Old sales leads. They don’t sound all that exciting, do they? Dropping a dusty old list of contacts into a sales rep’s lap, on a busy day, is not likely to evoke much more than a tired eye-roll.

While re-visiting potential clients who you never made contact with, or who have already turned you down, may seem like a desperate measure, you are potentially sitting on a huge resource that could actually provide great value to your bottom line. Though you’ll need to use a completely different approach to successfully turn these old leads into hot appointments.

Using a few smart techniques, you can inject renewed life into an old lead. There is a science to converting this type of lead. Here’s just how you can do this.

1 – Cut to the chase

One of the best things about an old lead is that you don’t need to wine and dine them, you can get right to the point. They’ve seen you online, they know who you are, and your first sale’s pitch (or lack thereof) didn’t work. So, cut to the chase: What do you want now? Tell them in 9 words or less using a mass email. And here’s a tip: Drop the HTML design from these emails. Yes, it looks cool, but it isn’t personal, and at the end of the day it looks like an advert. People don’t reply to ads, they reply to people. Keep your messages plain, simple, and to the point, as you would speak to a friend or colleague.

Be willing to sacrifice a part of your lead-list in order to start a fresh conversation with those who are still actually interested. From the thousands you reach out to, some will ask to be taken off your list, but many who respond will still be buying.

2 – Freshen-up your email blast

Aside from your short, sharp and less design-centric email jolt, also consider your more frequent communications. Have you slipped into marketing-speak, and do you sound like a robot in your messages? Scheduled drip emails, or emails automatically sent at set intervals, are not as effective to old leads after six months have passed. But for those more recent leads, well-written drip emails are still a viable way to connect and convert.

By all means set a reminder to compose a fresh email once or twice a month to send all your leads, but any email written months before it goes out is likely to stink of templated dullness. You want to keep it relevant and up to date. Using such sites as Buzzsumo.com you can enter keywords or websites and find trending topics on top social media sites. Alternatively, consider inserts from a popular recent blog post, to bring your customers back to your site, using content that has been proven to engage customers.

The average email open rate is around 20 percent, and only 3-5 percent will click through to your website, if you are lucky. Help increase these odds by using merge codes that let you insert your prospect’s name and avoiding sending from [email protected]; instead, send from [email protected]. Make sure to strike a conversation with entertaining or even educational content over salesy stuff.

3 –  Pick up the phone

It’s not cold-calling if it’s a hot lead. So, how do you know if a potential customer is warming up to you? Email marketing tools such as MailChimp, AWeber or Constant Contact all track user engagement. This lets you identify those people who opened your email, clicked on the link in your message, and might even be on your website right now!

Now you’ve got something that will get a sales rep’s attention. You’re not trying to cajole them into calling a six-month-old lead. Instead, they can contact someone  your email campaign engaged today.

Your rep should time their call with the sending of these messages. If you send your 9-word email on a Tuesday, you can follow up with those leads on the phone later that day and on Wednesday or Thursday as well. Studies show that you’re far more likely to make contact on these days, versus Mondays and Fridays.

4 – Behavior-based follow-up

Once a customer has made their way onto your website, tools such as Woopra, Mixpanel and Intercom can help you to understand what they are looking at, how long they looked at it and how many times. These analytics will help you to rank clients (think lead scoring) by understanding how engaged they really are.

You can even integrate this technology within your own customer relationship management, or CRM, system. Many businesses tag their leads by “date created,” but these tools allow you to tag them by the actions they have made, and when it happened. You can classify who watched your home page video, or lingered on your testimonial page, instead of only looking at leads in terms of how “old” they are.

Use this information to trigger messages that are tailored to their behaviors, coaxing them that little bit closer with something they are actually interested in. If they are on your blog, you can send them a message about subscribing for more posts. And if they were on your reviews page, the message you trigger could offer to send them more.

5 – Targeted ads to complement all of the above

Finally, in the way that you can personalize your emails, SMS campaigns, or notifications on your website, you can find your leads on different platforms, such as Facebook, and retarget them with tailored ads.

Facebook lets you target specific audiences with customized creatives and messaging. You can apply this to people who have recently visited your website, even getting as specific as which pages they visited. For those that are on the fence about your product, you might want to tempt them with a new angle or offer by retargeting them with a relevant ad. This even works post-sale. For someone that just signed up to your paid service, ask them to opt-in to your referral program.

Using this simple, yet multi-pronged approach, you can quickly turn a list of thousands of old leads into potential sales. Combining automated technologies with personalized calls, you can flush out the uninterested, and give sales something to really dig their teeth into. There is no excuse for letting thousands of leads die a slow death when you have the tools to resuscitate them.

Chris Smith is co-founder of Curaytor and the author of the USA Today Bestseller, The Conversion Code, which covers how to capture Internet leads, effectively speak with clients, and close as many sales as possible.

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