B2B Email Lead Generation: Grow Your Customer Base

If you’re constantly struggling to build a quality email list and attract the right audience, it’s time to fine-tune your email lead generation strategies.

If you’re a B2B company, it might be extra challenging for you to get in front of key decision-makers through lead generation marketing. But, when you refine lead magnet offerings, provide value, and broaden your tactics, you can eventually reach more potential audiences and convert them into loyal customers.

A lead generation strategy is not a standalone model — you must simultaneously focus on maintaining email deliverability, open and click-through rates, and legal compliance. Let’s take you through lead generation methodologies, pros and cons, how to create a lead generation email, and also give you an exclusive tip to generate more leads.

What are Email Marketing Leads?

Leads are potential customers a business tries to win over with various email marketing campaigns. A lead is someone who subscribes to your email list and is likely looking for solutions to their problems. Once they become a subscriber, you can nurture your leads with key selling points to convert them into paying customers.

You can do this by:

Building an email list through opt-in forms on your website (collecting leads),
Using segmentation strategy and personalization in your email content (nurturing leads),
Implementing email marketing automation to move your leads through the sales funnel (Converting leads).

Key Elements of Lead Generation Email Marketing

Use the following components to send targeted emails to your leads:

Opt-in forms: You can use opt-in forms on your websites, landing pages, or social media channels to get people to subscribe voluntarily. This is the most crucial step in collecting user information (leads) such as email addresses, age, and other details.
Lead magnets: Lead magnets are incentives to encourage people to sign up for your email list. For example, your lead magnet can be a B2B blueprint for email marketing. You may use whitepapers, exclusive content, webinars, discounts, or other valuable content to interest your leads.
Targeted email campaigns: After populating your email list, it’s time to send your leads a series of emails to attract and convert them. These campaigns can contain product offers, educational content, or compelling CTAs.
Segmentation: To send personalized offers, you must segment your audiences based on demographics, age, behavior, and preferences.
Automation: Implementing automation will help you send pre-planned messages without manual intervention. You can also set up triggers based on user actions or specific timelines.
Analytics and tracking: Continuously monitoring open rates, click-through rates, and conversions paints a clearer picture of lead interests and preferences. You can then refine your future lead magnets and email campaigns using this data.

Usually people opt-in to your mailing list in exchange for a course, an e-book, or any other freebies. These giveaways must highlight your brand’s uniqueness and solve common challenges of your leads. But how do you know who your leads are? Let’s show you the ways to identify them.

How to Identify Your Leads

To send an effective lead generation email campaign, you need to know who your ideal leads are.

Your leads can typically be someone who:

Fills out a form,
Downloads your e-book,
Attends your webinar.

Answering this question will help you target the right leads and nurture them to become your customers. But to get to that point, you need to understand what type of lead you’re targeting.

The Types of Email Leads

Leads are generally categorized into:

Cold leads: A cold lead is someone who fits your ideal customer profile but hasn’t shown any interest in your products or services. They are the hardest to convert and require constant nurturing through value-adding resources such as blog posts and industry articles.
Warm leads: These type of leads have prior knowledge about your business — maybe they follow you on social media, read your blogs, or have heard about you from their friends. Reach out to them from time to time to build a relationship and eventually turn them into customers.
Hot leads: These people are the most important for your business; they have shown interest and are likely ready to convert. Research their company and send them relevant content and then follow-up with a meeting to finalize the deal.
Information qualified leads (IQL): These leads are just starting to research a solution for their problems. They likely know your brand but are not ready to make the final call. Regularly, send them email newsletters, industry updates, etc, and find out what they are looking for in a company.
Marketing qualified leads(MQL): These leads actively search for solutions. For example, someone who downloads your e-book on email marketing strategies is a MQL. You can set up a call or complete the process through an email.
Sales qulaified lead (SQL): A sales qualified lead is ready for a meetup with your sales team, which means they have expressed continued interest in your services or products and are ready to buy. You just have to reach out to them and close the deal.

As a general rule, you must focus your efforts on a lead that’s most likely to convert. This means a cold lead will need more nurturing than a hot lead, and so on.

Creating a great lead magnet and collecting email addresses are not enough to convince your leads to become customers. You need to build trust through different phases of the journey.

What is the Email Lead Generation Journey?

When you get an inbound lead, the transition from a lead to a paying customer happens through a series of steps, called lead generation journey. These steps help attract, engage, and convert potential leads into customers.

Each phase has its objectives, such as below:

Awareness stage: The purpose of emails in this stage is to capture the lead’s attention and create brand awareness. You can send welcome emails, educational content, and integrate social media to let more people know about your business.
Interest and engagement stage: In this stage, you want to increase the lead’s curiosity and interest in your brand. Send them personalized recommendations, drip email campaigns, and invite leads to participate in webinars and events.
Consideration stage: This stage is all about building trust and positioning your brand as the go-to solution for your lead’s problems. Send your leads exclusive content, product tutorials, and case studies.
Decision stage: This is a crucial phase where you must focus on persuading your leads to take the desired action, such as requesting a demo or purchasing your products. Drive participation through time-limited offers, and compelling CTAs such as ”add to cart” or “buy now.”
Conversion stage: This phase is where you turn your leads into customers. So, ensure a user-friendly purchase process and add value through post-purchase emails.
Retention and loyalty stage: Once your leads have become your customers, you must maintain their trust in your brand. Offer rewards and incentives for repeat business and maintain ongoing communication through product updates.
Advocacy stage: When your customers are happy with your brand, it’s easy to turn them into brand advocates. This means they promote your brand and spread the word with thousands of other potential customers. You can use user-generated content, referral programs, and social media engagement to boost advocacy success.

It’s common for marketers to think — does lead generation work? The truth is email lead generation works with the right strategies and timing.

Why Should Your Business Use Email Lead Generation Strategies?

Lead generation can help your business:

Tailor products: Collecting details from your leads opens up avenues to customize your products and offers according to their wants and needs.
Increase revenue: When you provide value, you generate sales-qualified leads that will eventually increase your profits.
Improve brand awareness: Using inbound marketing allows you to spread brand awareness and attract more leads in the process.
Increase customer base: When your leads convert into paying customers, it simultaneously grows your mailing list and revenue.
Streamline the sales funnel: Automatically generating leads allows you to focus more on creating valuable content and moving interested users across the sales funnel.
Build trust and credibility: By providing educational and informative content, you gradually become the thought leader in your industry. This, in turn, increases customer trust and credibility in your brand.

Before we tell you how to create perfect email marketing campaigns, you must know the lead generation best practices to avoid common pitfalls.

B2B Email Lead Generation Best Practices

When you don’t pay attention to the basics of lead generation — your leads’ needs and wants,

you risk losing them once and forever. To help you avoid this scenario, we have outlined the lead generation best practices for you:

Choose the Right Lead

Your potential B2B clients are unique and require different solutions for their problems. Using the same approach for all your potential customers will not get you the desired outcome.

Set up tailored lead magnets for each of your leads based on their type. For example, you might want to create a detailed report on how your products or services can help your marketing qualified leads.

You can also use lead scoring to know which of your leads will possibly convert. Lead scoring is a method of assigning a score based on a lead’s behavior and interest in your product or service and their place in the buying journey.

Use an Irresistible Lead Magnet

Once you know what your potential customers are looking for, you can create customized lead magnets around their pain points.

Here are few types of lead magnets you can create:

E-books,
Research reports,
Courses,
Webinars.

You can also experiment with lead magnet options to understand what works best for your lead generation marketing.

Design a Simple Opt-in Form

Nobody wants to endlessly fill out a form. While it might be tempting to know more about your leads, your opt-in forms must be relevant and concise.

Here’s the basic information you should aim to collect:

Name,
Business email,
Job title,
Company,
An option to receive your promotional email content.

Use legible fonts and keep the form design simple and attractive.

Use Persuasive Landing Page Copy

Your landing page has the potential to get more leads for your business. All the elements must work cohesively to give your potential customers a strong reason to join your mailing list or contact you.

Here are critical elements to focus on for your landing page:

Landing Page Element	Focus
Headline	Clearly state the benefits of using your lead magnet.
Compelling offer	Mention the details of your offer, including benefits and features.
Body copy	Include your value proposition and use persuasive copywriting to attract potential customers.
CTA	Use a persuasive language to guide interested people to the opt-in form.
Supporting evidence	Include reviews and testimonials to back up your product claims.

Elements of a lead generation landing page

You get the idea — your landing page copy must always solve a problem and state the benefit.

Include a Strong Call to Action In Your Opt-in Form

Even though your products might be technical, using creative language will engage your leads.

Implement these different CTA button types to enhance your opt-in forms:

Form submission: Use a colorful and lively form to collect lead information. Utilize powerful copy to make leads fill out the form and click on the submit button.
Read more or view more buttons: These CTA buttons still hold a special place in email marketing — read more buttons generate curiosity and encourage readers to know your product or service in detail.
Social sharing: If your goal is to reach more people, including social sharing buttons is helpful. When readers like your content, they are bound to share it with their friends and family, increasing your lead generation.
Lead nurturing: Once a person becomes a lead, you can include specific CTAs aligned with their interests to convert them into customers. For example, “Get your free quote today”.

Here are specific CTAs for lead generation:

Download button,
Subscribe,
Learn more,
Request a demo,
Get started,
Free trial,
Contact us,
Register,
Join us,
Refer a friend,
See plans and pricing,
Exclusive access,
Upgrade.

Utilize Gated Content and Content Upgrades

Gated content refers to the content that’s accessible only after a lead submits the form. This is a great way to collect user information without violating their privacy. Using gated content and upgrades also allows you to know which audience type is the most interested in your content.

For example, after a potential lead visits your website, you can guide them to download an E-book, whitepaper, or to your blog section to learn more about your products.

Doing this helps you formulate your blogging strategy and grow your email list at the same time. This type of content also incentivizes your audience and increases the chances of conversions.

Use Social Media Channels

Leveraging social media buttons in your landing pages will boost your brand presence.

Follow these ideas to grow your email list through social media channels:

Promote your products or blog posts on platforms such as Pinterest and Twitter. This will put your brand in front of millions of users and generate more leads along the process.
Add signup forms or opt-in pages from your Facebook or Twitter handle.
Use Facebook ads or promoted pins to get more people to opt in.
Utilize the podcast option on Twitter and become a thought leader in your industry.

You can also include social links in the emails you send out, which will maximize the chances of people sharing your content with other interested leads.

Use Email Automation For Lead Scoring

When you automate your lead scoring strategy with the help of an ESP, you will have more time to focus on other important areas of your business. This helps you sort out hot leads from the rest and set them up for future email campaigns. You can also categorize the other types based on the quality of leads.

After you collect leads, you can set up triggers and actions for your lead outreach email campaigns with Campaign Refinery — the platform automatically sends out emails based on user action.

Triggers include:

A contact subscribing to your form,
A contact opening an email in the campaign,
A contact clicking on any link in the email,
A tag is added,
A goal is achieved,
A reward is unlocked.

Our platform automatically detects user action and sends the relevant email at the right time.

Incentivize Current Subscribers To Get More Leads

Getting more leads is always a task — instead, incentivize your current subscribers to refer your brand to their friends. This is a quicker way to build your email list and get more sales.

You can send them exclusive rewards to get them to spread the word. A simpler way to do it is by using Campaign Refinery’s engagement rewards feature.

Engagement rewards help you build a reward system for your audience — you can set points for each reward and other criteria for each campaign. This feature has particularly helped our clients unlock more open rates and conversions.

Be Timely

If there’s one thing to pay consistent attention to — it’s the time you send lead generation emails. If a lead downloads your e-book and there’s no email from your side, it’s a lost opportunity. To stay consistent with the timing, use automation software.

The automation mechanism sends out emails as per the triggers you have set. For example, you can set up an automated email series starting with welcome emails and lead nurture campaigns. You can also customize these triggers to suit your audience’s needs and wants.

Now, let’s take these steps and put them to use with Campaign Refinery’s Lead Magnet Multiplier Course.

How Campaign Refinery Gives You 756% More Clicks on Your Lead Magnets

Our founder Travis Ketchum created the Lead Magnet Multiplier Course to give email marketers in-depth knowledge on creating high-downloading lead magnets.

In this course, you’ll learn:

Different types of lead magnets and how to create them,
The advantages of the scarcity effect,
How to use back-end automation for your lead magnets

And everything else you need to achieve a high click rate on your lead magnets!

Instead of us telling you everything, we want you to explore the process to understand the steps better. However, be mindful that this course is only available for 7 days, and if you don’t use it, you lose access to it.

Download the Lead Magnet Multiplier Course to get more leads and increase your brand revenue.

Regularly collect and analyze data to optimize your email lead generation campaigns. But how do you gather leads in the first place? You can do it in 3 unique ways.

How to Gather Email Leads Through Email Marketing

Sure, it’s easy to buy an email list and start firing emails in the hope of making more sales. But when you email without consent, these emails will hardly reach your intended audience without going into the spam folders. So, how do you gather email leads without getting into trouble? Let’s show you 3 prominent ways below:

Outbound Lead Generation

Also known as cold email lead generation, this method is used to reach recipients who haven’t voluntarily signed up to receive your brand communication. You can extract email addresses from B2B websites and other general portals where your potential leads are active.

But emailing people without their consent is usually frowned upon and doesn’t do any good for you or the recipient. We have a strict policy at Campaign Refinery regarding cold emailing — we terminate user accounts using this method.

Often, outbound lead generation can become the only way to gather leads for your business. When you use it well, it helps you shorten your sales cycle and reach newer markets.

Collect Email Addresses Through Online Events

A great way to add more email addresses to your list is to host webinars and online events. With a simple signup form for these events, you can leave with a database full of hot leads. Since most of these leads are already interested in your event, it’s much easier to nurture and convert them.

You can also use the ‘login protocol’ which makes it mandatory for users to log in to access the online event. This way, you can connect with potential customers and prove your expertise through educational content.

Add Sign-up Forms in Emails

When you send different email campaigns to your audiences, you can add a signup button at the end of your emails. This will maximize the chances of reaching diverse audiences and generating more leads for your business.

However, align your email sign-up buttons with your email marketing niche. For example, if you regularly send marketing newsletters, make sure to include a register or sign-up button along with an incentive if possible.

Sometimes even when you do everything correctly, you may not see the desired results. It’s because every email lead generation campaign is different and follows a mechanism, let’s see how.

How to Write a Lead Generation Email

Your lead generation email follows a similar pattern to writing marketing email campaigns.

However, here are 3 main attributes to pay attention to:

Always offer valuable content: Show your audiences how your brand can solve their challenges through valuable resources such as e-books, whitepapers, and webinars.
Design a powerful lead magnet: Use email copywriting techniques and scarcity to encourage readers to utilize your lead magnet.
Use Clear CTAs: Your CTAs must be specific and immediately understandable by your users. Using links as CTAs is a great way to promote more curiosity and participation.

You can also use different email campaigns to move your leads through the sales funnel. We’ve listed a few of them below.

What Type of Email Campaigns to Send to Your Leads

The type of email campaigns to send depends on your brand goals, lead preferences, and their place in the buyer’s journey. To give you a fair idea, here are common email campaign types you can use:

Email Campaign Type	Purpose	Content Examples
Welcome emails	Welcome new leads and introduce your brand	Welcome messages, brand stories, and offers/incentives
Educational content	Provide valuable information and become a go-to industry leader	Blog posts, how-to guides, industry interviews, and tips
Product announcements	Introduce new products and features to generate curiosity and interest	Product images, videos, tutorials, and links to learn more
Promotional campaigns	Offer discounts, promotions, and limited-time deals	Promo codes, special offers, and exclusive content
Event invitations	Invite leads to increase their knowledge on certain subjects	Webinars, product demos, online courses, etc
Drip email campaigns	Send automated and targeted messages to encourage leads to purchase	Product information, educational content, and CTAs
Referral programs	Encourage leads to refer their friends and family to become a subscriber	Incentives, discounts, and exclusive content
Exclusive access emails	Provide leads with exclusive content to make them feel important	VIP events, sneak-peek, member-only promotions

Types of email campaigns to send to leads

If you’re starting out, use an ESP to segment, personalize, and automate your lead generation campaigns.

How Can Campaign Refinery Help You Generate More Leads

Email lead generation requires a comprehensive approach to gathering leads and convincing them to act. Maybe you have a great lead magnet, yet not enough people download it. This is usually because your product or service benefits are not explicit or there’s no scarcity effect to persuade your followers to act.

Campaign Refinery’s Llead magnet multiplier course is the best solution to this situation. Surf through the short videos and you’ll be on your way to creating the perfect lead magnets to get more qualified leads for your business.

And if you need more guidance, support and an email service with the best deliverability on the market — just apply to become a Campaign Refinery client and we’ll take care of the rest!