Nurturing leads is one of the most effective ways to influence purchase behavior. We define a lead nurturing campaign as purposive engagements with users done throughout the buyer’s journey.
The end goal is to have consumers prefer your brand over your competitors. You do this by earning their trust and loyalty through quality content that captivates, educates, and delights.
It can take on many forms such as blog posts, newsletters, social media marketing, and of course, email marketing. In this blog, we’re going to focus on how to pull off a successful lead nurturing email campaign.
Types of Lead Nurturing Email Campaigns
As consumers make their way to a purchase decision, it is your job to keep a good conversation going. To do this, consider what leads need depending on which stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in.
Those in the awareness stage greatly benefit from educational content as they research the problem they’re experiencing. Once they’re in the consideration stage, you can do subtle product placements in expert guides, podcasts, blogs, etc.
At the decision stage, you can offer product comparisons, free trials, demos, and case studies.
All these require proper timing and the appropriate tone of writing to position your brand top-of-mind.
The things that happen between these three major checkpoints are also crucial and need attention. Simple greetings and strategic nudges go a long way in securing a conversion. For example, you can make use of the following nurturing emails:
- Welcome Email
- Educational Content Email
- Promotional Email
- Personal Email
- Cart Abandonment Email
- Order Confirmation
How to Run a Successful Lead Nurturing Email Campaign
1. Segment your email list
Data is a powerful ally in marketing, especially when you know how to use it. User demographics, interests, purchasing patterns, and engagement level are among the necessary information you need in email marketing.
After collecting data, you can segment your subscriber list according to specific groups and tailor messages based on their profiles. The more specific you get, the better you’re able to target unique interests and subjects that matter to your target audience.
List segmentation increases email open rates by up to 203%. It also leads to meaningful customer engagements and higher conversion rates. These metrics boosts result in as much as a 760% increase in revenue.
2. Write a killer subject line
Email subject lines are the gatekeepers to your actual message. Poor open rates are almost always attributed to unoptimized subject lines, keeping your emails unread, or worse, marked as spam.
Subject lines must be short and to the point. With more than half of email users checking their inboxes on their phones, lengthy subject lines will only get cut and hurt open rates.
Take note that most email apps show no more than 43 characters on mobile view, so key information should come first. Incorporating numbers into your subject line is one way to cut it down and improve open and reply rates.
For example, instead of saying “Tips for whiter teeth”, you can say “Get whiter teeth in 7 days”. The second subject line tells a fuller story and is more enticing to click than the alternative.
Using the right words is important. While you want to appeal to curiosity and the fear of missing out, you should also know when to hold back so you don’t sound spammy. Test your subject lines, find out what makes high-converting words work, and learn from the results.
3. Add graphics
Email marketing is one of the most used tactics in the industry. Almost 90% of marketers use email marketing to reach out to consumers and disseminate content. The competition is fierce, which is why you need something to stand out.
Next to your subject line, the body of your email determines the success of the campaign. It influences click-to-open rates (CTORs), arguably the more important metric between that and average open rates.
CTOR measures the number of people who opened an email and clicked on at least one link within the message. As such, its results are linked more strongly to conversion rates.
Good email design is a surefire way to increase CTOR. Colors, typography, and graphics let you establish your brand’s personality and grab users’ attention. Make your text pop with a strong color palette and pair it with a high-quality image or illustrations.
Minimalist designs that direct focus on and display your offer well are safe bets in effective email marketing. However, you can also experiment and have fun with your designs so long as they remain balanced and easy on the eyes.
Before hitting send, double-check on your email’s file size and ensure that your graphics are mobile-friendly.
4. Personalize your message
Like we said, almost every brand engages in email marketing. Even with just a handful of subscriptions, you can imagine how many emails are sent to each account every day. This leads to a sort of fatigue when receiving generic, poorly worded messages.
Personalization brings back the human touch to an entirely digital practice. Simple adjustments like putting the recipient’s name on the subject line boost open rates by as much as 26%.
Positive outcomes are also expected when you personalize imagery and content based on user profiles and other relevant data.
The best strategy in a lead nurturing email campaign is to customize offers and product recommendations. By looking into your consumers’ web activity and buying patterns, you can easily tip the scale in your favor.
Take advantage of social media, analytics tools, and data from email service providers to improve your aim. If you have yet to mine those pieces of information, you can back to your buyer personas to guide you in creating content.
5. Optimize for mobile users
Gone are the times when we could only access the internet on desktops. Today, mobile surfing is becoming the norm even when users are at work. That is why you need a mobile email marketing campaign strategy.
Before anything else, you must be familiar with the latest mobile devices available to your consumers. Research on their key specs and test how your content will appear on these screens.
Remember that whatever works on a desktop won’t always translate well in mobile view. Resize buttons and avoid fine text with hyperlinks so that users don’t have to zoom in to engage with your email.
According to a study conducted by MIT, the average CTA button needs to be between 45 x 45 and 57 x 57 pixels on mobile. These dimensions are based on the acreage size of an adult index finger which is around 1.6 to 2 centimeters.
Mobile-ready templates are available online, but it would be better if you could code your own templates to have complete control over the layout. While it may take longer at first, it’s well worth the effort as you hit your targets in performance metrics and ROI.
6. Use automation tools
The beauty of living in the digital age is that there’s a ton of technology that can make our lives easier. Marketers relish in the abundance of automation tools, data analytics, and productivity apps that streamline many processes involved in their workflow.
Email marketing has many steps that can be automated with the right tools. From data collection and user segmentation to email sending and data management, there’s one you can use for almost anything.
Maximizing automation tools like Mailchimp and Sendinblue is integral in reaching a wider audience and eventually scaling up your business. Such services offer free versions of their products for small-scale campaigns, and reserve advanced features in paid subscriptions.
7. Test email content and deliverability
Finally, test, test, test! Conduct split tests for your subject lines, graphics, and copies. You can only get better as you gather data from every campaign and learn from your mistakes.
You should also test for problems in email deliverability. It wouldn’t matter if you had nailed your subject lines and content if your messages aren’t arriving safely. A spike in bounced emails or spam reports are red flags that must be addressed immediately.
There are tools like Litmus that can test for and fix deliverability issues. Cleaning your contacts, double-checking email handles, and removing yourself from spam lists should also fix the issue.
Work with a Trusted Email Marketing Partner
Strengthen your email marketing strategy when you work with a professional team of data-driven designers. We offer custom templates and top-notch graphics that will leave your readers wanting more. Contact DevWerkz today.