Part III: The Lead Gen Digital Farm

This is the third part in a series on smart farming and Lead Gen. Part I and Part II are great reads. But it’s ok if you want to skip to this part, we won’t tell.

In the first two parts of this series we discussed what farming is, the proper mindset going into it, how to identify your farm, and how to plant the seeds and nurture them to begin growing your own opportunities, not just buying them from a leadgen company.  We covered direct mail(“Land”), we covered digital retargeted advertising (“Air”), and that leaves us with “Sea” in our three prong attack, which is what we will call Email marketing.    

Are you an inbox zero kinda person – or do you ascribe to the “fill er up” mentality? 

Personally, I treat my inbox similar to a twitter feed, or my FB feed, once it goes in, it doesn’t come out, so I can search through it later should I so need.  Either way, the thing to remember about emails is that the strategy is no different than a direct mail piece, it’s all about message, and timing.  Remember, Email marketing has not been around forever and is still evolving.  Tactics that worked 3 or 6 years ago – or even pre pandemic might be dated or overused and spent.

In part one we talked about cadence, and messaging with respect to postcard campaigns.  It’s important to remember that any living, breathing, person is an opportunity at some point in their life, there are only two things that differentiate a good lead from a bad one: timing and message. 

With that in mind I would recommend an email marketing strategy that mirrors the postcard strategy we implemented in part I , but delivers a day or two after the physical mail gets delivered, with a subject line that points to the previously delivered mailer.  “Following up on my postcard the other day” is a pretty generic (read as: not great but serviceable) option. 

The consumer ought to see you all over their newsfeed, then they get a letter in the mail, then an email following up on the letter, and if they engage with any of the above, a phone call to “fact find” on what their needs are.  Thats te goal – so they see you everywhere.

Remember, like we said in Part II, everyone communicates best in their favorite mode (phone, text, DM, AOL IM…)  – so we want to have all the options on the table – not just your fax number because you like faxing. (If you are still faxing clients for leads, you are never gonna get it)


And now it’s time for a break down.

Here’s a little more detail of the cost associated with the proposed strategy to take your farm from bare dirt to fresh organic produce.  These figures are estimates, and obviously would vary by market.

Month 1 expense:

$5k Reveal monitoring for the year

$2500 EDDM 

$60/wk VLM mail = $240

$300 EM mail

$100/k/mo retargeting = $500

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Total: $8540

Month 2 Expense:

$60/wk VLM mail = $240

$300 EM mail

$100/k/mo retargeting = $500

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$1040

Month 3 Expense:

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Same as month 2 = $1040

Month 4 expense:

Month 3 + EDDM cost ($2500)

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$3540

ANNUAL COST:

$27480 includes physical mailers, social media retargeting, and email campaigns

Savings from a monthly EDDM campaign = $2520 and you’re reaching them on multiple platforms using multiple mediums and focusing your most costly efforts on those most likely to convert, without ignoring the ones who may get missed because of other emails etc.

Epilogue: There is no One Ring to Rule them All

On their own, any of these strategies can provide a certain level of success.  Combining them without the insights Revaluate provides can also help you cultivate opportunity.  Think of Revaluate’s Reside/Reveal predictive insights as the fertilizer to help make your crops grow as quickly, and as efficiently as possible.  There is no “one ring” or magic bullet, but well thought out and implemented strategies, working synergistically with each other, and applied consistently will help wean you off the junk food (leads) and grow your business into a self sustaining and profitable endeavor.  It won’t happen overnight, but in the immortal words of Nipsey Hustle:

To get started sewing your digital fields visit www.revaluate.com/talk and mention this post to receive a special Smart Farming package deal.