“On average, it takes 16 touches to qualify a lead”
- Lauren Zak, Concept’s Director of Account Development
Knowing this, do you believe your email marketing efforts are efficient at nurturing leads that turn into loyal customers? Email marketing can be a very powerful strategy for cost-effective lead qualifying & generation. You can build trust, acquire new customers, promote offers, and boost sales while gaining crucial insights into the interactions people have with your brand.
Well, we know email marketing and more specifically email nurture campaigns carry a lot of benefits when executed properly. The real question is, how do we get really good at email nurture campaigns? There’s a couple of things we can do to ensure we're creating successful campaigns every single time.
FIRST: Get sales and marketing on the same page.
When their ideas are connected you will have the precise strategies and transparent messaging you need for quality lead gen through email marketing.
Your sales and marketing teams can work together to build out customer and audience profiles. Not only do leads come from different industries, roles, and companies, but they have different needs and objectives as well. Utilize your team's insight to define the customer profiles and unique buying stages that your company has. With this information, you’ll be able to build segmented lists and enroll them in more relevant nurture campaigns. And remember 16 touches on average to qualify a lead. If someone isn’t quite ready to buy now, you’ll move them along by illustrating how your products/services/expertise will benefit them.
SECOND: Define the campaign objective.
What significant information and resources do you have to offer? And how will this information add value to your customers?
Value content, when nurturing, should come long before sales content. You have your target audience and you're building out campaigns but what are you sending & why? Maybe you’ve had a recent webinar or published an industry-specific blog. No matter what you offer, the goal is to attract your specific audience and get them sales-ready. Determine your objectives for the campaign and each specific email within it. For effective lead nurturing the type of content, subject, and call to action should align with the goal of your email. For the right audience, this 3-step model is super helpful:
Education: Make it about them. The person getting the email wants their problems solved without giving you any explanation. Let them know you’re the organization that can enable their success.
Credibility: You can build trust with a few customer testimonials. The success and satisfaction of a prior customer could entice a cold lead to warm back up.
Features: You are a resource to support the audience’s business goals. Give examples that show your company is valuable and worth a second look.
Now, this is merely one example out of endless examples you can follow when setting up a nurture stream. Tailor it to your specific audience and their nurturing needs to drive more conversions.
THIRD: Continuously analyze & optimize.
Create the best experience possible by A/B testing and evaluating your email nurture campaigns. Getting it absolutely perfect the first time, although impressive, is pretty unlikely.
Experiment with different calls-to-actions and subject lines to fine-tune your nurture campaigns. You can use auditing to see who became a qualified lead and what deals were created. Over time you’ll see what performs better when nurturing and qualifying your leads. Try this pro tip from HubSpot that has helped us when analyzing nurture campaign performance. Make a recurring event on your calendar each month and create time to evaluate your campaigns. Monitoring the campaign more closely will help you understand where improvements and adjustments can be made.
We know email marketing can be a concrete lead nurturing strategy when used correctly. Just start by segmenting your audience into lists then define the campaign objectives and finally, polish the nurture campaigns. You'll start to build the brand awareness & meaningful relationships that are proven to generate opportunities and move people down the funnel.
We get that finding harmony between your sales & marketing teams isn't easy. Maybe it's time to partner with dedicated sales development experts. See if Concept's full-scope B2B lead generation solutions are right for you.
