The 5 most effective lead nurturing tips

Investing in a website that generates tons of leads is just a small first step to acquiring more customers. The investment will go to waste without proper follow-up.

Powerful website integrations can help you nurture your leads but won’t do it for you. That’s why we always stress the importance of lead nurturing to our clients.

According to Forrester Research, companies that nurture their leads properly get up to 50% more leads and spend 33% less per lead.

Here are the most effective tips for converting your growing list of leads into paying clients.

1. Segment your leads

This is perhaps the most important part of the lead nurturing process. Be aware of the differences between your leads. They come from different sources, land on different pages, and have different interests and social statuses.

There are no golden rules here. Most of it is very similar to how you would profile a customer in a brick-and-mortar business – the key is understanding your audience. There are a few characteristics specific to online customers, though:

• traffic source
• pages they visited already
• how often they visit your site
• social media engagement
• email analytics

Now that you understand and have prepared a lead segmentation strategy, what’s next?

2. Personalise your content

Personalised content is as easy as including the lead’s name in the email and sending it from an actual employee instead of using “no-reply” as the sender. These little things go a long way.

Targeted content is where lead segmentation comes in. A 40-year-old CEO that came from a high-profile referral link differs from the 20-something enthusiast with a startup idea. You most likely don’t want to send them both all of your content, and you definitely want each of them to receive slightly different content.

Some of your content will appeal to both of the above personas but you still can present it in a targeted manner. The same blog post can communicate different things. For the startup persona, it might contain clever tips that will save them money, while establishing your company as best-in-class for the CEO.

Experiment with different subject lines and newsletter templates. A/B testing is invaluable in the lead nurturing process.

3. Invest in marketing automation

Marketing automation tools enable you to set up lead segmentation, assign a value to each lead type and create advanced workflows. In a way, marketing automation encapsulates everything we’ve mentioned above.

You can start custom campaigns for your existing leads based on the pages they visit. That way you can redirect them to the content they were looking for or show them a landing page with a compelling offer they wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. The possibilities are endless.

4. Bring old leads back to life

Leads that stopped converting or even never converted at all aren’t necessarily lost. Some of them will simply die off with time, even if they find your content valuable. It’s up to you to bring them back to life.

Sending a compelling email to those that fail to react to your efforts is a good way to rescue some of the leads. IMPACT has noted that 25% of your mailing list subscribers will die off each year. They also showcased how companies use email re-engagement campaigns in the lead nurturing process.

5. Reach people through different channels, multiple times

HubSpot reported that the average open rate for emails is 32%. It’s time to explore taking advantage of other challenges, on top of traditional email marketing.

Every year brings us an array of modern lead nurturing techniques. Ever searched for something online and then seen a ton of ads for that very product? While paid re-targeting might be a little creepy, you can advertise your website to people that have already visited it.

Dynamic website content will help you display different headlines or calls to action depending on the lead. And, of course, there are social media. New lead nurturing tactics emerge at an incredible rate these days.

Marketing Lead Management Report by Aberdeen has shown that leads receive on average as many as 10 touches before becoming paying customers while half of the marketers include less than 5. Quantity clearly matters but don’t do it at the cost of quality and remember to contact your prospects at an appropriate time.