I've noticed a trend that seems to be getting worse with the current economy: as marketers, we've become control freaks. Let me explain what I mean by giving you a few examples of what I've observed recently:

• A lot of marketers are creating sales materials and promotional flyers without asking for feedback from their sales force. Is this because they want all the glory for themselves?
• Several marketers who send email or direct mail campaigns want these communications to come from their marketing department instead of sending them on behalf of each salesperson. This gives them more control over the leads, but are there other motives?
• Most marketers don't have a blog for their website, but they still won't allow the sales team to create their own blog. Are they afraid of a little competition?

If you're in sales, you may feel like you're trapped in a constant cat-and-mouse game with your prospects, forced to chase them around until they're ready to buy. This usually means that you need to make relentless follow-up phone calls so they won't forget about you. But is there a better way to create top-of-mind awareness (TOMA) with prospects without investing so much time? For many salespeople, the best solution is to create an automated lead nurturing campaign.

If you plan to use email to keep in touch with people, it's important that every email message creates value and earns their trust. This means that you'll want to avoid sending those marketing materials your company created. You'll also want to quit "checking in" to see if the prospect is ready to make a decision. These types of approaches are self-serving and worthless to the prospect.

It's time to create a lead nurturing campaign that delivers  information and resources that are relevant and useful to your prospects. You're probably wondering what kind of content to send. Here are my recommendations:

Email blasts can be a great way to promote a new product or make a company announcement to a large group of clients or prospects. However, it is usually not the best approach. Here are 3 downfalls of sending blast emails:

1. An email blast is an event

We all know that a single event doesn't create a relationship. This requires an ongoing dialogue, or series of well-timed events.

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Over the past several years, email has been one of the best lead generation tools I’ve used for making sales. However, the problem with the emails that most salespeople send is that they all tend to resemble SPAM. Do away with generic sales messages and never email a brochure or marketing piece to a cold prospect.

While there are numerous times you can use email for lead generation, I've found there are 4 key points in the sales process where I use it most:

A lot of companies have a monthly newsletter they mail or email to clients and prospects as a way of keeping in touch. Once a month, the marketing department sends an email blast out to the world, and everyone gets the same message. But does this approach actually generate leads for the sales force?

If you don't use a newsletter but think you need to have one, this article should save you a lot of wasted time. Here's the thing: newsletters are dead. In fact, recent research shows that less than 10% of people even open them. There are several reasons for this:

He had a great first meeting with the prospect. His solution was well-received and the prospect even had the budget to pay for it. After the meeting, the prospect told him to follow up in a few days. Early the following week, he followed up and left a voice mail for the prospect. He called again the next day and left another message. And another. Then he tried sending an email but still no response. Now a month has gone by and unfortunately he has a better relationship with the prospect's voice mail system than he does with the prospect.

Every salesperson has had this happen countless times. You may have even learned to "beware of an easy prospect." But when a prospect stops responding to your follow-up efforts, what should you do? As a long-term strategy, I recommend creating a lead nurturing system. Short term, here are a few other suggestions:

Most salespeople dread the idea of cold calling, and it can often help to send a pre-call letter or email. We have tested literally hundreds of different email formats--some with long copy and some with only 1 sentence. Here are 5 rules to think about when creating your pre-call email campaigns:

1. Avoid being self-promotional

You may think the purpose of a pre-call email is to educate the prospect about your company and services. It's not. Overly-promotional messages create anxiety with the prospect and sound like spam. Oftentimes, the less you say about yourself the more a prospect wants to talk to you.

2. Create familiarity in the messages

Instead of telling a prospect about your company, tell him what you know about his company or industry. Do you know about a trend or current challenge? Are you working with similar companies? If so, let them know in the first sentence of your email.

Instead of emailing your prospects and clients the typical promotional product information, why not send them a relevant article, white paper, or video that will actually bring them value? It's much more interesting for the prospect, and it shows them that you're thinking about their business.

The idea of "article marketing" is an emerging email marketing solution that many businesses are leveraging.

There are several resources on the internet that will help you find terrific content. Here is a short lis:

Video is quickly becoming a mainstream medium for the internet. Just look at the popularity of sites like YouTube, and you'll quickly realize that video could also be an effective lead generation tool.

Video is still an emerging tool for lead generation, but I predict that within 3 years marketers will be sending out more videos than they send company newsletters or sales brochures. And as Google learns better ways to help people search for video content, videos will start to show up more frequently in search results--driving more traffic to your website.

The big question is: How can you use video as a lead generation tool?

First, I'd recommend that you put videos on YouTube and several pages of your company website. Then, get the word out through email. I'll show you how to create a targeted email campaign and send the video to your entire contact database.

If you design your email message correctly, you'll find that a video email will often have more than 3 times the response rate of a normal, text only email message. There is also the "wow factor" when people receive an email with a video in it, since this is still not common.

Here are a couple ways in which you can insert a video inside an email message:

The concept of "Article Marketing" is growing in popularity as people realize that it can be a powerful (and free) way to create free website traffic. If you're not taking advantage of it, you're missing out.

I've been publishing articles and e-books for the past 3 years. As a result, it has driven thousands of visitors to my website and created several new clients. I should also note that being a published "expert" will build your credibility and allow you to potentially even raise your prices.

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Here's what you'll find inside the article:

In today's economy, a lot of sales forces and marketing departments have had their budget cut. Meanwhile, they're being asked to generate more revenue than last year. There's good news, though: a lot of your sales and lead generation efforts could be automated, saving you both time and money.

Here are some of the ways you could use email to create an automated lead generation machine for your organization:

This article is courtesy of MarketingSherpa, from a recent case study.

SUMMARY: A long-term, strategic lead generation plan is essential for complex sales. But when market conditions change rapidly, you might find opportunities for ancillary campaigns that help address your customers’ immediate pain points.

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