In any business, generating more leads means more potential conversions. Traditional methods of gathering said leads have proven to be effective, but it’s time to take it a step further with AI in lead generation.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing new by any means, but it certainly has been a welcomed solution in lead generation. To be more specific, lead generation has grown to adopt AI for B2B marketing strategies that bring incredible results.
Although it may seem complex, there are plenty of ways that anyone of any skill set can utilize AI in their lead generation campaigns for some staggering results.
Why is AI important in lead generation?
Software and tools that utilize AI platforms and other algorithms behave by collecting and analyzing data, handling sales records, and a wide range of marketing strategies to improve technologies like CRMs. AI has led to improvements in customer management, sharper sales insights, and efficient social networking. This provides precious business insights, allowing decisions to be made to increase ROI and ROAS.
AI gives lead generation tools the ability to learn and make predictions. For example, using AI and machine learning, you can identify and target lookalike audiences on a large scale. Because the AI has seen and analyzed the patterns in your traditional audiences, it can extract insights and give you information on leads that best fit your narrative.
In short, AI takes a lot of the headaches and obstacles out of lead generation by using data you already have. It’s like having an analyst on your team dedicated to looking for insights and patterns, all without hiring anyone.
The best AI-powered lead generation techniques for 2022
One of the best things you can do for your lead generation strategy in 2022 is to implement AI and tools that utilize AI.
In this post, we’ve compiled a list of techniques and strategies that you can utilize to take full advantage of this technology now.
Gather sales intelligence and lead data
In the B2B marketing realm, any marketer will tell you that the biggest problem with lead generation is gathering the leads. It is a struggle.
AI has found a way to make this issue less stressful. You can picture AI as a fellow team member. It’s there to study and analyze patterns and data within your existing lead generation strategy. Using this data, AI can then identify and target lookalike audiences.
But it doesn’t stop there. Other than extracting intelligence from huge market research data sets, AI can also help gather leads in the following ways:
- Using sources like your CRM and data warehouses, AI can examine profiles of customers, transactional data, and behavior data.
- AI can take real-time data from the sources above and help determine your ideal customer.
- AI can also analyze and help determine the best tech stack for enticing prospects. It can even suggest the ideal style of communication for completing transactions.
AI has even gone so far as to analyze Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to find ideal profiles for advertising and additional marketing. It goes through these profiles and determines preferences and interests to be sure that your advertising and marketing efforts are effective.
We’ll go more into the exact tools you can use to help this process in just a bit. For now, all you need to know is that AI is more than capable of everything I’ve mentioned and what’s to follow.
Create and target AI-generated lists
Believe it or not, AI has come far enough to help create targeted lists. This plays heavily off of what we mentioned above with gathering data and using existing data to help identify the highest-quality prospects. By doing this, it can also do the following:
Create contact database
AI can create a contact database based on industry, companies, and other factors with real-time updates. Once this data is collected, AI can maintain updates to ensure that marketers have the most up-to-date information. AI can even validate contact information and help you locate your TAM.
Create automated email lists
Email marketing has come a long way, but if you add AI into the mix, it’s one of the most powerful lead nurturing techniques out there. Using AI, email marketers can see how many leads click on links, check their open rates, and determine how leads respond to certain emails.
Content generation
Content creation isn’t an easy thing to accomplish. That being said, AI has made it easier in recent years. We’ve seen a number of AI-powered tools like Copy.ai that can help you generate almost any type of content from articles for ad creatives.
At Encharge, we launched our own AI-powered email subject line generator; it’s completely free, so make sure to give it a try.
Predictive lead scoring
Lead scoring is the process of assessing prospects to determine their value. This is done on a scale, and usually, the ceiling is 100. The higher the score, the better, and any number of factors can contribute to the score for lead scoring.
Using predictive AI, you can calculate a score for all your open leads, helping push them through the sales funnel just a little bit faster. This enables you to understand which leads need to be prioritized and which leads might benefit from a little more nurturing in their current stage.
AI-based segmentation
Lead generation is nothing without accurate lead and user segmentation. If you’re unfamiliar, lead segmentation is the process of dividing your leads into separate groups based on behaviors, demographics, interactions, and many other factors.
AI-based segmentation inserts machine learning into the whole equation. Using natural language processing through your user data and interactions, AI can pick up on and learn from customers’ values, emotions, and feelings. Then, it will apply segmentation rules accordingly.
AI can then take it a step further. Using segments from smaller data sets, machine learning can perform lookalike analysis. This will help identify segments that share the same attributes within a larger customer database.
AI in email marketing
Automation has come far enough to predict and send out emails based on behavior and actions made by the lead. For example, behavior-based emails can trigger and send if a lead clicks a CTA, signs up for a newsletter, or downloads a marketing asset.
You can also use AI to optimize email send times at the individual level to ensure each lead is more likely to see your emails — a technology named predictive email sending.
Tools that you can use for better AI-powered lead generation
Without the right tools under your belt, AI can be hard, if not impossible to utilize. For many categories, AI is essential for productive lead generation. Here’s a list of tools you can use in a few categories across the marketing board.
GrowBots – Lead generation AI
GrowBots is a powerful, AI-driven tool that helps you with your lead generation efforts. It has over 200 million always-updated contacts in its database, and it is connected through many of the top social media platforms.
Using AI, GrowBots creates profiles for every lead in its database, using machine learning to keep it updated through those social profiles. Data such as businesses, preferences, names, and other important needs is all captured and stored in the database by the AI.
Companies can use the database and find their ideal customer based on information that they know is accurate. All of this is possible within minutes in this massive database. Anyone can input their ideal audience’s specific requirements, and with the AI algorithm, a list of specific potential customers will pop up. Because of the unique and specific parameters, the leads that appear after the AI has done its work will have a much higher conversion potential.
Drift – Chatbot automation AI
AI is often utilized in tools like chatbots for a more streamlined and human-like interaction between a company and its customers. In fact, they boast a lot of benefits.
Drift uses advanced AI algorithms to help companies aid customers in the sales process with generated messages based on a number of factors. Drift’s chatbot uses data from conversations between representatives of your company and the customers. Using that data, it can then answer questions and even understand the criteria to generate a good lead.
If you’re not currently utilizing a chatbot, this is a great place to start. Chatbots provide for less friction between your solution and waiting customers. Throw in some AI, and it can provide customers with a seamless and frictionless experience.
Signum – Audience parsing AI
In lead generation, the name of the game isn’t necessarily quantity, but quality. After all, what good are 10,000 leads if none of them plan to convert?
Signum is an AI-powered audience parsing tool that can help you generate more quality leads. This will help you focus more on leads that have high conversion potential, and segment those leads that aren’t high priority into separate lists.
Using these lists, Signum can even help generate high-quality content to attract new leads. Without going into too much tech-talk, Signum uses an entity-embed method that reinforces prospect selection based on their preferred content.
If you’re having trouble with accurately creating segmented lists, then Signum might be a good solution for you. Give it a shot and let us know your thoughts.
Albert – Prediction AI
We mentioned the power of prediction with AI above, and Albert is a great tool for you to utilize such insights. What makes it unique is its behavior-based prediction algorithm. Claiming to be your self-learning marketing ally, Albert analyzes behavioral patterns that ultimately lead a customer to a sale. Using the information it collects, Albert will then target the audience that most relates to your business and is likely to make a purchase.
Albert is a great resource because it works across multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google and determines what actions you need to take to optimize and maximize performance across each platform.
When implemented into these platforms, Albert uses data from previous sales to analyze, attract, and convert lookalike audiences.
If you’re looking for advanced AI solutions that are somewhat out-of-the-box, then Albert might be a good fit. Check it out.
Lusha – B2B lead generation
Lusha is an AI-powered lifesaver for those in the B2B space. As I stated at the very beginning of this article, the biggest issue marketers have with lead generation is actually generating leads. It’s a big first step, but often the gap is too large for marketers to make it to the next step.
Lusha makes that process easier with its AI-powered software, giving users the ability to find more qualified B2B contacts based on intelligent criteria. It will sort through them and reach out to them through the most convenient channels.
Prospex – Customer targeting AI
Prospex is another tool that works wonders with AI in lead generation, but this one comes with a twist. What makes it unique is that it connects these targeted leads through both the sales and marketing teams. It delivers leads that are tailored specially to meet your targets and sends them to a sales representative that can handle the conversion.
You provide the data, and then the tool creates a profile that it determines is your ideal customer. It will then search for new leads that match the persona. As time goes on and you use Prospex more, the algorithm gets better and better.
Encharge – Email marketing automation
Encharge is an email automation marketing tool that allows you to create and send emails based on what people do on your website, automating your marketing process across the entirety of the customer journey.
Remember that subject-line generator AI we were talking about before? Well, Encharge utilizes that so that you can create powerful subject lines that people actually want to click.
Encharge allows you to go beyond simple emails and messaging, giving the sales and marketing teams the tools and information they need to better their practices and efforts. With Encharge, you can easily attract, convert, and onboard new leads and customers. Understand what they’re thinking with the Flow builder feature.
Be confident in your email marketing. Send it flying leagues ahead of your competition with automation and AI capabilities powerful enough to back it up.
Conclusions and takeaway
AI in lead generation is becoming more and more prevalent. Without it, we would not be able to gain such insights into our ideal audiences, target them accurately, and nurture them through to the end of the funnel.
It’s clear that there’s still plenty of room for improvement. As technology advances, new ways of incorporating AI in lead generation are discovered, and people become more welcome to the idea, you can expect to see it a lot more.
For now, take a look at the tools and techniques that I mentioned above, and try to incorporate them into your own lead generation strategy. I also encourage you to do your own research to find out what AI-powered tools you could benefit from in marketing and sales. There are a lot out there to choose from, but we definitely went over some of the best above. Check them out and let us know what you think.
And as always, for all of your email automation needs, look no further than Encharge. With powerful features and implementations, you can reach your ideal audience with powerful messages that are proven to make the conversion, onboarding, and retention process easier.
Read next: How To Use AI To Predict User Engagement in Marketing (Guide 2024)