All leads age. All email lists become less responsive.
But, it’s what you do with these facts that determine if your database will be a consistent source of revenue or a slow, frustrating graveyard for past opportunities.
Here are 5 actionable steps you can take in one day to generate immediate new deals from almost any database, regardless of age or past neglect.
1. Review your pipeline for lost deals. Follow up with a call and email
Deals are often misplaced for a variety of reasons – distraction, bigger opportunities, higher priorities, or the client just goes quiet. Regardless of the reason, these kinds of opportunities slip off our radar and bury themselves in your database.
Take a moment and do a quick search in your CRM for leads that were marked as opportunities or had a lot of activity, but have been dormant for 30-60 days. Send a quick, short email to each of them following up on the last contact or topic of conversation you had with them. Follow that up with a call.
You’ll be shocked at the percentage of these deals that come back to life.
2. Write and send three emails to your pipeline
Anytime that you’re trying to spark a list, I like to create a timely or relevant three email sequence. Here is an example of an email sequence I might send at the end of the year to get my email list feeling some urgency around the end of the year.
3 subject lines to move your subscribers to action at the end of the year:
- Wrapping up loose ends
- Sometimes the best gift is the boring stuff
- Let’s schedule something for January
The first two are designed to trigger the anxiety and urgency of something that’s just sitting you the back of your mind that you know you need to do, but you feel like it is going to be a pain in the butt. Think about updating your insurance policies or refinancing your mortgage or getting a home equity loan. You want to create an email to pushes the importance of doing that thing but reassures them that it’s super simple with you.
The last one is one of my favorite techniques – give them a relief valve from the typical sales full-court press. This often gets you a response and although you’re suggesting and time in the future, many times they’ll take care of things more immediately because of a renewed feeling of control.
3. Write a new welcome email series
Take the time to review how you’re onboarding new leads into your database. Whether you’re generating leads from your website or importing aged leads, it’s important to start a welcoming dialogue with them.
If you have an existing welcome email series, review and optimize it making sure that it feels fresh and current.
Most of you probably don’t have a welcome series. Adding this simple three to five email sequence will dramatically increase the future engagement and performance of your list.
Here is an example of the approach I typically use in a welcome series:
Welcome Email #1 – Day 0
- Confirm that they are on the list, say a brief hi, ask them why they subscribed, and tell then what will happen next
- Primary goal: Why did you join this list and what do you hope to gain. Get a reply. Start a conversation.
Welcome Email #2 – Day 1
- Do a proper welcome and tell them what to expect. Give them a brief introduction to yourself and give them a tour of your world (this might be your website, other resources, your goal and mission).
- Primary goal: Build some affinity and loyalty to what you’re trying to accomplish and how it aligns with their goals and expectations for being on the email list.
- Note: This will probably be one of your higher unsubscribe emails. That’s okay.
Welcome Email #3 – Day 10
- Start to get them in the rhythm of getting some check-in emails from you.
- Ask them:
- Do you have any questions or immediate challenges you can help them with?
- What did you think of the first email you received from me? Any thoughts or feedback?
- Tell them they are always welcome to reply to any email – you’re listening and it comes straight to your personal email inbox.
- Primary goal: Get a reply
4. Prune your database
Get comfortable deleting zombie emails. If a subscriber or lead has not been responsive – opening or clicking – within the last six months, delete them. You’re not doing them or you any positive service. In fact, emailing unresponsive emails can do serious damage to your email domain and ultimately get you blacklisted – hurting overall deliverability to all of your clients.
Delete and move forward.
5. Restock your database with fresh inquiries
Make sure that you’re always restocking your pond. Whether you’re generating leads on your website, buying real-time leads, or buying aged leads make sure that you’re regularly (once a month or quarter, at a minimum) adding fresh inquiries to your database.
Note the fresh part of this recommendation. Although the price may be attractive on really old data or consumer data, for this strategy to work you need to stay in that 30-90 day window, or your essentially filling your database with stuff that should be deleted – see step 4.
Next Steps?
What are you going to do today? Do you have any other ideas for improving the performance of your book of business? Hit me up with questions or smart ideas in the comments below.
