“Lead nurturing.” It’s such a soft, sterile phrase, isn’t it? If this were the 90s, it would be the sort of thing you might say to your spouse about a promising Tamagatchi pet. Everything about it is mechanical, tactless, and genuinely distasteful.
Which leads me to my first rule of better lead nurturing.
1. You’re a human, so talk like a human.
Because “be conversational” just doesn’t do this rule justice. No matter how often you hammer this concept into the heads of CXOs from an older era of marketing, professional and industry jargon infiltrate every level of writing at larger corporations. This is a fail. Unless you’re having a real conversation with your customers, you won’t get responses.
So stop thinking of people as “leads” and email marketing as “nurturing.” You’re offering services to real people interested in your services. When you actually frame the conversation that way, great things can happen.
2. Make your call-to-action…not annoying
Some email marketers hate their lives. Fettered and fed up with the limitations placed on their “communications”, they naturally end up writing bland, yawn-inducing drivel. As a result, calls-to-action are hidden, obfuscated, and often just forgotten.
The best way to fix that? Don’t just stick a call-to-action at the end of an email. That’s one of the salesiest things you can do.
Instead, depending on the length of the email, try sticking it right at the top (and then explain yourself) or, in the case of longer emails, insert embedded CTAs throughout.
3. Create useful content maps
If you’re working at a smaller company, there’s a big chance that you aren’t doing this. But you should be. A content map done right is your customer bible. It tells you what email you should send for each stage of a customer journey. It also includes templates so you can write up the right, customized email in a fraction of the time it would take you to write one from scratch.
4. Automate your campaigns
Get marketing automation software if you haven’t already, and start automating all your campaigns. The human brain is, in fact, limited, and marketing automation helps you create multi-step email campaigns for each stage and segment of your customer base. Relying on automation also destresses you tremendously — you won’t feel the need to constantly check on your campaigns, or double-guess when you should be sending an email.
5. Rely on lead scoring
Even though it’s 2015, many marketers still believe in lead quantity over quality. This is an erroneous belief, and it hampers growth. You want quality leads, or you might as wel have no leads for all the good it will do you. This is another pain point that marketing automation solves permanently. By using advanced, customized lead scoring systems, all the data you’ll need to make effective, strategic decisions will be at your fingertips.
I’m sure there are more than just 5 better lead nurturing rules, but they’re ones I’ve used time and again. What about you? What are your top 5 better lead nurturing rules to live by?
