According to data, only 28% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. Research also indicates that an average of 50% of a brand’s leads isn’t ready to convert.
While these metrics may seem worrisome, you shouldn’t get discouraged. Instead, use these numbers as opportunities to work on your lead nurturing strategies, specifically those that rely on email marketing.
Email marketing can definitely help you nurture leads and convert them into subscribers, but only if you do it right.
In this post, we’ll walk you through four steps on how to effectively use email marketing to improve your lead nurturing process.
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Table of Contents
Qualify.
When it comes to lead nurturing, the first thing you need to do is qualify your leads (email subscribers) by asking for the right information.
Ask your leads for information that will help you determine their interests and their pain points. Knowing more about your leads will make it much easier for you to figure out how you can nurture them and convert them into paying customers.
This step is especially important during the signup phase when a prospective customer is filling out one of your signup forms.
As an internet user, you probably don’t like filling out lengthy online forms. Your prospective customers feel the same way, so it’s best to keep your forms as brief as possible. Three fields are optimal—any more and you run the risk of decreased signups.
Collect only the information that is the most pertinent to your objective, which is to qualify your leads. If your form has three fields, with one for the lead’s first name and another for their email address, then the third field could be for the lead’s occupation or their interests.
You can ask for more information after they sign up. One tactic is to send them a welcome email that includes a survey. Encourage leads to share more information with you by offering them something in exchange.
For example, you can offer users a discount on their first purchase in exchange for answering your survey, users can get a significant discount on their first purchase. Another method is to grant them access to your gated content.
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Segment.
Use the information you collect from your leads for your segmentation efforts. Through segmentation, you’ll be able to send your leads messages that are both relevant and timely, further increasing the likelihood of a conversion.
Basic segmentation calls for grouping your subscribers according to age, gender, and location. Take it even a bit further and segment your subscribers according to their occupations, the type of newsletters they open, the offers they click on, their pain points, and even the items they add to their cart but don’t purchase.
There are plenty of segments you can create for your subscribers, and they all depend on your brand’s type of business and the products or services you sell. Take a look at the information that you have and think of unique and creative ways to segment your subscribers.
If you have data that is specific to your brand, don’t hesitate to leverage that for your segmentation. After all, the point of segmentation is to get personal with your leads so that you can give them exactly what they want at the exact time that they want it.
The more relevant your message is to your lead, the more interested they will become in your brand. This increased interest is what’s going to make them open your emails again and again and soon convert into full-time customers.
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Personalize.
Having separate segments—each with their own specific criteria—gives you the opportunity to provide your leads with an experience that is tailored to their individual needs.
When personalizing your leads’ journeys, make sure to leverage dynamic content for your campaigns.
Basically, dynamic content is an element of email marketing that enables you to change certain areas of your email depending on the recipients and the information you have on them. You only need to create one email and then use dynamic content to send a customized message to each segment of recipients.
For example, you’re a travel and hospitality brand creating a promotional email for subscribers who have yet to book their flights. You can use dynamic content to send personalized offers to different subscriber segments.
For subscribers who live in countries with warm climates, you can offer vacations to ski resorts, like those found in Switzerland and Germany. Conversely, you can offer subscribers living in cold places the chance to travel to tropical paradises, like Hawaii or The Bahamas.
To further entice these subscribers into converting, use dynamic content to customize the images based on the locations where you are inviting your subscribers.
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Automate.
Want to make sure your personalized emails are sent to the right leads at the perfect time? Automate your messages to ensure that your emails reach the intended subscriber at the exact moment you intended.
For instance, you can automate your welcome series that includes the survey and exclusive offer so that new leads receive them immediately after signing up to be a part of your list. This prevents new leads from forgetting about your brand, which can have a negative effect on conversions.
You can also automate your promotional reminders. Set up a workflow that sends an automated message to subscribers who have not opened your promotional email after a specific number of days (three days is ideal).
With email automation, it’s also easier for you to determine how your leads behave. You can track engagement metrics such as open rates, click-to-open rates, and conversion rates.
You can then compare your own data with current email marketing benchmarks and see how your emails are performing against your competitors. Doing so gives you an idea of which specific email marketing strategies need work and which ones you need to keep implementing.
Wrap up
There’s no question that email marketing is an effective lead nurturing tool. However, it requires more than just sending emails to your leads. It takes some planning and effort, but you’ll find that the results are well worth it. Follow the steps in this post, and you’ll see your conversion rates soar in no time.
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Related posts:
- How To Use Email Marketing To Nurture Your Leads - January 20, 2020
- How to Combine Email Marketing and Social Media - August 19, 2019
Thanks for reading, Bill. Much appreciated. I’m happy to be able to share all this content from some really talented folks (guest contributors).
It’s really a cool and useful piece of information. I’m glad that you simply shared this helpful info with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thank you for sharing.
The beginning step ‘qualifying’ leads eludes many. You can neve rget it right unless you run tests. The truth is, there is a big business in selling leads and email lists, but we have seen easier lead generation tactics. This is quite extensive and worth implemeting, and seeing what works. Some niches are still with open arms waiting for the right fit, while others, the competition is tight. Despite this, anyone can also curve out a nice pie of the cake for their business. When you follow what everyone else is doing, it just mean its stale – the market moved on to new ventures, new tactics, and new lead generation modules.
Be on the right side.
Thanks, Hazlo! Yes, qualified leads is super important, but it’s also super challenging. I appreciate your reading!
Thanks for the comments, Chayan and Jared. Email marketing is a very powerful tool. With a focus on building quality, segmented lists, you can really target the right info to the right audience at the right time and help boost your marketing. Ash has some great tips here in this article.
Welcome Anthony. Yes, I agree with you that email marketing is the best platform to reach the target audience.
Email marketing is something that I Wana start for my blogs in the future. Thanks for this insightful info.
It’s a hugely effective tactic, Chayan. I’ve been able to build my newsletter, and it’s been very useful when I need to run promotions, but also just for keeping my brand top of mind on a regular basis.
Glad you like the tips from our team – best of luck to starting out! Feel free to give Campaign Monitor a spin for free here: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/signup/
Hey Jared, I will surely give it a try. I am a complete beginner into email marketing. I am using wordpress and elementor page builder to design my website. With elementor pro I can get attractive looking popups . So All I need is an email provider. I will surely get back to you.