As we marketers get better at grabbing other people’s attention, they grow wise to our methods. So we come up with better methods, only to be outsmarted again.
Marketing tactics are ever-changing, but for now, one of the best ways you can engage your customers is by using nurture marketing. We’ve made a lot of mistakes trying to figure out nurture marketing, so we want to share some of the lessons we learned so you don’t have to make the same mistakes.
This article will give you a good starting point to conduct your own nurture marketing, but if you want more support, visit our
Services page to learn more about how we can help.
1. Get personal.
Marketers love to talk about personalization, but it’s more than a buzzword.
Yes, personalization certainly entails using customers’ first names in communication, recommending products based on past purchases, and listening in on people’s personal conversations through their smartphones to deliver tailored ads (kidding about the last one, of course 😅), but it also means making the most of user segmentation.
Most
email marketing software solutions should give you at least some ability to segment your subscriber lists. This means you can tailor the content to your audience and only send them what they’ll be interested in.
Ask questions like:
- What do you know about the company they work for?
- Are you sending them the most relevant content based on what industry they’re in?
- Are you sending emails about a business conference in New England to people who live in England?
We know our customers better than ever before, so you’re missing huge opportunities if you don’t use this to your advantage.
2. Retrace your steps.
Most of us no longer live in a world of linear buying journeys. Even grocery shopping has become nonlinear, as people compare prices online while they shop.
Also Read: Adapting to a Nonlinear Buying Cycle
You’ll be hard-pressed to come up with an accurate model of a modern buyer’s journey, but maybe you shouldn’t be so concerned about getting it 100 percent perfect. Using email cadences in
marketing automation software, you can market to people based on their individual buying journeys.
Email cadences can become dizzyingly complex, so we recommend starting out with the action you want your customer to take and working backward.
Let’s say you notice in Google Analytics that some people are arriving at your product’s page after reading a blog post. If you use tracking cookies on your website, you can reach out to customers who read that blog post to recommend products to them.
Or you might know based on past experience that after downloading a white paper, some people like to read a few more blog posts before making a purchase. If this is the case, create an email cadence that delivers them some more content over the course of a few weeks.
Building out your email cadence doesn’t have to feel like learning calculus. Even with a cadence of two emails that send one week apart, you will likely see positive returns on your email marketing efforts.
3. Give people their space.
No one likes being pestered.
If you see that certain customers don’t really read your emails but haven’t taken the initiative to unsubscribe, there’s no reason you can’t do it for them. Or, if you don’t want to completely cease communication with them, just give them a break.
Try working a break-up letter of sorts into your email cadence. If someone hasn’t opened your emails in weeks, send them an email giving them a few options.
This doesn’t mean you should deliver an ultimatum. Some people might like the option to stop receiving emails for a short time, receive fewer emails, or unsubscribe altogether.
Your relationship with your customers is just that: a relationship. And just like any relationship, sometimes you need some time apart. Other times, it just doesn’t work out, period.
4. Use the right tools.
If there’s one thing marketers love more than generating leads, it’s collecting nifty tools.
While you won’t need every tool on the market to do your job well, there are at least a few essentials to keep on hand, including a solid email marketing solution.
The solution you go with will depend on several factors. But you should at least consider your company size, your budget, the features you need, and any integrations you’d like to have.
We list all this information for over 50 different tools on our
Email Marketing Software page, but
HubSpot and
Marketo are two popular solutions that allow you to segment lists in high detail and set email cadences.
More affordable solutions such as
Mailchimp also allow you to segment lists and set cadences, but depending on your company’s needs, you might want a solution with more features.
Nurture your nurture marketing efforts with a lead generation campaign from TechnologyAdvice.
We offer a number of different lead generation programs, including our
Nurtured Leads program. We can nurture leads for you and then hand them off when they’re still warm.
Contact us today to let us know how we can help.
