Email Vs. Text: Which One is The Better Lead Generation Channel?

by with No Comment Technology

One of the top priorities for every business is generating new leads. With so many communication channels available, it begs the questions as to which one will serve your needs the best from a lead generation standpoint.

While cold calling is the standard, perhaps even the most overused, way of contacting interested clients to turn them into leads, text-based communication is an effective alternative that you can use for lead generation purposes.

Email and text messaging are two of the most common communication channels. You will be hard pressed to find anyone that does not use either one of them at all times. These channels can also be used to generate new leads for your business.

The question is whether which one is, ultimately, the better lead generation channel. Even though both channels serve the same purpose, they are uniquely different in their own ways.

So let’s try to explore what the differences are and what makes them so effective. Consequently, this will determine which channel is best-suited for lead generation.

Email Marketing

No matter how much technology evolves and how many new, trendy marketing gimmicks appear, email marketing still remains as one of the top communication channels in all of marketing. Despite being the oldest channel, its effectiveness lies in its simplicity.

Whilst available data suggests that other forms of communication (like text messaging, push notifications and whatnot) are more effective in terms of open rate and conversion rate, email marketing still boasts the highest ROI (return on investment) among all marketing channels. A survey among 2,500 digital marketers by GetResponse has proven this claim to be true.

This makes it a pretty powerful lead generation to be reckoned with, albeit its shortcomings from a customer engagement standpoint.

So how do you use email marketing to turn potential customers into legitimate leads? You can follow these steps to ensure your success:

  1. Get people to opt in to your email marketing campaign.
  2. Segment people into groups using relevant criteria (age, gender, profession and so on).
  3. Start sending personalized emails to different segments, including relevant information for each group.

As far as the content of the email goes, make sure they are engaging. In other words, stuff like the subject line and the body of the email have to be attention catching (especially the former) as well as clearly stated. Additionally, include visual content to break up the wall of text. Most importantly, a powerful CTA (call-to-action) should be included either in the beginning or at the end so that people know what course of action you expect them to take.

Text Messaging

With over five billion mobile device owners worldwide, SMS is the only communication channel that can reach people on their mobile phones instantly. People spend a lot of time using their mobile platform. As such, from a lead generation standpoint, you should heavily focus on this channel.

Multiple reports show that customers prefer interactions with businesses over SMS as opposed to phone calls. More than that, almost half of the customers prefer to get offers and promotions through SMS. This means that people are already open to the idea of conducting business over SMS, thus making lead generation via this channel all the easier.

Lead generation via SMS follows the same fundamentals as email. Get people’s permission to text them, construct short and concise text messages with a CTA in the end, and finally start sending them out to your customers. Needless to say, personalizing messages for different demographics is a must.

Which is the Better Lead Generation Channel?

Both of these communication channels are vital in lead generation. To say that one is absolutely better than the other is virtually impossible. There are aspects where SMS excels in (better outreach, higher open rate and customer engagement) and there are certain aspects where email excels in (e.g. very high ROI).

Ideally, you can use both these channels to generate new leads but selecting just one requires you to carefully consider what the needs and wants are of your business as well as what objectives you intend to accomplish. In which case, it is totally down to your preference.

How to Create A Not So Boring B2B Social Media Strategy

by with No Comment Branding

When you start to make a list about all those companies that are killing it in the domains of social media, the first ones to come to your mind must be B2C (business to consumers) organizations. You can hardly name any IT or management company making it big on Instagram or Snapchat. But it does not translate to impossibility, B2B companies with successful social media strategy do exist, but they are in the minority.

For the most part, either B2B companies seem to struggle to grasp the concept of social media marketing, or they just flat out turn a blind eye to the strategy full of progressive potential. Despite the success B2C is collecting through social media marketing, B2B still heavily relies on the more of traditional methods like call calling or attending business network lunches. Don’t get it wrong, these techniques are also useful, but they should not be used instead of social media.

Action- Packed B2B Social Media Marketing Techniques:

Creating a social profile and then sending out a few tweets, B2B social media marketing is not just that simple. Any brand can do this, but this does not interpret a strategy that yields results. Every now and then we see a brand falling out of social media. Usually, because they fail to generate any engagement and scrolling through their page is just as exciting as watching the clock tick.

Build A Personality

The best way to fail at social media is to be a bore and insipid. Unfortunately, since several other B2B companies are going that way, you should steer clear. Since B2B consider social media as an added feature only, their post lack personality.

The fear of being too vexed usually keeps them from being creative. Not everyone can ace being sassy like Wendy. However, businesses to not have to be a troll to sound like a human. All you need is a conversational tone, engagement with users instead of just advertisement, a little humor and you are all set.

Know What You Are Aiming For

Be specific about what you want to achieve from social media, shooting arrows in the dark won’t do you good. Be sure of what you are aiming to achieve through it, whether it is branding you are interested in or you want to increase traffic to your website.

Know Who You Are Dealing With

With social media, you can easily reach the global audience relevant to your brand. Which is why the emphasis is on customers and not brand. Confused about how to find apt customers or conversations? Here is how you can do it, keywords, influencers, hashtags, and competitor’s audience.

Identify Your Social Media Platform

Determining which social media platform you are going to target plays a decisive role in whether your strategy will stay successful or not! For B2B, following four social platforms can play a decisive role, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. As an estimate, almost 93% of B2B market experts consider Linked to be the most potent lead generation site.

Undeviating Attitude

Consistent attitude is a must. Being steady and unvarying allows customers to recognize your brand. Plus post should be more frequent to reach a large volume of the customer without having to opt for paid methods. But it a lot harder then it may sounds. B2B marketers usually fail consequent to their lack of consistency.

Biggest Myth about Social Media Marketing

You must have heard of it from time to time or even think about it yourself, “Social Media won’t work for me because it not for boring B2B industries”.

Abolish this thought completely. Social media is not merely reserved for beauty and fashion brands. There are billions of people on social platforms, and you can bet that there must be a little chunk of audience interested in your brand. All you need to do is find them. There are various successful examples like Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, etc.

Ready to Formulate a Killing Social Media Strategy?

We are no longer at the point where we need to decide whether social media works for B2B or not, in this competitive era, it has become compulsory.

While devising a robust social media strategy, it always comes down to setting specific goals, planning, and understanding the nature of social media. Moreover, it is imperative to create content keeping your target audience in mind and also maintaining visual uniformity.