How to Nurture Leads with Email Marketing?

These days email marketing campaigns are widely used for lead nurturing. However, there are a few roadblocks to success, such as nurturing leads, driving more traffic, gaining customers' trust, and converting more leads through emails? Let us understand what lead nurturing is and which platform you should use to scale up the campaigns' results?

Table of contents

• What is lead nurturing?
• What are lead nurturing email campaigns?
• What are the benefits of nurturing leads with email marketing?
• How to send good lead nurture campaigns?
• Automating your nurture campaigns
• Sending nurture campaigns using AMP emails
• Wrapping up

What is lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing involves engaging with the audience to drive maximum conversions. It is the process of building a good relationship with the customers, including both individuals and other businesses and organizations. It aims at 'nurturing' potential customers by providing the correct information at the right time.

Lead funnels have to be carefully planned and executed just as any other sales funnel. A lead usually goes through the following steps in the lead funnel.

• A new prospect

• An interested prospect

• A hot opportunity

• A paying customer

You would be surprised to know that the companies excelling at lead nurturing generate 50% more 'sales ready leads' that too at 33% lower cost. Also, 47% larger purchases have been observed from the nurtured leads as compared to the non-nurtured ones.

The point is to raise your brand awareness. Henceforth, customers themselves choose your brand over another. During the lead nurturing process, emails prove to be a great tool in the hands of marketers.

What are lead nurturing email campaigns?

The lead nurturing email campaigns tend to impact the users' buying behavior by sending automated and personalized emails from time to time. For example, welcome campaigns, promotional campaigns, educational campaigns, and renewal or re-engagement campaigns.

These campaigns use email automation for sending scheduled emails to potential leads. One can plan and set up a series of lead nurturing emails based on user interaction. Then, every new subscriber will start receiving these emails automatically.

The lead nurturing emails have personalized user-generated content. For example, a discount offer for subscribing may be pretty intriguing to a new lead. Such emails convey the idea that the brand is invested in them. Companies that automate lead management witness a 10% or even a more significant increase in revenue in the first 6-9 months itself.

What are the benefits of nurturing leads with email marketing?

There are various advantages of nurturing leads with email marketing. Some of which are as follows:

1. Quick review

The automated software facilitates the tracking and monitoring of leads. Thus, marketers can overview the performance at regular intervals.

2. Client relationship management

Sustaining healthy business relations is crucial for any business's success. Lead nurturing boosts professional relationships through personalized emails.

3. Improved results

The automated email campaigns help in the timely delivery of information to the users. It increases click-through rates and conversion rates.

4. Effective method

Comparatively, email marketing is a flexible and cost-effective method. Furthermore, it brings a considerable increase in the sales revenue of the firms.

5. Multi-dimensional

Brands can target the right audience and even exploit hidden cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

Overall, it helps in customer relationship management as a whole. Also, you can trigger the buying behavior in the form of CTAs. Now designing effective lead nurture campaigns is vital for building trust and inducing the purchases.

How to send good lead nurture campaigns?

The winning email marketing campaigns indicate the business' success. Well-nurtured leads to create a sense of brand loyalty among satisfied customers. A lot of factors have to be kept in mind while sending good lead nurture campaigns, such as:

1. Make the prospect/lead the hero of the email

The marketers should study the leads in advance and learn about their unique personas, including their interests, preferences, goals, etc. The campaigns should be designed keeping the target audience in mind.

2. Provide educational and relevant content

The idea of any campaign is to take potential leads through different stages of the buying process. For this, provide the content they're looking for in that particular stage. For example, if it is a new lead, provide a brief explanation about your product/service and how you can serve them. It's crucial to provide educational and relevant content to raise brand awareness and develop a well-paying relationship.

3. Make appeals to leads

Make your users feel valued and then appeal to the respective CTAs such that they couldn't say 'NO.'

4. Ask for feedback periodically

Feedback ensures that you're going in the right direction. Also, you can clarify the doubts and queries of the prospects. It will help you know whether the particular lead is worth nurturing or not. Therefore, follow-up is a must at regular intervals.

5. Neat and easy email design

The email design leaves a significant impact on the users. It should be neat and easily understandable. For example, you can opt for a simple font and consider adding space between two long paragraphs to enhance clarity.

Keep it simple as well as captivating!

Automating your nurture campaigns

Making use of User Journey maps will help us automate these email campaigns. Here, the buyers' journey goes through three main stages, awareness, consideration, and decision. The brands have to follow these closely to achieve the desired results. First, the need has to be created through awareness of the product/service. Then nurture further to make the lead realize the benefits your brand provides in terms of quality of products and services. Lastly, during the decision stage, the brands have to show how they're better than other brands available in the market. All these can be quickly done through automated email marketing campaigns. Two ways of automating your nurture campaigns are:

1. Drip campaigns

In Drip campaigns, the automation software sends the lead nurturing emails at the set intervals. The software tracks the user's journey according to the given actions and events such as website visits and clicks on specific links etc. Likewise, it sends scheduled drips or emails.

2. Triggered campaigns

Here, the software identifies the triggers based on the interaction with the users. Then, it sends the respective email. In marketing automation, the software automatically sends the email to your customers, clients, and new prospects according to the pre-defined triggers by you. Here the customer journeys are defined, and emails are set up at once. Then, the same email is sent each time a subscriber reaches a new step.

The automation saves a lot of time and makes customers' transition from one step to another in the funnel easier. The marketers can improve the quality of emails with automated technology as results help in overviewing the trends and rectifying the mistakes if any.

Sending nurture campaigns using AMP emails

• AMP emails allow marketers to embed the interactive elements such as carousels, accordions, and other such CTA buttons into the emails. The users don't have to open a new webpage.

• AMP emails are useful for adding forms, scheduling meetings, conducting surveys, etc., inside the emails. It reduces the number of steps and generates quick responses from the recipient's side.

• The users can register, place orders or provide feedback right inside the email. The email open rates and click-through rates grow significantly. Thus, the interactive AMP emails take the lead nurturing campaigns to another level.

Wrapping up

Lead nurturing is essential for the success of any email marketing campaign. Email automation tools are becoming every marketer's choice for nurturing leads. However, selecting the best automation tool is crucial for achieving the desired results.

Mailmodo is a perfect email automation tool powered by AMP for nurturing leads. It helps marketers to send AMP emails to a vast number of users. It helps increase productivity by reducing response time and attracting new customers while retaining the old ones. Mailmodo automation tool acts as the secret success recipe using which you can establish, nurture and manage valuable relationships with customers and other businesses.