The effect of lead nurturing emails cannot be overemphasized, as the process of converting a lead to a customer doesn’t start and end at getting their email address. Creating a lead magnet is one great way to whet the appetite of your site visitors and customers but what comes after that? Roughly 80% of new leads never translate into sales but you can improve the chances by nurturing your leads.
Lead nurturing is the process of encouraging leads to become a customer. This includes fostering relationships with prospects through any means possible to further improve their trust in the brand and convince them to make a purchase. To build a functional program that can help nurture your leads, it must provide answers to their questions, build trust, enhance brand awareness, and also maintain a stream of communication until the lead is successfully converted.
Statistics show that 66% of firms run up to 10 different lead nurturing programs per year, as seen in the image below.
However, one of the most efficient ways to nurture leads is through emails and this article will highlight the best practices for lead nurturing emails.
What are Lead Nurturing Emails?
Lead nurturing emails are emails sent to leads, also known as potential customers, to encourage them to move from the contemplation stage to the decision stage of the sales funnel. Lead nurturing emails, if done properly, can convert more leads to customers and this can also contribute to the customer retention rate.
Key Things to Consider When Creating Lead Nurturing Emails
1. Email Marketing Platform
Before getting started with lead nurturing emails, you want to ensure that you have the right email marketing service provider. This can contribute greatly to the result you get from your marketing strategy. Different platforms have different offers, so you need to check carefully which would suit your strategy. For example, if you intend to create lead nurturing emails, you will need a platform designed for drip emails, such as MailDrip. With this, you can create an automated email sequence that will nurture your leads into the decision stage of the sales funnel.
2. Valuable Content
It is one thing to have a plan in place and another to have valuable content to support it. Now that you have managed to get their email addresses, your leads should expect nothing less than valuable content to further solidify their trust in your brand. Every single piece of content you share via the email sequence should align towards a common goal, which is to increase the chances of your prospects becoming actual customers. Your lead nurturing emails should embrace diverse content marketing types to pass the message across. You could make it look like mini blog posts while including infographics, videos, checklists, and more.
Let your content signify that you are an authority in your field, as this can further influence their decision. Also, remember that if you constantly send emails that are not helpful, your open rate might reduce and your unsubscribe rate will increase.
3. Personalization and Segmentation
The effect of email personalization and email list segmentation cannot be overemphasized and is one of the email marketing trends embraced in recent times. Personalization increases the open rate, as it enhances the curiosity of the receiver, which drives them to take action. Marketers also report that 58% of revenue is generated due to segmented and personalized emails. In the long run, this improves email revenue and ROI as shown in the image below.
Instead of “Hello there”, you can instead use “Hello [FirstName]” and it would make a lot of difference. Beyond just greeting, there are also other ways to personalize your email and this includes incorporating email segmentation.
You can have your list broken into different segments such as:
- Age
- Location
- Interest in your brand
- Registration date
- Purchase history and habits
- Level of engagement
- Email subscription form type
- Website activities
This is also why it is important to choose your email marketing platform carefully, as some platforms already make it easier to segment a list directly from your website. Proper personalization and list segmentation can make a whole lot of difference and improve your conversion rate.
4. Email Progress
Remember that you are creating an email sequence and this means that the emails must progress naturally, one after the other. Draw a plan on what each email in the sequence will look like. For example, the first email is meant to be the welcoming and introduction email. After that, you can consider sending educational content and further encouraging the lead to make a decision. You can also introduce an incentive, like a free trial or demo or discount on a product/service.
5. One Topic and CTA at a Time
As much as you are trying to win their hearts to your brand, you also don’t want to bombard your leads with too much information. Ensure that for every email you send, there is a clear topic and call to action (CTA). If you are asking them to do too many things at once, chances are that they either might not do any or it will be difficult to track key metrics.
6. Track Key Metrics
While building your email marketing strategy, it is important to note the key metrics that will help measure your efforts. This will also help you know what you might be doing right or wrong and what to improve on to ensure maximum results. Key metrics to track in this case will include:
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
- Unsubscribe rate
These two will show the number of people who took action after reading your email. If you have a high open rate, but no one clicks any link to take action, you are probably not getting it right. Also, your unsubscribe rate should not be more than 5%, and tracking it will help you know when to reevaluate your strategy.
You Need a Team
Creating lead nurturing emails is not a walk in the park. You need a team to work with you, as they handle different aspects of the project to ensure the end goal comes alive. This is also where a well-structured and effective marketing strategy comes in handy. At MailDrip, we not only have a team that can show you the ropes, but we also have created a template to help small business owners navigate the email marketing field.
If you struggle with creating an effective marketing strategy, this template is for you, as you can customize it to suit your brand. All you have to do is fill out the form below and you will have the template in your inbox.
