Cold Lead

A cold lead is a type of marketing lead that expresses no interest in a brand or service. These leads might have never heard of a company. Sales representatives usually reach them via cold emails or cold calling.

In this article, you'll get to know the difference between cold, warm, and hot leads. You'll also learn how to generate and convert them in warm leads. So, stay tuned!

The Difference Between Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads

Although cold leads demonstrate the lowest engagement level, they are as important for companies as warm and hot leads, because they provide new opportunities. Let's make the difference between these types of leads clear.

Cold leads might have never heard about your brand. They don't know that you provide a specific solution to their problem. Alternatively, they might have subscribed to your email newsletter to get a checklist and never interacted with your emails then. Or, your sales representatives cold them some time ago but they expressed no interest in your brand. So, their email address or phone number exists in your database. These leads are at the top of their buyer journey. They are valuable for your business since they have the features of your ideal customer. With a thought-out lead nurturing strategy, you can convert them into customers.

A warm lead is in the middle of your sales funnel. This type of lead have expresses their interest in your product. They might have subscribed to your email newsletter, followed you on social media, visited your website, or left their contact information. Warm leads are aware of your solution but they're not ready to purchase yet. These leads also require some nurturing efforts from your side but they're much easier to convert into clients.

Hot leads are the most promising prospects. They are at the bottom of your sales funnel. These leads need a final push to buy from you. They are aware of your solution and even know your competitive advantages. Hot leads are highly qualified and don't require any nurturing activities to become customers.

Now that you know the peculiarities of each type of lead, we'll consider the ways to generate cold leads.

3 Ways of Generating Cold Leads

There are three ways how your sales reps can generate cold leads. The choice depends on the specifics of your product, your budget, and your level of intrusiveness. Let's consider each one.

1. Cold calling. Sales reps contact people they have never interacted with before. This is a great way to tell about the benefits of your products and consider their competitive advantages. Sales reps should be ready with an effective sales pitch. What's more important, they need to be interested in the needs and desires of leads to provide the best solution. A good sales rep should be able to face objections. To make this strategy work, do some research before calling, develop a script, and identify the best timing. You need to know your prospect well to provide value.
2. Cold emailing. It's an old but gold way of generating leads and increasing brand recognition. Companies send email campaigns to people they have never interacted with before. The most important thing here is that you should not buy email lists. This is SPAM. Leads should share their email address with you. To succeed in cold emailing, choose a reliable email service. SendPulse is one of those platforms. You can send up to 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers each month for free. Warm up your IP address, verify your emails, create an informative subject line and design a nice email to make this strategy work.
3. Social media. Whether you work with B2B or B2C clients, they all spend time on social media. You can't underestimate the power of this channel. Find out the platforms preferred by your target audience and generate leads there. It can be LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. These platforms provide lots of chances to generate leads. You can share the testimonials of your existing clients to let your leads look through them before making a choice. You can also create a chatbot with SendPulse for free to communicate with your potential clients 24/7 without the need to hire a new employee. A chatbot can provide information about your product, assist while making a choice, provide help, answer FAQs, handle orders, etc. Finally, social media is a great place to build your brand community.

Now that you know how to connect with your potential clients, we'll share some tips on how to convert them into warm leads.

How to warm up cold leads?

There are lots of marketing strategies that will help you convert a lead into a customer. You should invest time and money into producing high-quality personalized content. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Provide personalized communication. People appreciate brands that care about their needs, wants, and desires. In a highly competitive market, it’s not the price that makes people choose a brand but the service. Spend some time on research and collecting data about your prospects to provide them with personalized offers in the future. You can do that via email campaigns based on personalization and segmentation.
2. Develop targeted content. Leads at different sales funnel stages are interested in different content formats based on their engagement level and knowledge of your product. Create checklists, step-by-step guides, podcasts, webinars, and cases to attract potential clients, demonstrate the benefits of your product, show how things work, and share reviews of your satisfied customers. All these content types will help you achieve specific goals.
3. Create a lead nurturing strategy. With its help, you can move leads down the sales funnel. It helps educate them, provide help and the necessary information right when they need it. A well-thought nurturing strategy implies sharing valuable content, sending emails, and regular follow-ups based on users’ actions. For example, if they added an item to the shopping cart without purchasing, you can once set an automated email sending. This email will remind them of the product in a cart and provide a discount to buy right now. This email can be sent to all subscribers with items in their shopping cart. SendPulse provides Automation 360 that helps automate communication with clients and increase conversions.
4. Run webinars. A webinar is an online event that helps companies bring in new leads, and increase engagement, brand recognition, and website traffic. During a webinar, you can demonstrate the benefits of your product, show how it works, and share some lifehacks. To get the email addresses of the attendees, you can either let them access it with their address or promise to share the recording in exchange for an email. So, this is a win-win for both parties.
5. Offer a free plan or trial. For SaaS companies, it may be difficult to generate new leads since they are not ready to invest immediately. Users need much time to research, ask for recommendations, and compare different services before purchasing. So, help them to make this decision with a free trial or plan. They will help them evaluate the benefits of your company and understand what they’re paying for. If they like your product, they will buy a subscription to continue using it. Do your best to help your new lead realize the power of your product.

Congrats, now you know how to approach cold leads to convert them into paying customers. Register with SendPulse and make use of email service, SMS, web push notifications, landing page builder, CRM, and chatbots to build long-lasting relationships with your clients!

Last Updated: 22.03.2023