How to Nurture B2B Leads Towards A Sale Using Email Marketing
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Now, in 2023 it’s harder than ever before to attract and keep your audience’s attention. Consumers are bombarded with more sales messages than ever before, whether that’s via their social media feeds or direct through their inbox. More and more companies are creating engaging content and attention spans seem to be reducing daily, making generating leads extremely difficult.
But this blog isn’t about attracting your audience’s attention, today we are going to focus on something even harder, nurturing those leads and converting them into actual sales.
What Is Nurturing Your leads?
From the moment someone shows interest in your business whether you offer a product or service you should keep in contact with them so that your business stays at the forefront of their mind and their interest does not diminish. The act of keeping your business at the forefront of your leads minds through strategic communications is known as Lead Nurturing. Research shows that lead nurturing can lead up to 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.
Lead nurturing is an extremely useful technique for all brands. Nurturing leads is especially useful for businesses with particularly long sales cycles, as keeping the lead interested and engaged with the brand is crucial to eventually convert them into a customer.
How to Nurture Leads
There are a number of different ways to nurture leads depending on the nature of your business and what kind of product/ service you provide. But first things first you need to fully understand and segment them efficiently.
1. Segment and Personalise Your Email Campaigns:
The first step towards nurturing B2B email leads is understanding that each lead is a uniquely different person. Segmenting your email list based on age, gender, interests, behaviours, and other relevant information is a good start. By doing this, you can tailor your content and offers to specific groups of people in your email list, increasing their relevance and engagement. Personalisation is key, as it makes your emails feel more personalised and less like generic marketing messages. Click here for our blog on the psychology behind personalised marketing.
2. Provide Valuable and Engaging Content:
Your emails should aim to provide value to your leads at every opportunity whether that’s by providing: helpful, educational, or entertaining content, try to create content that evokes emotion. Click here for our full guide on how to provide value in your email marketing. Focus on addressing your audience’s pain points and offer solutions to common issues they may be facing, or share some industry insights, afterall you are the expert in the field! Utilise a mix of different content formats: blog articles, videos, infographics and case studies to cater to different preferences and remember that content can be repurposed into different forms.
3. Build Trust and Credibility:
Trust is the foundation of any successful relationship. As you continue to provide constant quality with your email content, you will start to build and develop this relationship of trust with your audience. They will start to associate your name with quality valuable content, great news for your brand reputation. Social proof plays a significant role in assuring your leads that your product or service can deliver the desired results. Additionally, ensure that your emails come from a recognizable and reputable sender name and email address.
4. Encourage Engagement and Feedback:
Engagement and feedback are crucial pieces of information when it comes to nurturing leads. Encouraging your email list to interact with your emails by including social media sharing buttons, encouraging replies, or conducting surveys is a great way to develop a community feel around your brand and improve your email marketing efforts. Listen to their feedback closely and respond quickly to show that you value their opinions and your brand is committed to providing excellent customer service.
5. Offer Exclusive Content
Utilising exclusivity and scarcity in your marketing mix is a technique as old as the marketing profession itself and it still applies to this day. Making the lead/ prospect feel like they’re missing out on deals, valuable information or any other form of opportunity is an excellent way to spike their interest and motivate them to take action.
*Tip* ‘Offering exclusive deals, free shipping, sign up discounts, free content/ resources are all perceived as valuable offers by subscribers and are likely to get them to convert.’
Wrap Up
Nurturing email leads towards a sale requires a well-crafted strategy that focuses on personalisation, valuable content, building trust, and effective communication. By implementing the techniques outlined in this blog post, you can establish stronger connections with your leads, increase engagement, and drive more conversions.
Remember, successful email nurturing is an ongoing process that requires constant refinement and adaptation based on your audience’s needs and preferences so don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t take off instantly.
If you would rather leave this to the professionals then let us cover all this for you. At Inboxx we provide bespoke direct email marketing solutions for businesses, getting you noticed by the people that matter and boosting your revenue.