This article was kindly written by our friends at BenchmarkONE.
Are you generating leads that suddenly go dead in the water? Maybe your marketing content isn’t maintaining the impact it used to? You need to know about email nurture campaigns – a great way to keep your leads hot, interested, and engaged.
Whether you work with a lead generation agency, or manage it in house, consistently generating qualified leads isn’t easy. In a report by Hubspot, they found that 61% of marketers rank lead generation as their #1 challenge. But what happens once you’ve generated the lead?
In order to convert those leads you’ve worked hard to generate into customers, you need to contact them quickly and start building that relationship.
In this article, we’ll dive into the best email marketing tactics you can use to help turn a new lead into a customer: email nurture campaigns.
How to Use Email Marketing to Engage New Leads
Email marketing is a highly effective strategy. In fact, for every dollar spent on email, marketers see an average return of $42. There aren’t many other marketing strategies out there that can deliver that kind of ROI.
But:
You can’t expect to see your profits climb unless you’re using the correct email strategy.
What are Email Nurture Campaigns?
Email nurture campaigns involve a sequence of emails sent to your leads based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. You can automate these emails based on site user-interaction or qualifying factors like industry, region, or job title.
Each email within your nurture campaign should provide essential resources, education, or helpful content that your leads can use. The aim is to increase brand awareness and clarify what your company does/offers, helping you move your lead through your funnel and – ultimately – closer to a sale.
Why do Email Nurture Campaigns Work?
Email nurture campaigns work because, by nature, they’re personalised, allowing you to segment your leads based on pre-determined factors. The returns support this, too: a personalised email marketing approach can generate an ROI of 122%!
A new lead on your site can be defined by user action. Perhaps your visitor:
- Filled out a form to download a piece of content
- Signed up for a demo, or
- Subscribed to your newsletter.
Website forms can help determine what stage your lead is at in the customer journey. The right questions on your web form can help identify the type of nurture campaign likely to be most effective for each lead.
Ask for specific information. Aside from name and email address, you can ask for things like:
- Industry
- Job title
- Region
- Marketing budget
Of course, you could just ask for a name and email address. But, it’s easier to send compelling, personalised campaigns if you have more information about your lead.
Email nurture campaigns supersede bulk email blasts completely, and for good reason: each lead has specific needs, questions, and concerns.
It doesn’t make sense to send the same content to everyone.
How to Implement an Email Nurture Campaign
To get your email nurture campaign underway, you’ll want to first think about what you need from each campaign. Take into consideration how you qualify and segment your leads.
If you qualify your leads based on the industry they’re in, then you may want a separate campaign geared towards each industry you target. But try to get more granular than that, too: think about the buyer’s journey and how it relates to the industry you’re targeting.
Each stage of the journey has a different point of view – choose specific types of content to address each point of view, along with questions that accompany it.
How to Determine Email Nurture Content by Buyer’s Journey
Let’s break this down into three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision – with suggestions about the most effective content at each step.
- Awareness – This stage is about heightening the visibility and awareness of your brand. Your content is getting your brand in front of a new audience and leading them back to your site to learn more, becoming a lead in the process. Guest-contributed articles placed on external publications, online ads, press mentions, and webinars are all great at doing that.
- Consideration – Leads at this stage are newly converted and are starting to look more deeply into your brand offering. They’re gaining an idea of what your company does and how it can help them with their needs. Content that works at this stage: blog posts, case studies, email newsletters, and webinars.
- Decision – It’s time for your leads to either sign up for your services and become a customer or decide to go elsewhere. Content at this stage of the journey should help them make a decision. Things like case studies, demos, or customer testimonials are particularly effective.
Let’s Get Started With Email Nurture Campaigns
Now that you know what types of content serve each stage, you can start your campaigns. You’ll want each campaign to consist of 4-5 emails, and they should go out within a few days of each other.
Avoid annoying your subscribers by emailing them too much – space your emails out. It’s about walking the fine line between staying top of mind and not inundating leads with too much outreach.
Each email should include a piece of helpful content that addresses questions your leads may be asking within their particular stage of the journey. The goal is to gradually educate your leads – advancing them through your funnel and encouraging them to either sign up for a demo, talk to a sales rep, or make a purchase.
You’re probably wondering how you’ll have enough time to send all these emails to your segmented lists. Well, don’t worry. There are tools for that.
Tools You’ll Need to Send Email Nurture Campaigns
The beauty of email marketing is that it has evolved. You no longer have to send individual emails to your leads in the hope of getting a response (let alone a sale). If you have the right tools, all you need to do is prepare everything at the front end and then set your automations.
Let’s go over some of the best tools that help you pull off your email nurture campaigns the right way.
Landing Pages and Website Forms
You need a way to generate leads (and gather information) in the first instance. So, having a tool that allows you to create website forms is crucial. You’ll also want to create landing pages so you can promote them through online campaigns, directing new site traffic to a specific page aimed at converting them into a lead.
CRM
A customer relationship management (CRM) tool helps you keep track of your customers’ on-site activity. It can help identify how leads are engaging with your content while recording the interactions you and your team have had with them. This insight enables you to get to know your leads better so you can ace that personalised outreach.
Email and Marketing Automation
No more manual emails. Use email automation to send out your newsletters and campaigns on your behalf. That way, your leads will receive nurture while you’re busy doing other things. And, with marketing automation, you can trigger specific emails to be sent out based on the website pages your leads visit, the forms they fill out, and the emails they subscribe to.
Analytics
Understanding how your emails perform gives you insight into which practices are successful and which need to be revamped. Look for tools that provide analytics, like email opens, click-through rate, bounce rate, links clicked, and unsubscribes.
Generating leads with email nurturing
Creating sales is a two-part game. You first have to generate leads, then instil strategies that turn those leads into educated, informed prospects ready to buy.
When you put together email nurture campaigns, keep in mind the buyer’s journey and the kinds of issues your leads experience – that way, you’ll be well on your way towards increasing sales.
We hope you’re able to use our expert tips to your advantage and find the right tools that help you pull this off with ease.
Thanks for reading.
