5 Email Marketing Tactics That Lead to Demand Generation Success

Email marketing is a versatile tool that has the potential to generate leads through targeted outreach to businesses and the potential decision-makers that can result in increased revenue.

This is often the primary focus of email marketing and other outbound marketing efforts. However,  as prospective clients continue to be well-informed of their options and respond better to relationships with more nurturing, emails, among other methods, can also serve to aid a company’s demand generation campaign. 

What is Demand Generation? 

Although similar in aspects, demand generation is not to be confused with lead generation. While lead generation focuses on converting an engaged audience into high-quality leads, demand generation is often where long-lasting client relationships are formed.

Demand generation grows audiences by creating interest and awareness of a brand, its products, and services that will ultimately result in future conversions and sales.

5 Email Marketing Tactics for Demand Generation

Here we will explore 5 tactics for driving the success of demand generation with email marketing:

1. List Segmentation

The foundation of any successful marketing campaign is a detailed knowledge of its target audience. This understanding should be leveraged to cater to the specific needs of groups within a broad audience. Segmentation in this way can help the personalization of emails and is crucial for ensuring an email marketing campaign is effective. This knowledge can also later be demonstrated in the content of emails (see tactic 2). 

Key information you determine about the intended recipients of your email marketing can then be leveraged to segment lists. These segments can be guided by interests, the issues they face, or by data such as firmographics.

If implemented accurately, segmentation can serve as a starting point for both the email content and the creation and distribution of content topics within email marketing. This means that emails and the content attached can be tailored to their audiences and then sent at the right time to nurture prospects and create lasting demand. 

Informing email marketing campaigns with insights about target audiences from the very beginning helps to boost the capability of emails to generate demand.

2. Personalization

Now that your email marketing is fueled with information and segmentation, it is important to demonstrate this knowledge in the main body of text in the emails. This may include a few comments in an introductory email that are specific to each prospect.

While email cadences can be facilitated by marketing automation, it is important to leave key emails automated. These may include opening emails, emails to regain lost interest, or emails designed to encourage interaction. This is where personalization is most effective and necessary. 

Marketers and sales teams should approach and prioritize personalization with the end goal of creating a lasting relationship with a prospect in mind. As such, even quick research into a prospect, their work, and achievements can be effective in bypassing the awkward nature of a first email and making a prospect feel special.

3. Share valuable content

Due to the ability of email marketing to distribute content, if implemented correctly, emails can have a symbiotic relationship with content marketing. As a vehicle for delivering content directly to its target audience, the effectiveness of emails for demand generation can be boosted by sharing content.

Linking back to proprietary publishing sites has the potential to compound the effect of content and encourage satisfied readers to consume more on-site content resulting in better demand generation.

Content distributed, much like the body of text within an email, should be informed by market research of the preferences and needs of its target audience. It is essential to carefully choose the topics to be shared to ensure that the content is relevant and valuable for the recipient. Irrelevant content may result in further emails being disregarded and demand generation campaigns suffering.

Including a variety of content in emails can help to boost awareness and establish your brand as a thought leader and industry expert. Depending on the engagement with the content shared in emails and feedback, content creation can also be guided and improved to prioritize content that is successful with target segments.

4. Email format

In order for email marketing to be successful in demand generation and retain higher open rates, it is important to invest time in developing a strong email format. This includes optimizing emails for mobile and ensuring images and design features are clear and don’t take a long time to load. The longer emails take to load, the more likely they are to be dismissed.

Email copy should be optimized and kept shorter to suit mobile users. Emails can also be adapted and developed with responsive templates. These automatically identify the model and make of the device the email is being accessed on and adjust the email to fit its screen. They can be customized to prioritize the optimal placement of the most important email features. This might include CTAs or graphics highlighting content and any offers being made.

5. Well-written emails

In addition to personalization, it is essential to align the copy of the email with its functionality to create interest and demand. With this in mind, emails for demand generation should differ from lead generation email marketing and not be sales-focused or push for engagement.

Language choice is also important to consider. Using language that prospects use to describe their problems and industry is another way to show investment in getting to know them and their needs. 

Depending on the target audience for emails, it is worth including light humor and a conversational tone when appropriate. This reminds recipients that you are human, which helps to make any offers seem more genuine and promotes a stronger relationship with prospects.

This knowledge can also be applied to the creation of subject lines (link to email subject lines article when published) to help make emails stand out from a crowded inbox.

Keep emails short and to the point, and let your content speak for itself. Demand generation emails should give prospects the space for nurturing to be possible and for them to consume content when they are ready to. 

As such, it is also beneficial to create an emphasis on the reader and their needs. This also helps to remove the pressure to make a commitment that may otherwise harm demand generation efforts.

Final Thoughts

It is important to manage expectations when it comes to demand generation email marketing. Demand generation can be a longer process than lead generation and largely depends on the accuracy and creativity of the campaign and the responses of individual accounts it targets.

With this in mind, it is imperative for sales and marketing teams to avoid making assumptions and instead continuously adapt strategies to make improvements to key factors such as the best time and day for segments.

The success and potential of demand generation come from engaging and informative content shared with prospects without the pressure of having to commit to a sale. 

As such, emails make a fantastic channel for distributing content that demonstrates the expertise of a brand at the same time as providing prospects with value that helps to build and nurture relationships.