100,000,000 in B2B sales for our clients. One of the core pillars of our work has always been email lead generation. 

If you’re looking to shorten your sales cycle and start using laser-focused targeting, we’re the agency to contact now. 

While we can offer you just email, we advise going for a multichannel marketing approach. SEO, PPC, CRO, content, coaching for your own team, we do it all; and we do it well.

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