For businesses operating in the modern day environment, competition in the market, and the ability to compete effectively and efficiently, is the biggest indicator for the ability of the business to be able to survive in the long-term. The increased level of competition has created the need for businesses to implement digital tools that aid them across the spectrum of operations in order to maximize efficacy and efficiency. Digital business tools are the legacy of an ever increasing rate of innovation in the macro environment, and while this innovation has drastically increased the competitiveness of the market, it has also provided the solution.
In the previous era’s generating leads and prospects required sales people to cold call on businesses in order to fill prospects into the sales funnel. Today however, websites and social media platforms provide the ideal environment for information gathering and sales prospecting. From this perspective, email marketing is a powerful tool for lead generation, however the right business tool is needed in order to activate it. This article will define and discuss email hunting as the perfect tool for lead generation in the digital space.
What is email hunting?
According to HubSpot, there are approximately 4 billion daily email users in the world, and email marketing revenue is estimated to reach over $11 billion by 2023. From this perspective, it is easy to see why email marketing is an imperative for any business that generates its revenue from sales activities. The greatest challenge in this regard is the ability to reach your specific market in the digital domain with the right message at the right time.
According to HubSpot, there are approximately 4 billion daily email users in the world, and email marketing revenue is estimated to reach over $11 billion by 2023. From this perspective, it is easy to see why email marketing is an imperative for any business that generates its revenue from sales activities. The greatest challenge in this regard is the ability to reach your specific market in the digital domain with the right message at the right time.
How do email hunting tools work?
From the perspective of email hunting tools, there are two main types available: 1. Software that you install on your computer, and 2. Cloud-based tools that you leverage through a subscription. In this regard, cloud-based tools are generally the better option, as the companies that make them available continually update and improve the tool, and additionally, automate many of the processes that would otherwise need to be manually managed – this is the biggest difference between cloud-based software and software that you pay a once off fee and instal on your machine.
Implementing an email hunter is a straightforward process, where you would define a set of search parameters, such as company name, job title, geographic location, etc. and the email hunter will browse millions of websites and social media pages and extract email addresses that match the criteria defined, and then export the information to a defined format such as excel document.
What can you use an email hunter for?
Email hunting tools offer a number of benefits for companies from a lead generation and sales perspective, this include but are not limited to:
- Generating leads
Using an email hunter as a cold calling tool, you can create a search term – that is relevant to your business and product, and find email addresses related to the term in order to contact potential customers. - Collating a database
Originally, marketers would need to comb through websites and manually copy and paste email addresses in order to build a database for their company. Email hunters make this job much more efficient. - Compiling mailing lists
Similar to lead generation, compiling mailing lists for prospecting makes the job of generating new customers and sales much easier. - Conducting market research
You can use email hunter to find email addresses of potential customers that are interested in products and services that are similar to yours, or a potential product you are doing market research for. - Monitoring competitors
You can also use email hunter to keep an eye on the marketing activities of your competitors. Identify how often they send marketing emails or newsletters and then use this information to update your own strategy.
Features to consider when choosing an email hunter
When looking for the perfect email hunting tool for your business, the following five features should form the basis of your search, as well as be the bare minimum requirement of your search:
- Price
Email hunting tools should be affordable and should not cost you excessive amounts of money as subscriptions. They are also very specific tools and generally need to be used in conjunction with other tools to become meaningful. - Ease of use
The best email hunting tools are simple and easy to use. Look for a tool that is intuitive and makes the process fast and efficient. - Speed
Email hunters should be able to extract large amounts of email addresses in a short period of time. - Accuracy
Checking the accuracy rate of the email hunter tool is vital, as if the tool isn’t accurate and makes mistakes, your revenue generating processes are going to fall flat. - Reliability
Choosing an email hunter that has an indexed database is vital as it not only shows credibility, but also reliability.
LeadsChilly is more than just an email hunter
It is important to understand that an email hunting tool is only one of four sales tools that are needed in order to maximize the efficacy of your digital marketing efforts. The remaining three tools are a data enrichment tool, in order to ensure that the data extracted is of the highest quality and accurate, a prospecting tool to automate sales processes and free up valuable time for sales staff, and an email campaign manager to help with the process of ensuring the right message meets your target audience at the right time, with robust reporting in order to measure efficacy and streamline strategic objectives.
These four tools are generally available online, and require different subscriptions and integration in order to make them valuable. Alternatively, a platform like LeadsChilly offers a fully integrated sales system, that streamlines your sales process, and because of the nature of the platform, it offers a 75% savings as compared to individually amalgamating fragmented tools from the web.
Conclusion
Creating an efficient and effective sales process is akin to creating a valuable piece of art. It is time consuming, strategic in nature, and requires high levels of skill to deliver results that are consistent. For this reason, innovative digital business tools offer great advantages for businesses competing in highly competitive environments, but finding the right tools that are a good fit for your business can be challenging. Implementing an end to end sales system such as LeadsChilly, can be the ultimate difference between surviving and thriving in business.
Find out more about the 4 digital tools mentioned in this article by clicking here.