Automate Your Lead Generation By Jake Atwood At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

In today's economy, a lot of sales forces and marketing departments have had their budgets cut. Meanwhile, they're being asked to generate more sales than last year. There's good news, though: a lot of your sales and lead generation efforts could be automated, saving you both time and money.

Here are some of the ways you could use email to create an automated lead generation machine for your organization:

1. Create A Lead Capture Form On Your Website

You probably have a "contact us" page on your website, but there are better ways to gather contact information from your web visitors. Give them the option to download a free white paper, recorded webinar, or ebook in exchange for their contact info. Once they submit their info, you can use an Autoresponder or Email Marketing tool like BuzzBuilder Pro to automatically send follow-up emails over the next several weeks. These follow-up messages should provide more tips and tools that they'll find useful.

2. Qualify Prospects Who Attended Tradeshows or Webinars

As a follow-up to an event you hosted, pre-write a series of follow-up emails and then use an email marketing tool to automatically send them out over the next several weeks. You could also email the attendees a survey or poll to find out their level of interest in your services.

3. Create A Lead Nurturing Campaign

Identify the inactive leads that your sales force has given up on calling. Create a series of "value-added" emails you can send over the next 12-18 months. Each email should include articles, white papers, industry trends, or other information that the prospects will find useful. This type of campaign is generally more conversational and less formal than a typical company newsletter. After every 3-4 emails, you can also include a promotional message about your services, or a success story about another client.

4. Create a Cross-Sell Campaign

Your existing clients may be your best source of revenue right now. Segment your clients based on the types of products or services they currently buy from you. Then, create a series of emails that show them how to get the most out of those services. In each message, you can also mention other services they may find useful.

5. Develop An Online Training Program

Regardless of what you sell, you have knowledge and insights that could benefit your prospects and clients. Package that knowledge into some sort of free training program. Create a series of email messages that each contain a useful tip or idea. Schedule each email to go out daily. Then, offer this free course on your website and allow people to sign up by submitting their contact information. Your email marketing system will automatically send them each email course over the next several days. At the end of the course, the last email could ask them if they would like to schedule a call with a Sales Rep.

6. Create a Pre-Call Campaign

Instead of cold calling, warm up your leads first by using a Pre-Call Campaign. Write a series of 3 email messages to introduce yourself, deliver your value proposition, and create interest. Schedule each email to go out every 2 days. Each week, you can import a list of contacts from your database or a purchased list, and your email marketing software will automatically get in touch with everyone on your behalf. It's like having a sales assistant who never sleeps!

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