There is an ugly truth about marketers: they’re interested in acquiring new contacts much more that in caring for existing ones. In a crazy rush, they chase fresh visitors and leads but forget about them as soon as their email addresses land in the database.
When marketer lays a hand on your contact data, she stops to bother. You are moved to sales department or become just another recipient of a regular, one-size-fits-all newsletter. And your personal preferences or needs don’t matter.
Email marketing – > Marketing Automation. The most important switch you have to make this year.
But only 2% of your website visitors are ready to buy at the first contact (Marketing Donut). What happens with the rest of them?
Lead leakage
The fate of the other 98% is various, yet most of them leak out. The term „lead leakage” describes the obstacle on buyer’s journey: some potential customers are ignored, misunderstood, or overlooked in marketing communication, they lack knowledge or motivation to move to the next step. That’s the exact moment when they either leave or get stuck. In your base, you probably have people who have been receiving your emails for months or years and haven’t bought a single thing.
You can’t push them further.
And here enters the Lead Nurturing program: it educates your leads who show initial enthusiasm and provides them with knowledge required to make a decision and gain trust. LN addresses these remaining 98% of visitors who consider your products but aren’t ready to buy right now.
1. What Lead Nurturing is?
It’s an educational campaign that provides your leads with information they need to buy. For example, if you sell and app for small business, you want to show your potential clients where they could save time and money and what mistakes might they be making. You have to discuss the pain points and possible improvements to build a context for your product. If you offer natural eco cosmetics, you might want to explain the production process and how traditional creams differ from natural products. With that knowledge, customers will be able to understand why your prices are higher.
Annuitas research showed that visitors who were nurtured spend 47% more than non-nurtured ones. We are more willing to pay when we know exactly what we pay for. Simply put, customer education translates into sales.
2. Do I sell in Lead Nurturing?
No, you don’t.
On that stage, your aim is to develop a relationship and share information. Introducing sales too soon will undermine the whole process and turn the lead off.
Of course, it might occur that your potential clients want to buy sooner than you expected – be prepared for such situation with alerts set.
3. Can sales department help me?
Yes!
Salespeople will tell you, what potential customers ask about most often, what they don’t get, what is a problem to them. That insight will indicate topics you should include in the campaign.
Because you’re an expert in your field, you might need a different perspective – a layman’s viewpoint. While your mind is busy with super-advanced issues, your audience can’t get what your software actually does. So don’t loose touch with regular people: engage in discussions with them in social media, but also listen to feedback from other teams.
4. How do I know what to include?
Firstly, learn what information your potential customers search. Apart from feedback from other departments, use analytics to see which posts have been visited most frequently, which drove considerable traffic, and which get the most comments?
Include also your customers’ success stories. You will kill two birds with one stone: explain how your solution works on a particular example and show social proof.
But don’t be mistaken: Lead Nurturing is not a cycle of the most popular or helpful posts from your blog: it has to reflect what you know about customer’s journey, doubts, questions, and challenges. You build an environment for sale, so include not only what is useful but also what is needed for the sale to happen.
5. Can I use blog posts in Lead Nurturing?
Yes!
Just be sure that materials suit customers’ knowledge and aren’t too expert. Update screens, stats, and data if required.
6. When to start?
As soon as possible. The sooner you react, the better you exploit lead’s interest.
7. Omnichannel Lead Nurturing: what’s that?
LN is about education. While email seem the most suitable medium for that task, sometimes it doesn’t deliver results you expected, and you have to approach your customers in a different way. Or maybe you want to interact with your audience in many ways to make your messages more efficient.
Think of social media. Facebook can be a perfect place for Lead Nurturing, provided that you target recipients precisely (with Facebook Ads and Custom Audiences, preferably integrated with Marketing Automation).
When you reach customer outside email, they will also start to react to your messages in their inboxes differently. The company name will become more familiar, what will distinguish your emails among others. A social media campaign might also be some kind of preparation for users who haven’t handed you their email addresses or a supplement to your traditional email campaign.
8. For whom it works?
Although LN belonged to the B2B kingdom in the beginning, now it’s widely used by all companies who want to teach their customers. It might turn out that it’s a great solution for your ecommerce or B2C company.
In most cases, LN is introduced when the shopping process is long-lasting and decision requires some data, information and research.
9. Where will I find data and stats about Lead Nurturing and its efficiency?
Do you want to convince your boss or want to learn more about the process yourself? See our post with Lead Nurturing stats and download an ebook.
10. What should I test?
As any other campaign, Lead Nurturing must be tested: it applies both to particular emails, other creations (like Facebook banners) and landing pages.
Notice that sometimes one isolated message performs much worse than the rest and only that one needs corrections. Sometimes, on the other hand, the whole cycle requires revising.
11. What metrics should you use for measuring the performance of your Lead Nurturing?
Check the following metrics:
- Unsubscription rate
- Open Rate
- Click-Through Rate
- Lead Scoring: compare lead scoring before and after the program. Contacts’ engagement should increase
- The length of a sales cycle: how long it takes for a lead to make a purchase? Your LN program should reduce that time and if it doesn’t, it should be optimized.
- Revenue per customer: as abovementioned research suggests, nurtured customers should buy more, choose premium options and add more products to the cart.
[source: CMS Wire]
12. When Lead Nurturing ends?
Don’t limit lead nurturing to pre-sales campaigns. You can conduct one for existing customers, for example, topic-related educational programs or issues.
Also, you can use LN to improve and streamline onboarding. Create a cycle of messages informing about company values, useful procedures, tips, and rules for new employees.
Time for your Lead Nurturing questions!
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