Lead Nurturing is the process of building a relationship with your leads and moving them down your sales funnel until they are ready to become a customer. There are multiple channels you can use to nurture leads. This article focuses on how to use email to move your leads from prospects to purchasers.
1. Value The first priority is to make sure you have something valuable to share with your leads. Think of your lead nurturing emails as mini blog posts – even link them to your blog. Remember, always provide your leads with something interesting and valuable and they will be more than happy to receive your emails and continue engaging with you and your business. Create value with your outreach, but don’t over-inform. Sending content-heavy communication risks losing your prospects. The first time they read something they don’t understand, it will distance them and make them think you aren’t a good fit.
You want your prospects to say “tell me more,” not “please stop talking.”
2. Personal Interaction Personal interaction communication is an open, free-flowing discussion that lets the prospect talk. It’s not telling them what they’re doing wrong by not working with you. Your lead nurturing program should be a deliberate effort to break down barriers with your prospects, inform them, and also build a personal relationship with them. Do something to connect with your prospects on their level and remember it’s NEVER about you, it’s ALWAYS about them.
3. Stay Focused Each nurturing email should be focused around one topic and include a call to action. Put yourself in your leads shoes when creating your emails, they are bombarded by messages all day long and are looking for an excuse to delete your email. Keep the content of your email specific. Speak directly to the problem your lead is trying to solve.
4. Keep It Short This is not the time to worry about fonts, or adding images or custom HTML. Your prospect should be able to glance at your email and within five seconds know the value it provides to them. Information overload happens quickly in email, adding secondary calls-to-action or un-related links to offerings that your lead has shown zero interest in, will increase your unsubscribe rate and reduce the effectiveness of your activity.
5. Measurement Like every other aspect of Inbound Marketing, email testing is a key to fine tuning your campaigns. Click through Rate (the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email) and Unsubscribe Rate, are two of the key metrics to track on a regular basis. A strong lead nurturing campaign will generally have a unsubscribe rate of less than 5%. If your unsubscribe rate climbs above 5%, it’s time to re-evaluate your campaign. Try testing new content or a stronger subject line, or adjusting the timing of your emails.
Final Thought
Lead nurturing programs can take on different forms, from simple campaigns to sophisticated ones within automation platforms. The key here is to do something that keeps you involved and progresses the relationship.
It’s essential that your outreach activity happens regularly. Train your prospects to look forward to receiving your emails. Don’t not fall into the trap of losing the prospect that you invested so much to get in the first place simply because they aren’t buying right now.
The most successful lead nurturing strategies deliver content that helps prospects progress through the buyer’s journey by addressing common questions and concerns. In addition to email tactics, consider how you can use a mix of content types like social media, blog posts, whitepapers, interactive calculators, or even direct mail, to nurture your prospects into customers.
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