An efficient email nurture strategy is a powerful marketing tool that helps in building relationships with their audience, cultivating leads, and driving conversions. As businesses are rapidly shifting towards digitalisation, email marketing continues to be a highly effective way to communicate with potential customers and customers, making a nurture strategy an essential component of any comprehensive marketing plan.
Why an email nurture strategy is important
Here are some key benefits of coherent lead nurturing efforts:
Improved Engagement
By sending targeted and personalised up to date emails, a nurture strategy allows businesses and sales teams to engage with their audience in a meaningful way. When recipients receive relevant and valuable content that resonates with their interests and needs, they are more likely to open, read, and interact with the emails. This leads to improved engagement metrics such as higher open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and conversion rates. A key element in engagement is also to target customers and new leads with the right message, at the right time.
Increased Conversions
A nurture strategy is designed to create a targeted sales funnel to guide prospects through the customer’s journey, from awareness to consideration to decision-making. By delivering timely and relevant content, nurturing leads, and building trust, businesses can increase the likelihood of converting prospects into customers. Because consumers have more faith in your company, sales-ready leads typically make purchases that are 47% more expensive on average. Moreover, automation allows for timely follow-ups and reminders, helping to move prospects closer to the conversion point.
Email marketers often rely on standalone email blasts, but its really a thing of the past. A well developed lead nurturing process that combines sales strategy, customer journey and landing pages is indefinitely more efficient!
Enhance Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Do you know that 78% of marketers prefer email as the most efficient lead nurturing channel and by 2023, 81% of businesses are predicted to use AI-powered CRM systems to enhance customer interactions? This shows us that improving customer relationships and utilising email nurturing strategies has become critical to sustain business growth.
The prime goal of a CRM is to improve and manage the business’s relationship with the customers, which ultimately increases the chances of business’s success. Therefore, a nurture strategy encourage creating valuable content, personalised offers, and tailored messaging to deepen customer loyalty, drive repeat purchases, streamline the sales cycle, and foster long-term customer relationships.
This can result in increased customer lifetime value (CLTV) and positive word-of-mouth marketing. Furthermore, integrating social media posts into your email nurture strategy can help broaden your reach and create a cohesive brand message across different channels.
Time and Resource Efficiency
Automation is a key element of an efficient email nurture campaign, allowing businesses to automate repetitive tasks and save time and resources. Once set up, automated emails can be triggered by specific actions or sent at predetermined intervals, without requiring manual effort for each individual email. This frees up time for marketers to focus on other strategic initiatives and improves overall efficiency.
Check out this guide about why marketing automation is a must in 2023.
Data-Driven Insights
Email nurture strategies provide businesses with valuable data and insights on user behaviour, preferences, and engagement metrics. This data can be used to optimise future email campaigns, refine messaging, and segment the audience further, resulting in more effective targeting and better results.
Scalability
An efficient email nurture campaign can be scaled to accommodate growing email lists and business needs. As businesses expand and reach more prospects and customers, a personalised lead-nurturing email sequence can adapt and scale to meet the demands of a larger audience, making it a flexible and scalable marketing approach.
How to create an effective email lead-nurturing strategy?
Segment your audience
Creating efficient email nurture campaigns requires careful planning and execution. One of the first steps in building effective email nurture campaigns is to segment your audience. Segmenting your prospective customers involves categorising your email list into smaller groups based on various criteria such as demographics, behaviours, past interactions, and preferences. This allows the marketing team to send targeted and relevant content to each segment, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
Determine the frequency
The frequency at which you send emails to your audience should be carefully considered and based on multiple factors, including your marketing goals, audience preferences, and the stage of the buyer journey. For instance, if your primary objective is to build awareness and engagement among your audience, you may opt for a higher frequency of emails during the initial stages of the buyer’s journey. This can include sending regular updates, educational content, and relevant offers to keep your audience engaged and informed.
As the buyer progresses through the journey and moves closer to the decision-making stage, your audience may have a more specific interest and preference, and too many emails can be perceived as spammy or intrusive. Therefore, sending fewer emails with more targeted and personalised content can be more effective in driving conversions.
Provide value to new and repeat customer
You should not be solely focused on promoting your products or services, but should also focus on creating relevant content that addresses your audience’s needs and interests. When your emails consistently provide value, your audience is more likely to engage with them and take the desired actions, such as opening, reading, and clicking through your emails.
One effective way to provide value in your emails is through educational content. This can include informative articles, tutorials, industry news, or insights that are relevant to your audience. Educational content establishes your brand as a credible and knowledgeable source in your industry, and positions you as an authority that your audience can trust.
Another way to provide value is through helpful tips or actionable advice. You can share practical tips or strategies that can benefit your audience in solving a problem or achieving a goal. This demonstrates your understanding of your audience’s pain points.
Besides that, when a lead downloaded a gated piece of content, such as an eBook or white paper, an email nurture strategy can be implemented to provide further relevant information and keep them engaged with the brand.
Providing discounts, limited-time promotions, or exclusive deals for upcoming events can incentivise your audience to take action and make a purchase. However, it’s important to ensure that your offers are genuinely valuable and relevant to your audience, and not overly promotional.
Here’s our comprehensive guide about what makes a product demo a good lead magnet!
Improve the buying process through personalisation
Connecting with the audience on a personal level by simply using the recipient’s name in the email is an effective form of personalisation. Addressing your audience by their name creates a sense of familiarity and makes your email campaign feel more personal and less generic.
Furthermore, referencing past behaviour or interests of your audience can also be a powerful form of personalisation. For example, you can mention a previous interaction they had with your brand, such as a recent purchase or webinar attendance. You can also refer to their interests or preferences based on their past interactions or website behaviour.
Test and optimise from the initial conversion
Your continuous effort of testing and tweaking various elements of emails will help you gather valuable insights and data that can inform your decision-making and help you make data-driven improvements.
One aspect to test is your email subject line. Subject lines play a critical role in determining whether your emails get opened or end up in the dreaded spam folder. By testing different subject lines, sales teams can identify which ones resonate best with your audience and drive higher open rates. You can try different approaches, such as using questions, emojis, or urgency, and analyse the performance of each subject line to optimise for the best results.
Another element to test is the email format. Experimenting with different email formats, such as plain text versus HTML, single-column versus multi-column layouts, or different font styles and sizes, can help you determine which format resonates better with your audience and improves engagement. You can also test the length of your emails, as shorter or longer emails may perform differently depending on your audience and the nature of your content.
Besides that, different CTAs, such as “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” or “Download Now,” may generate different response rates. Testing different CTAs, their placement within the email, and their wording can help you identify which CTAs drive the desired action from your audience and optimise your CTAs for better results.
Some of the industries that significantly benefits from email nurture strategies
E-commerce
An e-commerce business can implement an email nurturing strategy that includes sending welcome emails to new subscribers, introducing them to the brand, and offering exclusive discounts for their first purchase. Follow-up emails can include product recommendations based on their browsing or purchase history, abandoned cart or purchase reminder with incentives to complete the purchase, persuasive lead magnet like a white paper, and post-purchase emails with upsell or cross-sell opportunities. Additionally, post-purchase lead nurturing emails can be set up to request reviews or testimonials, offer loyalty rewards, and share relevant content such as user guides or styling tips.
B2B
A B2B business can implement an email lead nurturing campaign that focuses on providing valuable content to educate and nurture leads. This can include sending white papers, ebooks, webinars, or case studies that showcase the business’s expertise and address the pain points of the target audience. Follow-up emails can include drip campaign to build relationships and nurture leads based on their interactions with previous emails or website visits, invitations to attend industry events or webinars, and updates on relevant industry news or trends.
Real Estate
A real estate agency can implement an email nurturing strategy that caters to both buyers and sellers. For buyers, the nurturing sequence can start with sending informative emails about the local real estate market, available listings, and tips for first-time homebuyers. Follow-up emails can include personalised property recommendations based on the buyer’s preferences and needs, virtual tours or open house invitations, and financing options. For sellers, the nurturing sequence can start with sending emails that highlight the agency’s track record and expertise, tips for preparing a property for sale, and market updates. Follow-up email marketing campaigns can include testimonials from satisfied sellers, market trends, and invitations for a free home valuation.
SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS) companies can implement email nurturing strategies that focus on onboarding new users, retaining existing users, and upselling or cross-selling additional features or plans. The nurturing sequence for new users can include welcome emails with tutorials on how to use the software, potential customer success stories, and invitations to join a community or support forum.
Follow-up emails can include personalised tips or best practices based on the user’s actions or usage data, feature updates, and incentives to upgrade or refer other users. For existing users, the nurturing sequence can include emails that highlight new features, offer exclusive discounts for annual subscriptions, and provide opportunities for feedback or testimonials. Additionally, a re-engagement sequence can be set up for inactive users, offering nurtured leads incentives or promotions to regain their interest and usage of the software.
What are the top email marketing software?
Mailchimp
First on the list is Mailchimp, which is one of the most popular email marketing software platforms available today. Mailchimp offers a user-friendly interface, and advanced reporting capabilities, and streamlines nurturing process with automated email campaigns. Additionally, it offers a wide range of integrations with other marketing tools and platforms.
HubSpot
For those looking for a more comprehensive marketing solution, HubSpot is one of the best email marketing tools. HubSpot offers a suite of marketing tools, including email marketing, CRM, marketing automation, and more to strengthen content marketing efforts. This platform offers a powerful, all-in-one marketing solution for businesses of all sizes.
Constant Contact
Another popular email marketing platform is Constant Contact. This platform has excellent customer support teams and provides users with a variety of customisable templates and designs to create visually appealing nurturing emails. It also includes advanced reporting features, list segmentation, and social media integration.
Conclusion
In conclusion, lead nurturing refers to the process of building relationships with potential customers with the ultimate goal of converting them into loyal customers. Therefore, efficient email nurturing campaigns are essential to create well-rounded campaigns, that ultimately lead to significant business growth.
It’s high time to gain and retain qualified leads
By following the best practices outlined above, including segmenting your audience, determining the frequency, providing value, utilising personalisation, testing and optimising, you can create powerful email nurturing strategies that help you effectively engage, nurture, and convert leads, ultimately leading to business success.
