Email marketing: developing a lead nurturing campaign

Email marketing is the process of sending emails to customers or potential customers with a specific objective. To do this, you need a marketing software like HubSpot. This practice has a multitude of functionalities. The most common actions are transactional or relationship actions. That is, those that aim to fulfil a commercial action or improve relations with subscribers. Sending emails to contact lists can increase sales and user loyalty. For this reason, it is directly related to lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing is a digital marketing strategy used by companies to improve the relationship with leads and convert them into sales. It is an interaction with potential customers to convert them into buyers of the product or service offered. Lead nurturing begins when the brand obtains the contact information. This action is not only done through email marketing, but can also involve social networks, chatbots or phone calls, among others.

Advantages of lead nurturing

• Fluid communication: Lead nurturing allows you to maintain constant communication with subscribers. It is important to take care of the relationship with the user to guide them through the sales funnel and achieve an increase in lead conversion.
• Improving brand image: In digital marketing, it is key to integrate business strategies to compete in the market. Lead nurturing will demonstrate the quality and knowledge of the brand, improving its image.
• Segmentation: Lead nurturing and its subsequent analysis allows finding greater segmentation opportunities. The brand can learn more about potential customers through emails and perform a more detailed segmentation. It is advisable to segment the contact list to optimise marketing actions.
• Loyalty: Taking care of customers with constant and personalised communication ensures long-term relationships. Automating the sending of emails increases subscriber loyalty. This is due to the establishment of lasting and quality relationships.
• Increased referrals: If the marketing department sends quality content to users, leads will be converted into customers. Subsequently, customers will recommend our product or service to people around them. This will generate a direct increase in referrals.
• Increased business opportunity: Lead nurturing increases the number of sales, but also the number of business opportunities. More traffic to our website will generate brand awareness in the sector. Expanding opportunities allows you to activate up selling and cross selling strategies.

how to develop a lead nurturing campaign with email marketing?

1. Define the objectives

The first step to develop a lead nurturing campaign with email marketing is to define the objectives, i.e., to clarify the KPIs of your business and what you want to achieve with lead nurturing. To specify the intentions of the campaign, you must define the objective of the campaign and the resources needed to carry it out. These resources can be ebooks, quality articles, exclusive offers or a landing page, among others.

It is recommended that the objectives are SMART: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and temporary. They are concrete intentions that allow you to check the performance of the marketing campaign. This will allow you to organise your work and optimise your processes.

2. Enable a database

For the development of the lead nurturing campaign, it is essential to structure a database on which to work. In this database, the characteristics, interests, interactions and needs of the contacts are defined. The database allows personalising communication with the user and improves customer-company relations.

3. Create work workflows

Creating a workflow determines the performance of the lead nurturing strategy. It is advisable to create a segmented workflow for each user in order to obtain positive results.

4. Selecting an email marketing tool

For any marketing action it is important to choose a tool to carry out the strategies. In the case of a lead nurturing campaign through email marketing, it is advisable that the software is specialised in mailing. Having a good support, technologically updated and with multiple functionalities will reduce the work time and increase lead conversion. HubSpot offers a complete marketing CRM.

Best practices in lead nurturing with email marketing

Offer valuable content

The priority is to offer quality content to leads. It is advisable to have original and creative ideas to differentiate yourself among competitors. To create valuable content it is advisable to make useful, functional and memorable content. In addition, it should be dynamic and brief so that it is not tedious.

Use CTAs

Keeping the recipient'sattention focused will advance your lead nurturing campaign. Including one or more calls to action related to the objective of the strategy will guide the contact through the buyer's journey. The call to action should have a neat design, short text and corporate brand colours.

Brevity

As this is email marketing, content should be consumed in a few seconds by the recipient. Too much information can be generated by calls to action, empty links or unrelated content. Losing the interest of users will increase the unsubscribe rate.