It’s officially autumn, and we’re here for it! Bring on the crisp air, vibrant foliage, and cozy sweaters… #fallvibes, anyone?
Embracing harvest season can also extend to your business. It’s the perfect time to plant seeds of interest and reap loyal customers. The key to making leads blossom into buyers? Lead nurturing.
Lead nurturing = building relationships with people who have opted in to hear from you. They signed up for a marketing campaign and/or gated content that required their email address.
Why plant your marketing efforts here? Nurtured leads have a 23% shorter sales cycle than non-nurtured leads. Talk about reaping what you sow!
We’ve got three lessons to help you nourish qualified leads and harvest a bumper crop of consumers. Let’s dig in!
Lesson 1: Know What You’re Growing
Before you till the soil, you need to know:
1) How lead nurturing works
2) Who you’re nurturing
Think back to the ever-trusty marketing funnel. The goal is to convert buyers from being aware of your business to purchasing from it. Any customer who has become aware of your brand and is considering whether to commit is called a qualified lead.
You’re targeting people who have expressed interest in your brand and are contemplating a purchase. Maybe they’ve sent you a DM or subscribed to your mailing list. Your job is to listen to their needs, earn their trust, and position your product as the helpmate they’re looking for.
To build that type of relationship, you must get to know your leads. They may have already given you some info—age, location, and purchase history. Use the data you’ve gleaned to strategically craft future outreach and promotions.
Now, like most gardeners, you won’t be cultivating just one type of crop. That’s where buyer persona come in. These are avatars or sub-groups within your audience based on the research you’ve done.
For example, if you’re running a cellphone company, you might attract a variety of potential buyers:
- Tech-savvy, young professionals
- Budget-conscious families
- Digitally-flustered seniors
Different buyers have different pain points and needs. A tech-savvy pro will want software specs; digital newbies will care most about ease of access. Mapping out these buyer personas will help you tailor communication for each group.
Lesson 2: Cultivate the Right Soil
While lead nurturing can take many forms, email marketing is the most nutrient-rich platform for cultivating buyers. A few reasons why:
Accessibility
Did you know that 99 percent of folks check their inboxes at least once per day? That’s ample screen time to drum up engagement.
But as it’s often said, with great accessibility comes great responsibility.
The point is, you’ll want to maintain healthy boundaries regarding communication, as you would in any relationship. Start with a monthly sequence. If that’s going well, add a bi-weekly newsletter. As the occasion demands, pepper in special product deals or announcements. Strike a balance of regular communication, so you neither overwhelm your leads nor ghost them.
And don’t forget to factor in the dates and content that will be special to each of your buyer personas. This leads us to our next point…
Personalization
You can’t scatter seeds haphazardly and hope to reap a huge crop. Craft personalized content based on each lead’s persona and buyer’s journey stage.
How do you do that? Two words: email segmentation. Send emails to specific subsections of your audience. For example, different messages would be sent to:
- Information seekers who downloaded an eBook about one of your products (hint: send them related resources and similar products)
- Potential buyers who added your products to their online cart (hint: send them a purchase reminder)
- One-time customers who haven’t engaged with you in a while (hint: send them a follow-up and loyalty coupon)
Optimization
Here are some #trueblue strategies to make your emails stand out from the pack:
1) Open with a brief, attention-grabbing subject line and greeting
2) Focus each message around ONE clear topic
3) End with a strong call to action
4) Make your messages mobile-friendly
Strategize for conversion rate optimization (turning leads into buyers) by tailoring the progression of every email. Initial campaigns (welcome emails and/or free downloads) should prioritize connection and education over a blatant sales pitch. As a subscriber advances the funnel and gains trust, they’re now considered a “warm” lead. Then, and only then, should you introduce revenue-making streams—product offerings, courses, paid webinars, etc.
For more on this, check out our content marketing guide.
Automation
If conversions seem like a TON to juggle, we’ve got the fix: automation. From MailChimp to Hubspot to Constant Contact, these softwares are designed to make email segmentation run like clockwork. Remember, email segmentation divides your subscriber list. Leads receive email campaigns based on where they’re at in the buyer’s journey. Automated email software will catalog such checkpoints, making the appropriate inroads for you.
On the back end, upload your list of leads and email content ahead of time. And let automation take care of the rest. Segment for holiday campaigns and special messages to individual customers…who doesn’t love a birthday coupon?
Lesson 3: Reap Your Harvest
Just as gardeners assess the fruits of their labor, look for evidence that you’ve cultivated sales. We call this “heat mapping,” or checking in on back-end analytics, like engagement and conversion rate. For example…
How many people are opening your emails? How often?
How many of your subscribers end up making a purchase?
How many times do people unsubscribe from your content?
Growth calculations also indicate exactly who is worth investing in. Lead scoring is the process of evaluating potentiality—the likelihood of a sale—based on behaviors (i.e. past purchases, click-through rates, intent).
While you want to invest in ALL your qualified leads, people with the highest scores are your VICs—very important customers. They have demonstrated high engagement and should be paid back in kind.
Last but not least, there’s one more relationship you should nurture—the one with our team! Let’s get on a first-name basis and strategize ways to grow your seeds into leads. Shoot an email to letstalk@onepartsocial.com and get growing!