Entrepreneurial Selling

Email - Still the Godfather of Lead Generation?

Written by Jay Shapiro for Gaebler Ventures

The customer wants info yesterday. Everything needs to be done pronto! You need to make sure you generate leads and follow them up before your competitors strike and close the deal. Email is instant and still the godfather of lead generation.

As business people we, and some of our customers, want something done yesterday.

We live in an 'instant' society where immediate results are not only appreciated, they are often expected. The world's on fast forward and sometimes it needs to be, especially when there's the risk of your competition going in for the kill and snapping up your potential customers. Unless you act with expedience, those customers won't know you can supply what they need.

Picture the scene; you've a hot lead who wants more information about your products. Great, but you'll very likely lose that potential deal if you keep your client too long to receive brochures or order forms. We still use snail mail today, of course, and it's ideal when hard copy must be sent. But email really cuts it when we need to send info fast, and especially when we deal internationally.

Email is the key, not just with the generating of leads, but it's also one of the most powerful communication tools - it can play a major role in turning your leads into confirmed and closed sales.

Comfort Zone

As we're all so au fait with email it is a method of connection and lead generation which sits well with us and our prospective customers. It's as near as you can get to instant too. The client wants information, you send that information. The whole action takes a minute or so at the worst. In most cases everything has arrived within seconds of your clicking send

Automatic Emailing Systems Help Keeps Leads Hot

The way email works makes it perfect as a lead generating tool. It can also be set to send and respond automatically to suit your criteria.

Any efficient automated system that lets you be less hands-on is worth considering. Mail and/or auto bots, specially designed email programs, automatically send your messages for you. That way, if you're not able to respond to queries at any time your lead and contact is still kept live if you use an auto responder.

Email is still very much the godfather of online lead generation, but even old hands need to up their game sometimes, that's where automatic sending gives email a boost.

The benefits of email lead generation:

• Email lead generation is instant
• Highly cost effective
• Fully automatable

Nowadays it's hard to recall a time before email, and even harder to imagine how we coped without it. Having said that email is still, effectively, in its infancy. Although, it's possibly the one of the most effective tools we have. In its simplest form, without add-ons and automation it does exactly what it says on the pack and is vastly user-friendly - there are few people today who aren't fully conversant with how to use it.

There will always be occasions to use hard copy and bricks and mortar techniques for lead generation and, as has been said before, offline promotions serve well as support for online activity and vice versa.

Jay Shapiro is a freelance writer based in the UK. Jay has a particular interest in the emotive aspects of the entrepreneur's character. "Alongside the nuts and bolts of business, the character of the person is often the ingredient responsible for success."

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