Why Should I Nurture My Leads?
Lead nurturing requires thoughtful communications, not the copying and pasting of generic sales emails in attempt to receive a reply back. When a lead nurturing program is functional, your prospects are receiving targeted content based upon their actual activities and interests, which ultimately provides them with what they want to see. If a prospect has visited a specific product page of yours for about 5-10 minutes, why shouldn’t an email automatically be sent to that prospect with further information and a notification go out to a sales rep?
The statistics
26% of today’s marketers receive a 10% – 20% greater response from their lead nurturing campaigns than those who use standardized email campaigns. On top of that, more than a quarter of marketers receive a 20% – 30% greater increase in responses using automatic lead nurturing campaigns in comparison to marketers who do not use a nurturing campaign. (Demand Gen Report, 2015)
Save your sales team some time
As marketers we’re all too familiar with the unqualified lead scenario and the not so happy sales rep that comes back to us. The best lead for a sales rep is one that is educated on your organization and the product(s) they are interested in. If the sales rep has to spend a good amount of time explaining what your product is, that lead should not have been qualified in the first place. So how do we make sure a lead is qualified? Nurture! Nurturing provides you the ability to dramatically speed up your organization’s sales cycle by providing the lead with information they want to see before they come in contact with your sales team. Start with a high-level overview of your company and its products and then funnel your way down to which specific product the lead is interested in.
Revive inactive leads
Never give up on leads that your sales team couldn’t get ahold of, they just might not be ready for your product at this moment. 2 months later, they could be ready for your product! Although don’t expect them to dig through their email to find your contact information, you are going to have to put these leads on a nurture campaign. Your campaigns will provide you with the information that tells you when the lead is qualified again based upon activity with your emails, webpages, and other content. Present this recent activity information to your sales rep to show them that the lead is qualified again and for them to reach out to the prospect.
Personalized emails
Lead nurturing is an extraordinary feature, but it shouldn’t be used to automatically send out those generic emails your team was sending out manually. You should personalize your content and lead nurturing provides you with that ability with variable tags and dynamic content. Organizations who personalize their content receive a 19% increase in qualified leads and sales. Including a personalized sales rep signature, using variable tags to input correct information, and sending content centered around the prospect’s interests and actions are a few ways to increase lead nurturing campaign effectiveness.
Don’t stop…nurturing! (Please read in Journey’s voice)
A great deal of organizations think that lead nurturing stops when a lead has closed a sale with your organization, but that is just the beginning. Your current customer database is also considered a lead, because there is always an opportunity to sell additional products to them! Having done business with you before, they are more likely to engage with your content. Update them about your organization’s milestones, new product information, or even new services your company provides. Think internally too! Use nurture campaigns to train your new employees on software that your organization uses.
What’s next?
Be on the lookout for our next blog post which contains a number of nurturing campaigns with proven success. If you would like to learn more about lead nurturing, please visit our website.
