5 Things Every B2B Company Must Know About Lead Nurturing Email Campaigns
Digital marketers are said to have superb romance skills, considering that lead nurturing is pretty similar to scoring a date. Dressing up to look good is the bare minimum, and the real challenge comes with maintaining someone’s interest until you get that big yes. Who knows, maybe they have other active suitors. Similarly, aesthetic social media pages and a strong brand persona mean nothing if you don’t push leads towards making an actual purchase.
1. What is Lead Nurturing?
Basically, lead nurturing is a process where companies build relationships with potential buyers. It gives emphasis to valuable conversations appropriate for each step in the sales funnel - from the moment they first express curiosity up until they’re ready to buy your product or service.
You’re definitely not the only company trying to win them over, and it’s important to stand out by investing in customers and making them feel like they matter. Using varied marketing and communication tactics, your company must cultivate trust and awareness of your brand.
2. Why is Lead Nurturing important?
Still skeptical about giving lead nurturing a chunk of your budget? Allow these case studies and industry trends to change your mind:
In 2014, DemandGen Report exposed that 67% of B2B companies enjoyed at least 10% higher sales, thanks to lead nurturing. Even better, 15% said that theirs increased by 30% or more! Researchers also found that nurtured leads can produce an average of 20% higher sales than non-nurtured leads.
Gleanster reported that lead nurturing can convert 15-20% of “not ready to buy yet” leads into actual sales. In fact, 74% of the world’s biggest companies have automated lead nurturing campaigns.
Forrester Research revealed that companies with great lead nurturing campaigns secure 50% higher sales at 30% lower cost for each lead. Gartner Research supported this by publishing that this strategy can give you 80% savings from your direct mail budget alongside raising your revenue by 10%.
3. What is a lead nurturing email campaign?
There are multiple ways to nurture leads, but email campaigns are crowned as the best. These allow marketers to send out automated yet personalized messages to customers, customized based on how deep they are into the purchase journey. It’s powered by big data and analytics on user behavior research, making sure that each email is engaging and targeted.
4. Interesting trends on email marketing
Get ready to be impressed and check out these numbers proving the power of email campaigns:
Direct Marketing Association reported that you can get a whopping 4,300% return on investment from email campaigns!
According to Jupiter Research, you can drive 18 times higher income when you switch from broadcast emails to targeted/relevant emails.
DemandGen Report shared that customers are 4-10 times more likely to respond to lead nurturing emails than to general email blasts.
5. What are the characteristics of a great email campaign?
Email campaigns won’t take much work to kickstart, especially if you have a trusted automation tool in your marketing armory. My personal favorite is Active Campaign which can help make segmentation, content creation, messaging, and reports generation such a breeze.
To start you off, keep this checklist in mind as you design your own campaign:
Relevant - emails must be fit to each customer’s behavior and priorities
Conversational - make sure you leave room for a two-way communication while keeping a friendly brand voice
Trusted - enrich your emails with valuable opt-in content, not just hollow brand promises
Strategic - eyes on your goal, focus on messages that will guide customers to take a step closer to an actual purchase
