How to Build an Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign
April 19, 2023
With the average buyer getting over 100 emails daily, email marketing is becoming more challenging: it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd and convert leads into paying customers.
That’s where lead nurturing comes in. Developing relationships with potential customers and sharing relevant content can help you build trust and credibility and boost your conversion chances.
With that in mind, let’s look at what lead nurturing campaigns are and discuss five ways to build a successful lead nurturing strategy.
What are Lead Nurturing Campaigns?
Lead nurturing campaigns are a tactic for building relationships with leads so you can attract, educate, and turn them into customers.
Nurturing leads is an effective way of driving sales since it keeps you at the top of prospects’ minds so they return when they’re ready to buy.
Image source: Sender.net
Lead nurturing campaigns can be automated, meaning you create them using marketing automation software that sends scheduled emails to leads based on their brand interactions.
Here’s an email example from CreativeMornings:
Image source: CreativeMornings
The beauty of a lead nurturing program is its customized nature, which you build using analytics, data, and researching user behavior.
As a result, it allows sales and marketing teams to create personalized campaigns that are engaging and targeted, attracting high-quality leads that advance through the sales funnel.
5 Ways To Build an Effective Lead Nurturing Campaign
Now, let’s look at five ways to build a successful lead nurturing strategy:
1. Personalize Your Emails To Meet the Needs of Each Prospect
Email marketing is a highly-effective lead nurturing process, and personalizing your emails tends to produce the best results. According to research by Dynamic Yield, 98% of companies believe that personalization yields high benefits for their businesses.
To effectively personalize your emails, ask for relevant details on your landing page to segment your leads properly. That way, you can place potential customers in ideal buyer persona segments.
This helps you send prospects personalized emails with content tailored to their specific needs, earning their trust and boosting your conversion rates.
Here’s an example from Spotify:
Image source: Spotify
Spotify’s email is effective since it frames personalization in a way that makes the user feel like they’re being rewarded for using the app. Phrases such as “Guess which song is your #1?” create a sense of exclusivity, making the customer feel important.
2. Use Omnichannel Lead Nurturing Strategies
An omnichannel experience is where a customer interacts with your brand through multiple channels that connect seamlessly. These channels include email marketing, SMS, dynamic website content, social media, direct sales outreach, and physical stores.
For example, Sephora — a personal care and beauty products retailer — provides an omnichannel experience for their customers by connecting their online purchases with in-store visits.
Shoppers can access their “Beauty Bag” account while shopping by using Sephora’s in-store tablets. The “Beauty Bag” is an account that allows customers to create a wishlist by researching product details and virtually trying them on.
As a result, Sephora’s customers can start their shopping experience on one channel (Beauty Bag) and finish it on another channel (in-store).
The omnichannel marketing automation example below can be an effective way to leverage omnichannel marketing:
Image source: Sender
It’ll help you reach your target audience through various channels, such as email and SMS, which might lead to higher conversions and better engagement.
3. Use Lead Scoring Tactics to Determine Which Leads to Nurture More
Lead scoring helps you assign a numerical value to leads based on their behaviors. It ranks prospects on a scale based on the perceived value each lead represents to the company.
For example, you can assign more points to leads who spend time exploring your website and have higher click-through rates and fewer points to prospects who’ve signed up for your newsletters but rarely open your emails.
You can then forward leads who are a good fit to the sales rep, while the marketing professionals nurture prospects that aren’t a good fit until they become a good fit.
Since each lead will be in different sales funnel stages, you shouldn’t put the same amount of effort into each prospect. Your efforts will be more rewarding if you focus on the leads engaging with your brand.
4. Get Active on Social Media to Build Relationships with Leads
Social media is an effective channel for building relationships with leads. According to Hootsuite, around 50% of all working-age internet users actively visit social media platforms to learn about brands and research services and products they want to buy.
As a result, you can use social media to show some of your brand’s personality, distribute your content, retarget ads, and remind customers about your business.
With that in mind, here are some tips to excel at social media:
- Create a dedicated customer service channel where customers can enter customer service requests, or you can direct prospects to your website’s support page.
- Use social listening to make more informed decisions that can offer valuable answers to customers’ questions and help them solve their problems. You can also use the knowledge you acquire to compile a list of blog posts and learning resources that your audience will appreciate.
- Listen to customer feedback by acting on your followers’ suggestions.
- Create contests and giveaways to provide incentives and rewards to your audience.
- Share user-generated content to build your social media community and offer hyper-relevant content to leads.
5. Provide Valuable Content To Educate Leads at Various Stages
The Content Marketing Institute shares that 71% of marketers said creating content for their leads and customers became more critical for their businesses in 2022. However, 61% of these marketers implied that creating content that appeals to the various stages of the buyer’s journey is difficult.
How do you overcome this issue and produce content that offers value to leads?
As mentioned earlier, you need to place your leads in ideal buyer persona segments so you can send personalized content to each group.
So suppose you cater to a B2B audience and create two segments — one for CEOs and the other for product managers. In that case, you can send ROI-focused whitepapers to the CEOs and product feature ebooks to the product managers.
As a result, you’ll educate and nurture leads across the sales funnel and boost your chances of converting prospects into paying customers.
Another option is to get the help of internal experts on content initiatives, such as case studies, whitepapers, and webinars. This is especially helpful when the experts have knowledge that’s difficult to find elsewhere and will establish your company as a thought leader in your industry and build credibility and trust.
Key Takeaways
An effective lead generation and nurturing campaign is crucial for any business that wants to build meaningful relationships with future customers.
Here’s a summary of the five lead nurturing tactics to help you build effective campaigns:
- Personalize your emails to meet the needs of each prospect;
- Use omnichannel lead nurturing strategies to engage with prospects across various channels;
- Use lead scoring tactics to determine which prospects to nurture more;
- Get active on social media to build relationships with leads;
- Provide valuable content to educate prospects at various stages of the sales funnel.
The strategies above will help you improve your lead nurturing efforts and convert leads into paying customers.
Another way to expand your customer base is by acquiring an existing business. This strategy allows you to gain a greater market share, and broaden your reach within your niche.
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