A marketer’s responsibility does not end when a prospect fills up the form. In fact, that’s exactly the point where they come into the picture. Once you get a potential sales contact who expresses interest in your product or service, the next step is to build a strong relationship with them. That’s possible through lead nurturing. Just like you foster a seed to help it grow into a full-blown tree, the same holds true for your prospects. They need nurturing with a series of persuasive emails.
Before we get into the “how” of lead nurturing, let’s discuss the “why”.
Advantages of Lead Nurturing: Why is it Important?
- Nurturing enhances the quality of leads
Of course, your leads are not ready to make the purchase as soon as they sign up. Therefore, lead nurturing plays a crucial role in convincing them to take the subsequent actions. Combination of email nurturing and marketing automation generates a 451% increase in qualified leads. Moreover, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases when compared to non-nurtured leads.
- You get a better response for lead nurturing campaigns
Rather than sending promotional blast emails, lead nurturing emails bring 4-10 times the response rate. As these emails are tailormade according to the customer journey, they are more impactful for the readers. Consequently, they are more likely to bring the leads closer to conversions.
- Email nurturing is a frugal way of generating conversions
When done right, lead nurturing can give rise to 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead. Therefore, you must devise a foolproof lead nurturing strategy and keep optimizing it based on the response rate and conversions.
- Lead nurturing helps to build your brand reputation
Your leads might not be ready to buy from you right after they sign up. You will have to gain their trust and convince them that you have the perfect product or service for them. By sending lead nurturing emails, you can keep your brand at the top of their mind. You can share testimonials and social proof in your lead nurturing emails to build brand credibility. All these efforts will culminate in winning the subscriber’s confidence. It will encourage them to buy from you once they are ready or need your product.
Now, you must be wondering how to practice lead nurturing. So, let me simplify the process and share 3 easy steps in which you can execute it.
- Have a well-designed sign-up form
According to a report, for every additional field on the sign-up form, the lead generation rate goes down by 11%. Therefore, work on creating short sign-up forms with relevant questions.
Take a look at this sleek lead generation form by Dropbox Business.
According to the type of your business, you can include fields that will help you in qualifying the leads better. For example: If you are from the real estate sector, your form should include fields that ask the client about their preferred location, type of property they are looking for, kind of amenities, and their budget. Based on these details, you can automate the campaigns and send relevant lead nurturing campaigns.
- Create segments according to the buyer’s journey
Once you have collected all the relevant information from the leads, you must create relevant segments considering their demographics and geographical data. Let’s say you are a brand dealing with pet wellness. You must segment your subscribers based on the pets they have and pet issues that concern them the most. Later, you can go still further and divide them according to their past purchases, frequency of purchase, and kind of items they are interested in. All this information will help you send personalized lead nurturing emails that will be most useful for the readers.
- Automate your lead nurturing campaigns
As mentioned earlier, use automation and lead nurturing together. To elaborate, assume that someone has expressed interest in a particular product from your B2B website. You can send them triggered lead nurturing emails that share more information about that product. In addition, if you have a podcast or webinar recording on the same product, it would be a great addition to the email. Personalized emails are not just about addressing them with their first name. Make them look personal too, by going an extra mile.
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I am sure you must be feeling overwhelmed, thinking that all this is just too much work.
If you are keen to take your lead nurturing campaigns to the next level, I can suggest a cost-effective solution.
So, are you ready to hear the game plan?
The answer is: Hire an agency for the entire lead nurturing strategy.
I hear your next question too.
You are probably thinking how can a third party help me with it.
Well, I am not gonna say – “Everyone’s doing it, so should you.”
Rather, I will give you precise reasons why you should count on an agency.
Hiring an Email Agency: The Safest Bet for Lead Nurturing Strategy
- An email agency has extensive experience working with different brands.
While an in-house team might be limited to the same mundane tactics, an email marketing agency has the privilege of working with several companies across diverse niches. Their expertise can be attributed to exposure to a variety of campaigns. Hiring an agency will give you access to a huge pool of talent, which would not be possible by recruiting in-house resources. It is quite likely that the agency has worked with picky clients in the past. So, agency professionals always strive to bring the best results for their customers. After all, their testimonials will bring them new clients in the future.
- They are well aware of the technological advancements and latest trends
Launching a digital marketing agency sounds like the simplest and most lucrative ‘startup’ idea. Therefore, most agencies invest a lot of time and effort in learning about new marketing strategies to overcome the competitive bottleneck and stay ahead in the game. They try to keep up with the trends and optimize their strategy accordingly. Moreover, they pay special attention to the changing consumer psychology, which has become all the more important after the pandemic. As much as we want to avoid talking about it, we cannot deny the fact that the pandemic has influenced the way people buy. That’s why it is highly recommended that you take the help of an esteemed agency to cater to the dynamic marketing landscape.
- An agency can handle all the complex steps involved in lead nurturing
An agency is familiar with all the intricacies of lead nurturing, be it creating high-converting sign-up forms, segmenting the list, personalization of the emails, or automating the lead nurturing workflow. For example: Marketo and Salesforce come with advanced lead scoring features. An agency can audit your current strategy and make necessary recommendations that would work in your favor. They will not let you chase the wrong prospects and waste your resources in it. Email Uplers provides you access to Marketo and Salesforce Marketing Cloud experts, who are well aware of all these sophisticated functionalities. While an in-house team is likely to get overwhelmed amidst all these tasks and futuristic tactics, an agency can smoothly execute them for you — of course, without any errors. They are pretty accustomed to working with tight deadlines without cutting corners or compromising on the quality.
- You need not worry about the volume of emails
By hiring an agency, you can delete the words like stress, resource crunch, and work overload, from your dictionary. It is a scalable approach to carry out lead nurturing campaigns. Whether you are a startup with 100 leads or an enterprise with more than 1000 leads coming each day, you can assuredly bank on an agency.
- Turning to an agency is lighter on the pocket
Imagine hiring multiple in-house resources for all the different steps of lead nurturing campaigns. Wouldn’t it lighten your wallet? Think about all the money that gets used up for recruitment, training the resources, incentives, appraisals, utility bills, and other overhead costs. On the other hand, an agency will relieve you of all these additional expenses and be an affordable option to carry out the lead nurturing campaigns. They give you promising results too, through the nurture emails.
Choosing the Right Email Agency
If I put myself in your shoes, I will choose an agency that has worked with a brand that matches my niche — maybe a competitor or someone I take inspiration from.
Go for an agency that gives you the liberty to pay per project or for a team of resources. For instance: Email Uplers offers you two models for campaign management (that also includes nurture emails). The project based model is perfect for people who want to send occasional emails. It starts at $395. Another model is resource-based that allows you to hire dedicated resources for your campaign management. They will work remotely as an extended team. This model starts at $1750. The best bet is the dedicated resources model where you get certified email specialists working for you.
Wrapping Up
All businesses want to shorten their sales cycle, get more conversions, and spend the least on their customer acquisition. An email agency will help ensure a delightful customer experience and streamline the process for you.
Convinced to hire an email marketing agency for your business, already?