Those who are running truly effective email marketing campaigns know the necessity of detailed prospecting. This is the process of finding, researching, and qualifying contacts, ensuring you are reaching out to people of relevance and not wasting thousands of emails on unqualified individuals.
Prospecting also aids in the tracking of key information, enabling better email personalization and resulting in increased reply rates and conversions. Let’s have a look at what you can do to optimize your prospecting management, including direct tips on how to research everything effectively.
Study Every Prospect
Finding contact details of potential customers is not complicated. The challenge is to look more closely and establish whether or not this person really is a worthy contact. Though it can be a bit time-consuming, this is an unskippable step. If you wish to launch your email campaign at its fullest potential, it is entirely crucial to dig for some extra information, so as to qualify your prospect list accordingly.
This essential, basic information can be found on any social media platform– Linkedin and Twitter being the most convenient options. These platforms often share public profiles, making personality and behavior more easily trackable. Facebook users, on the other hand, tend to have their profiles set to private.
As you may already know, personalization is a key aspect of our digital marketing methods. This applies to conceptual equality when researching and studying our prospects. Each individual has their own unique profile, so it is necessary to layout specific pain points and desires of each target. Different jobs mean different values, different interests, and different psyche. Becoming familiar with what matters most to each person is an easy, yet crucial aspect of your studied research.
When digging through Linkedin profiles, make sure to look beyond only background and experience! Take a peek at the recommendations areas– they frequently display a few hints regarding the professional behavior and work ethics of a person. You might also come across things they have posted themselves and learn an extra helpful bit about this individual’s character.
Companies’ web pages also tend to entail potentially useful insight into the capabilities and interests of prospects. If digging even more deeply, you might come across recent online activities, such as what articles or blog posts have been read lately, or what other interactions have taken place.
You might choose to utilize data platforms such as SalesIntel as an extra guiding tool.
Manage Time Wisely
If you are confident a certain person is a successful lead, it can be very disappointing to spend a long time digging for information to then ultimately receive no as an answer. Researching every individual can lead you into an infinitely deep pool of data collection, so pay attention to set strict limits on how much time you wish to spend on a prospect.
We recommend no more than ten minutes per lead. This should be enough to gather a useful amount of details to best personalize your email text, while still granting you the necessary time to work on other aspects of the campaign.
Using Setting Scores As Tracking Tool
Depending on the set score of each prospect, we, later on, recommend adjusting the level of personalization used in each email. What we mean by this:
A large company is more likely to generate positive reply conversions, and so is someone ranking in a high position. This leads to the clever conclusion of placing them in a top score category. Accordingly, you may then choose to spend more time finding respective prospecting data, as well as more time on thoroughly customizing this top-scoring client’s email.
There are no rules on how to structure this exactly; just be creative and figure out what way of tracking works best for you! For example, you may give each prospect a star number from 1-5, depending on their importance in your campaign. Some criteria to look at when setting scores are:
- Work Position
- Industry
- Company Size
- Decision Making Power
Good Timing To Your Advantage
Timing plays a decisive role in the open and reply rates of your emails. Interestingly, many studies showcase Tuesday as the most effective day of the week to send out a message. With that in consideration, it is easy to conclude that there are other factors that may influence the receptiveness of your prospect.
For instance, companies are more likely to answer positively while budgeting for the upcoming year. Additionally, you could also benefit from their current excitement over a new achievement, sending out a well-timed email outreach. Make sure to research any momentary happenings that might impact the open rate of your prospects.
Conclusion
In this article, we have covered the guiding criteria to best organize and initially go about your email marketing journey. Within finding, searching, and qualifying contacts lies the need for well thought out time management structures, discernment of individual character, determination of relevance in your campaign, personalized application, and the smart use of simple & good timing. Use this formula for a well-planned prospecting affair!
Refer to our latest article and find out how to create engaging copywriting in your email campaigns.
Julia Arguello Busch – Ninja Partners
