A Brand+Aid Guide to Lead Nurturing

Do These Practices to Help Nurture Leads:

• • • Segment your list.
  • • Use filters in your mailing list program or CRM (customer relationship management) to filter your leads by their buyer traits such as industry or job function. This can help you create nurturing sequences specific to each type of buyer. You should also be segmenting your list by what stage of the buying funnel a prospect is currently in. By doing this, you can include relevant offers such as demos, free trials, or coupons to those leads who have progressed further into the funnel.
  • • Use plain text emails. Consider staying away from HTML-based emails. Plain text emails generally look more genuine to those receiving them. Plus you can save all that design time and put it towards producing amazing content for the emails, instead of just pretty pictures.
  • • Along with plain text, use plain English. Keep the written content concise and simple to understand.  PrintWand suggests keeping your email simple enough to be understood by a 7th grader. Not sure if your text is simple enough? Try editing it using the Hemingway App. This free to use tool gives your text a readability score. The lower the number, the easier it is to read. The app also give various suggestions on how to make your writing clearer, stronger, and easier to read.
  • • Keep permission to stay in contact. Don’t lose the one thing you have going for you right now: your lead has given you permission to stay in touch. This is a big deal. 53% of leads will stop responding as soon as the information becomes irrelevant. Make sure you are sending your leads relevant and timely information that will keep them subscribed and opening emails from you. Relevant nurturing emails have 4 to 10 times the response rate of standard email blasts. Couple email with other touch points such as direct mail, social media, and webinars to feed information in different forms. Make your business a thought leader.
  • • Give your leads a reason to keep opening your emails. Provide them with quality, thought-provoking content that shows you to be an authority in your niche. Don’t stray too far from the product or service that got the lead to respond in the first place. Instead offer them heavy hitting guides and tools that they can use as they move through the buying stages.

Don’t Do When Lead Nurturing:

• • • Email leads every day. Be timely with your emails.  Emailing leads every day is the fastest way to get them to unsubscribe. Pardot recommends an email time of 6 to 45 days. Marketing Advocate suggests sending no more than 9 to 12 emails per quarter.
  • • Do not send every lead the same email. This goes hand in hand with segmenting your list. The same content won’t resonate with everyone.  Make sure to differentiate your content based on whom it’s being sent. Do more than just change the name and industry. Try writing new emails designed specifically for each of your list segments.
  • • Don’t leave your team out of the loop. They’re there to help you! Use them. Your marketing team will be the primary task owner for lead nurturing, but you should still involve your sales team when designing the nurturing sequence. Your salespeople can tell marketing the best way to approach your prospects’ needs and pain points. Including them in the creation of your sequence makes it easier and more effective than if marketing does it alone.
  • • Don’t start lead nurturing without content to back it up. You shouldn’t start generating content even before you have a nurturing system in place. That way, when you do start your sequence, you’ll have plenty of ready-made items to include in your emails or social posts. Your content can include blog posts, images, infographics, or anything that you could send to prospects as a new source of information or knowledge.