How to Generate High-Quality Leads Using Automation

Just a few years ago, I was generating leads through billboards, radio commercials, and designing print marketing materials.

This was also the era of all-denim-everything, drinking juice from Garfield cups, and AOL messenger.

Today, the customer journey has changed. Customers buy experiences, not products.

73 pecent of users say the customer experience is an important factor.

But, only 49 percent of consumers say they’re getting a good customer experience.

Modern marketers need to react to what is happening to the customer journey.

And, with today’s seemingly endless amount of marketing automation tools available, modern marketers are integrating automation into their MarTech stack.

So, I’ve officially jumped on the bandwagon to join the 80 percent of marketers who are using automation software to generate more leads.

The good news?

77 percent of like-minded marketers saw their number of conversions increase after switching to automated systems.

We’re not alone. The majority of enterprise business respondents saw spending in marketing automation to be worth the price.

Marketo generated 2,500+ conversation-qualified leads using automation.

And, Kate Hollar, Marketing Manager at Capterra, saw nearly 4x increased sales leads with automation.

The downside to the power of automation is the pressure it puts on smaller businesses that have more limited resources.

In fact, a lack of resources is the biggest obstacle for 61 percent of marketers working on B2B lead generation.

As the technology develops, it is becoming cheaper and more accessible.

Even with great automation software at your fingertips, there are several other things to consider when designing email campaigns, personalizing your website, and using a chatbot.

Let’s take a deeper look at four ways to generate high-quality leads using automation.

Note: Ready to start generation higher-quality leads for your sales team? See your leads now when you sign up for our free 14-day trial.

Here are 4 ways to automate lead generation

I’ve ransacked the depths of the internet to unearth these four enticing automated lead generation tactics.

1. Automated cold email campaigns

Have you ever felt like this after receiving a poorly designed automated email?

Yep. 🙌🏽 That’s exactly how I felt after reading this email.

And, this email.

According to Content Marketing Institute, 83 percent of B2B marketers still use email as part of their content marketing strategy.

And, 28 percent of customers still prefer to regularly receive promotional emails.

With an expected 3 percent increase in email usage per year, email is the lifeblood to generating your B2B leads.

Using email marketing is still the top lead generation strategy of 2019.

Advanced, automated email systems improve your bottom line.

Don’t believe me?

Tools like Mailshake can help scale your leads through automated email marketing.

Growthscore generated 500 leads in 72 hours using automated email marketed.

According to Campaign Monitor, automated emails increase open rates — and, they also generate 320 percent more in revenue than traditional emails.

All that said, if you want to see revenue jump by up to 760 percent, all you have to do is personalize your emails.

Aaron Ross, CEO of Predictable Revenue, gained 16 new customers simply by personalizing his automated email template.

B2B companies around the world dream about automating their email processes. Harnessing the power of email automation isn’t easy, though.

Ask yourself, how will your company succeed in this elevated era of customer expectations?

2. Automation through personalized website experiences

One misconception about B2B personalization is that it is vastly different from B2C.

The common denominator?

There’s still a human behind the product or service that you’re targeting.

Brian Solis, author and principal analyst at Altimeter, explains it like this.

Business buyers don’t go to work and forget what they do as humans. There’s a new normal that blurs the line between B2B and B2C. They just want things personalized.

According to Salesforce, 75 percent of business buyers foresee that by 2020, companies will be able to anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before even making contact.

It works.

The team at Nuxeo personalized their blog post recommendations to personalize at the one-to-one level for each blog reader.

They saw a 34 percent lift in blog engagement (measured as views of 2+ blog posts) and a 2.4 percent decrease in bounce rate.

Nuxeo isn’t alone.

Dynamic Yield gained 111 percent increase in demo requests after personalizing elements across their site.

Personalized leads can be created from customer behaviors. When looking at customer behavior, you should divide up customers based on marketing personas.

For example, tailoring your homepage for new vs. returning visitors like Gusto.

You can also use behavior-based data geared toward paying attention to how customers navigate your website, then dividing them into groups based on their actions.

RightMessage is a market newcomer that’s tailored to a small business customer.

One of their features, RightBar, allows you to create a welcome bar that changes messaging based on the type of customer seeing it.

No matter how you decided to create customer behavior categories, you will need to establish rules once a customer’s behavior is identified.

Though there is plenty of data to inform your decisions about what kind of personalization to adapt, you still need to manually make choices, create content, and set triggers.

Thankfully, there are plenty of useful automation tools out there to finish the job for you.

3. Automation using a chatbot

Social media can be an amazingly awesome source of leads.

According to Pinpoint Market Research, 64 percent of B2B marketers generate leads through LinkedIn, 49 percent Facebook, and 36 percent Twitter.

However, social media is so much more to your business than a way to generate leads.

These platforms have also become customer service channels through which people expect immediate responses — no matter what time zone they’re in.

For instance, at Leadfeeder, we have our own Facebook Group for Leadfeeder users.

Here is yet another way automation technology comes to the rescue. With massive leaps in artificial intelligence due to machine learning systems, the complexities of language can be managed by chatbots.

According to the 2018 State of Chatbots Report, when users were asked why they would engage with chatbots:

-35 percent said they would use the bot to resolve a complaint or problem -22 percent said they would use it to add themselves to a mailing list -13 percent said they would use it to buy an expensive item

Drift shows us how their customers use chatbots to generate leads.

SalesRabbit saw 40 percent lift in the conversion rate of requests to meetings held and a 50 percent increase in qualified leads after using Drift.

Larry Kim, founder of MobileMonkey, reduced their cost per lead acquisition to 97 percent.

And, at Leadfeeder, we use Intercom’s answer bot to help out our Customer Success team when we’re out of the office.

Of course, a chatbot can’t do everything for you when it comes to communicating with customers.

However, for most consumers, 64 percent, said chatbots are useful because they are available 24/7.

So, unless you’ve got endless resources to pay employees to provide 24/7 customer service, using chatbots has become essential.

Even if you can’t answer right away, you can still gather enough information to generate a lead.

4. Lead automation tools using your website data

In addition to chatbots, pop-ups, lead generation pages, and email software, there are automated tools that generate leads based on who visits your website, like us at Leadfeeder.

Tactikmedia gained 600 accounts using Leadfeeder.

And, AlertOps increased demo rates by 700 percent using Leadfeeder.

Leadfeeder is a bit different than other lead generation tools.

Leadfeeder will automatically identify companies visiting your website, which will help you determine which visitors to contact directly.

Along these same lines, you’ll be able to set up Slack alerts when specific companies visit your site.

You can even connect such tools to your CRM to create a centralized database of information for following up with all leads — regardless of how you initially connected with them.

Final thoughts: How to generate high-quality leads using automation

Successful lead generation, as well as lead nurturing, hinges on relevance.

You can create relevance through personalizing content, prompt responses, or combining the two through automated email campaigns.

Introducing automation to your lead generation efforts makes the process fast and efficient by eliminating low-value and repetitive tasks from your workday.

Not only will automation end up being quicker, but you’re also going to get better results.

Note: Ready to start generation higher-quality leads for your sales team? See your leads now when you sign up for our free 14-day trial.