20 Oct 5 Proven Tactics for Re-Engaging Cold Leads

Cold leads are a common frustration many businesses experience in B2B lead generation. It’s a shared experience even with highly successful mega companies despite most businesses having incredible sales teams. Cold leads are so common, because, try hard as you may, some prospects simply don’t convert. 

Having a high number of cold leads can be discouraging, but it’s important to know that all hope is not lost if your business keeps getting cold leads. No one looks forward to cold leads, and sales teams will employ many techniques to circumvent this. However, you may still lose leads despite your best efforts. As long as your team is ready to re-engage with them, there are proven techniques for winning them back. 

1. Tap your last touchpoint along the sales funnel

Knowing precisely who your cold leads are, and at what touchpoint they fell off can be incredibly helpful with re-engaging cold leads. Picking up from their last point of contact helps inform strategies for reconnecting with them. Sometimes, your attempts to spark a conversation with a cold lead might fail. 

For example, when you find a prospect that fell off at the discovery stage of your sales funnel, targeting them with content suited for leads that went cold at the consideration stage would be irrelevant. 

This kind of content fails to resonate with them enough to convince them to come back into your sales funnel. Be gentle in your approach and remind them of why they were interested in your brand in the first place. Keep positioning your product or service’s solution to their challenge with each message to gently remind them how you can make their lives easier. 

2. Energize your re-engagement strategy

Sometimes your re-engagement strategy can do more harm than good. If you’re trying to warm up leads and fail, you may be using the wrong tactics. Listen to your prospect’s needs and learn what their frustrations are. This can help breathe new life into your re-engagement strategies and make them more appealing to cold leads. It’s also important to gauge your timing to ensure your messages are received well. 

Try contacting leads at different times to see when they’re more receptive, or use drip campaigns with your email outreach strategies to ascertain the best times to reach out. Using CRM and automation tools also increases the efficiency of your re-engagement strategy as they make it easier to find information on leads, such as the last days they interacted with your brand. They’re also incredibly useful for setting automated follow-up messages that are automatically sent after a lead has been inactive for some time. 

3. Personalization is the key

Nothing turns a cold lead to ice faster than a generic one-size-fits-all re-engagement message. It gives them the impression your business doesn’t care enough to reach out personally. Custom messages add a human touch to online interactions and show leads they’re more than just a number to a business. Personalization is also vital to client retention and increased loyalty and return purchases. 

Personalization also goes beyond using the prospect’s name. Messages should be warm, contain only relevant content, and shouldn’t be too sales-focused. Custom communication can be done by simply reaching out to check on the prospect and mentioning something personal about them. Examples are events such as a new hire, achievements, or disappointments they’ve faced and other desires or challenges specific to them. Emphatically show you know their current situation and may understand their future needs to ensure your message resonates. 

4. Be wary of timing and triggers

Sometimes, leads grow cold because the sales team hasn’t had the right opportunity to interact with them and get them to convert. Trigger events create an opening for such opportunities and give sales teams a chance to strike while the iron is hot and close a deal. These trigger events can be blatant, such as a new executive taking over the sales decision process, or they can be more subtle. Whatever they may be, keep an eye out for such events so you know the right time to engage a cold lead. 

It’ll remind the prospect about your company, show them you’re keeping up with their activities, and create an ideal opportunity to connect and establish your business cares. LinkedIn is an excellent place to spot trigger events in the B2B landscape. Many businesses share recent happenings and company updates on the platform frequently. You can also set Google alerts that send a notification when something new happens to a cold lead. Another way to learn about trigger events is by keeping up with industry news. 

5. Try different channels to see what works best for you

Emails, calls, and messages are some of the communication channels that can be used to reconnect with cold leads. Many businesses consider emails one of the most effective channels for re-engagement. But businesses need to explore other channels, including traditional methods, such as print mail. You can use many different channels as long as you’re confident they’ll convert them successfully. If you know your cold leads have communicated via emails and phone calls with your business in the past, trying to contact them via social media messages may not work in your favor. 

Try multiple channels until you find the ones they respond to the most, and target them heavily here with relevant messaging that rekindles their interest in your offer. Avoid overusing these channels, as it’s easy for leads to get overwhelmed if you send them too many messages or try to contact them too often. Also, keep your messages short, respectful, and straight to the point so they know you value their time and they don’t lose patience.

Linked Strategies provides automation messaging and gifting program solutions that help businesses connect with cold leads. These engagement strategies help your business return to the top of your cold leads’ minds, guaranteeing they convert the next time they interact with your brand. Contact us today to get started.