2min
As the adage goes... "Mighty oaks from little acorns grow", nurturing every sales lead with targeted personalised email marketing, will help you walk each prospect by the hand through the buyer's journey.
Imagine you’re trekking through the forest, wouldn't you like a path guide to help you to reach your tree house? Or would you rather be going a little "Bear Grylls"? Surely, only Bear himself, Ray Mears and perhaps Robin Hood with his band of merry men, given their vast knowledge, seasoned practice and skills would select option two. Undoubtedly, for most of us, path guides inspire confidence, security, and trustworthiness that we’ll ultimately get us to our tree house.
A similar principle is applicable to leads. Clearly, your customers will likely be more than happy to walk their path, while interacting with your brand on their own, because they know the forest well, have their own map and have learned to live off the land and have already made a judgment about your products or services.
However how about the other folk trekking around, unsure what to do, how to do it and which direction to go in? Have you left directions, path guides and signs to watering holes for prospects? As a marketer, you must nurture every lead through the awareness and consideration stages of interaction with your business to qualify or convert them into a candidate that's all set to engage with.
The compelling reason to nurture leads
Your leads need path guides, signposts, and a few directions if you are to stand any chance of turning them into customers. Marketing Sherpa states that, 79% of marketing leads don't convert into sales with lack of lead nurturing as the prevalent cause. There are a finite number of prospects who are actively looking for your products/services and very few of them are instantly prepared to commit to a purchase
So, this causes me to ask a simply question. How come so many business websites offer little or nothing to their visitors and leads? Completing an enquiry form is not likely to encourage many prospects to interact with your brand and discover more about your business, brand, history, and experience. Nurturing leads with appropriate, educational content will steer them to progress along the path towards becoming a customer.
Additionally, you email, and content lead nurturing boosts your marketing ROI, content marketing creates 3 times more leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less
Email is the means to the mighty oak
As soon as visitors land on your website, you need them to establish and develop a health relationship with your brand and want to spend time exploring your offerings. By using Call-to-actions (CTA) combined with landing pages, you present your prospect with free and easy access to your premium educational content and capture contact details simultaneously, which will form the basis of your personalised email nurture strategy.
Email is an incredibly inexpensive marketing tool that offers several advantages:
- Relationship Building: You become the source of information rather than an interruption. You’re not trying to blast unwanted info at unsuspecting leads, this outdated approach doesn't attract prospects or encourage them to warm to your services. Alternatively, you’re tactically supplying relevant, interesting information that prospects are hungry to consume.
- Industry Thought leadership: Email nurturing campaigns make it easy to successfully illustrate your industry knowledge. Try distributing an industry report that shows your business in a positive light. This not only motivates prospects to evaluate your brand, but you are demonstrating your industry insight, which instils confidence and trust.
- Brand Awareness: If you’re a rising brand, leads might not initially recognise you. Email nurturing allows you to illustrate your businesses position in the industry, how you stand out from the competition and why your brand should be considered
What types of lead nurturing emails are you currently sending, and which subject matters perform the best?
