Hello, Is it Leads You’re Looking For?
August 23, 2019
7 Useful Tips and Best Practices for Lead Generation
Lead Generation isn’t always easy but is a crucial part of being able to measure return on investment. Madden is no stranger when it comes to collecting leads for clients; with launching our own travel resource, VacationistUSA, we have loads of experience to help spread our knowledge. Let us make your DMO life a little easier!
Why is sharing lists for lead generation a tactic of the past?
Email list sharing was a popular lead generation tactic to build a quick database way back in Y2K. While this tactic used to work well, it now faces several challenges as technology evolves to protect the privacy of the user along with sender reputations. With this recent evolution of policies, many email vendors like Constant Contact & MailChimp no longer allow sharing email lists with a single opt-in for multiple advertising participants.
The value of these leads deteriorates with list sharing as users expect trust & privacy from a brand they recognize. Even if you have great content, users expect to receive emails from a brand they are familiar with. If a user is not familiar with the brand a few things can occur:
- Low open rates
- Email is flagged as spam
- Perceived as a lack of trust
- Lower engagement with your brand and less potential to convert
This results in:
- Damage to email sender reputation, like seriously you could get blacklisted!
- Unsubscribes
What should I do if partners in my organization want to use my email list?
Send a dedicated email on behalf of your partner. This could mean directing traffic directly to their content or offering an opt-in so leads can receive information from your partners in the future through their own email marketing campaigns. By working with your partners in this way, you can also ask the partner to return the favor by including a call out for your DMO into their emails.
What does Madden recommend for capturing leads?
TIP 1: Focus on campaign initiatives directly on your website to keep travelers feeling safe about the info they are providing. It’s also not a bad idea to have the added protection of double-opt-in via a welcome email after they give you their information.
TIP 2: If you don’t have a website form or the budget or time to add one to your website, Facebook Lead Ads are the perfect solution. You can capture leads and email sign-ups which can easily export to a CSV file and transferred into your email marketing database.
TIP 3: If you are not keeping your leads collections on your website be sure to work with a reliable leads source & request to see the opt-in verbiage they are using. As we mentioned earlier you NEVER want to buy or share a list of leads. It’s gross just don’t do it!
TIP 4: Instead of traditional sweepstakes giveaways offer small giveaways like SWAG along with a visitor guide download or request for a physical copy. This provides users with information on a client’s destination as well as the potential to receive some free stuff.
How can I nurture my leads?
Keeping an engaged list of leads is key to keeping your sender reputation up to par with your email marketing automation vendor. If you are not taking steps to nurture your leads by sending content
TIP 1: Use an Email scrubbing & validation service to remove invalid emails to make sure your leads list is free potential spam traps. No one wants to waste emails sends to users who yield a pretty email metric to show to your board.
TIP 2: Work with Madden to get set up with a reliable marketing automation vendor like Sharpspring, yep we are a partner!
TIP 3: Use your email list for expanding on other Digital Marketing initiatives like remarketing display ads using Google’s Customer Match.
