Lead generation in 2021
Lately, companies that use such major lead generation channels as LinkedIn and email have faced the problem of being blocked by spam filters in both channels.
This article will look at how not to be blocked by the spam filters through both channels and give general recommendations on a lead generation strategy for IT companies in 2021.
1 Email.
Here, the recommendations are divided into:
- technical;
- marketing.
Technical recommendations. To reduce the possibility of being blocked by spam filters, you have to:
- configure SPF;
- configure DKIM;
- verify emails with the help of third-party verifiers because if the deliverability is less than 95%, there is a risk of getting blocked by filters;
- develop new domains, namely – gradually increase the number of sent emails for new domains.
We also recommend using an alternative domain for sending emails since you may have problems with the deliverability of the daily work mails if the spam filters block you. If your primary domain is companyname.com, buy additional companyname.net and use this domain cold email outreach.
Marketing Recommendations:
- do not use spam words (sell, order, exclusive opportunity, etc.);
- the subject and time of sending the letter is the key to its opening (the more interesting it is to the addressee, the higher the chance that they will open the letter);
- personalize letters as much as possible: {username} {companyname} is not enough. Use personalized graphics;
- be clear and stick to the point – people don’t have time to read milk and water;
- don’t send more than four letters per month.
2 LinkedIn.
Recently, Linkedin started using the same strategy as spam filters. Namely, it tracks the correlation by three indicators:
number of invites – connection rate – number of responses
If your connection rate is < 30%, your number of invites will be limited to 100 per week. Currently, this innovation has affected about 50% of users.
We rate this moment as positive, as it will reduce the amount of spam in Linkedin and allow making your way through to your client through this social network.
3 General recommendations for a lead generation strategy.
Despite the mentioned above recommendations, the key points of successful lead generation are:
- Qualitative development of ICP and Buyer’s persona. You can do it yourself or invite marketing consultants. A detailed study of your ideal customer portrait allows you not to “spam” everyone in a row and get a good response rate for your letters and messages on LinkedIn at the same time.
- Use innovative tools to improve the effectiveness of your cold outreach campaigns. We recommend you to be careful when using the tools to automate lead generation since many of them can lead to blocking your LinkedIn account or make your mail blocked by spam filters.
- Always use a multichannel approach that will significantly increase the effectiveness of your outreach campaigns. If the person doesn’t respond on Linkedin, send them an email. Put trackers on your site to track who visited your site by IP address and use an account-based approach.
Never stop the lead generation process, even when the number of leads is sufficient, or you do not have people available to fill new orders.
This is because the “acceleration” process in lead generation is quite long, and different leads have different response times (from 3 minutes to 3 years). Thus, when the sales funnel is full and, at one point, the process stops, you can have a “flop” in the number of leads just at an inconvenient time.
If this “flop” happens exactly when a part of your team is free, or there is a crisis in the market, then you will understand how wrong your decision was.
In addition to outbound lead generation, we recommend using SEO – the most effective tool for inbound lead generation. Within a very reasonable time frame, you can get a good stream of inbound leads through SEO.
The most important thing. No matter how well the lead generation process is built in your company, the main thing is the further work of your sales team, how you track the KPI of your sales team, and the percentage of conversions of leads to customers.
