Lead nurturing?!

When you look up the meaning of lead nurturing, you are presented lots of definitions. Simply put, lead nurturing means that you’re going to send (a series of) automated email campaigns to a (fresh) lead to guide him through his decision making process, before handing that contact over to your sales team.
Lead nurturing is about understanding the needs and the timing of your contacts.

For example: if you’re selling a product or service with a decision making process of a month, make sure that you’re spreading your lead nurturing over a month as well (or even longer). Your contact should receive relevant information from you, on a regular basis.

Research also shows that 35-50% of all sales go to the company that is first to respond to the contact request. The chance that a lead knows everything about your products or services, before he gets into contact with you or fills out a form on your website, is very small. You can make the difference with a timely and engaging follow-up. By sharing interesting contact with them on a regular basis, you also show them that you’re the expert in your field.

Setting up your own lead nurturing process

1. Determine your goal
   What’s the goal of your campaign? Are you trying to awaken cold leads? Generate new leads?
2. Select a persona
   Who do you want to reach? What problem are you helping them solve?
3. Select your content
   Choose which content you’re going to send them. Offer value.
4. Set up a timeline
   How long does it take to convert a contact to a lead that’s ready to be contacted by sales? When do you need to send what information? Go for logical intervals.
5. Measure and optimize
   Make sure you know what’s working in your lead nurturing process. Check the results for every single message and search for ways to improve.

4 recipes for the most engaging lead nurturing email campaigns

Recipe #1: Building a relationship with your contacts

The fact that someone subscribes to your newsletter, doesn’t mean that they’re ready to be contacted – no matter how friendly your sales is on the phone. They want to collect more information first.

Ingredients:

• Opt-in form on your website
• Subscribers
• 1-2 email messages

Directions:

1. Compose a welcome message to send to your new contacts. Thank them for their subscription. Think of what type of information would interest your new subscriber and provide them with interesting content that helps them get started. Add a pinch of personalization.
2. Trigger an automated campaign when a contact subscribes for your newsletter. Send your welcome message immediately.
3. Send them a second message after 2 weeks (very to taste) with a promotion for a new whitepaper or e-book. Send them to a form where they need to leave additional information before they can download your free content. By using an automated confirmation message, that content is sent to their inbox.

Recipe #2: Follow-up for an event

Organizing an event is a great way to attract new interesting contacts. Provide a great follow-up.

Ingredients:

• Form to collect registrations
• Participants
• 4-5 email messages
• Survey

Directions:

1. Send a promotional email campaign to promote your event. Sell your program by using lists and a testimonial from participants of the previous edition. Create a good-looking design and a call to action that stands out. Link to your form to allow your participants an easy registration.
2. Make your contacts feels at ease by sending a confirmation message immediately after their registration. Also include some useful information (add to taste).
3. Send them a reminder a week before the event with the most important information like date and time, and don’t forget to include the route description.
4. Send your contacts a thank you message after the event, and add a link to a survey. That way you can ask them about their experiences and to evaluate the event. Also consider to ask them for a fun quote, so you can use that for the promotion of the next edition.

Recipe #3: Follow-up after someone fills out a contact form

When someone fills out a contact form on your website to ask for more information, you need to follow those contacts as good as possible. This recipe was designed provide a fun extra follow-up that your contacts will appreciate. Besides your automated follow-up, someone from sales can contact them with an offer.

Ingredients:

• New requests
• 2 email messages
• 1 notification to sales

Directions:

1. Trigger this flow when someone fills out a form on your website.
2. Send a follow-up email after a couple of days (vary to taste), with a message that is related to the reason why your contact has asked for more information from you. For example, if you work for a moving firm, you could send them an article with tips on how to best prepare for your move to a new home.
3. Follow up with a second email that explains your different formulas. This email can be more salesy than the previous one. That’s why they contacted you in the first place. Together with the follow-up of your sales you can make sure that contact gets helped quickly and correctly.
4. Use an extra trigger to alert your sales which of those email messages your lead has read.

Recipe #4: Follow-up after purchase

Once a contact or lead converts into a customer, you can also enroll them in a customer nurturing work- flow. Customer nurturing workflows should be aimed at helping your customers get the most out of your product or service, and to introduce them to other relevant products.

Ingredients:

• Clients
• 2 email messages
• Form

Directions:

1. Immediately upon purchase, send them a welcome email and thank them for their purchase. This email is their first experience with you since becoming a customer, so put a lot of thought into it. Keep the design simple; you don’t want this to be just another sales email. Make sure the sender is a real person, and mix in some personalization to reflect that you know who they are and what they bought.
2. After 2 weeks (vary to taste) send a follow-up email to see how they are doing with their purchase. Include links to any resources you have, like manuals or maintenance tips, and ask them for their honest feedback. Invite customers to tailor their preferences so they only get the emails they wish to receive

Conclusion

Think about how you can offer your leads and clients a better follow-up, that will also get you more conversions. By implementing these lead nurturing recipes you’ll notice that you can segment your database into smaller, more relevant segments. You can then send those segments information that is really tailored to their interests and needs. When you’ve tried these out, you can add new ingredients and set up your own targeted lead nurturing campaigns.