The power of email marketing is well-known
to digital marketers. Emails are a great way to introduce your brand to new
leads and guide them through the sales funnel. They can be used after any point
of contact to follow up on the interaction.
Naturally, that makes them great at lead
nurturing as well. Lead nurturing is the blanket term for all processes that
lead to a sale. That includes lead generation and lead conversion.
If you are a salesman or a marketer, you
know that most customers are not ready to commit to a sale right after they
learn about a brand. It takes time for them to come around and make a conscious
decision to make a purchase.
“Bringing them around” is done via lead
nurturing. Let’s see how email automation helps with lead nurturing.
How Does Automation In Email Marketing Help Lead Nurturing
Here are some ways in which email
automation can help with lead nurturing.
1. Automation Allows For Seamless Drip Campaigns
A drip campaign is basically a tactic where
emails are sent to leads after a certain amount of time has passed. The main
purpose is to keep reminding the lead about your brand so that when they do
have to avail of your services, they know where to look.
Normally, drip campaigns are hard to do
because manually sending emails to hundreds of clients is not
feasible. But with email automation that becomes a trivial task.
It is no secret that emails are not completely handwritten. Liberal use of
templates and generated emails is common in the industry.
So, what’s wrong with scheduling them
automatically too? Nothing. However, these emails should have some human
involvement, as providing a personalized experience goes a long way in lead
nurturing.
Long story short, email automation allows marketers to engage in drip campaigns to ensure that customers never forget your brand. As a result, they become more likely to convert later on.
2. Set-Up Behavioral Triggers
Email marketing often comes after lead
generation. That’s because emails are known to be better at lead nurturing than
other methods. The only other method that comes close is content
marketing.
Anyway, the point we are trying to make is
that with emails, it is easier to follow up on leads and get them to convert.
One of the better ways of going about this is sending emails after the lead has
taken some specific action.
Naturally, that requires that you somehow
track the lead on your platform. This is
known as sending emails on specific behaviors that count as triggers.
Here is an example of a behavior trigger.
Let’s say a lead goes to your website, they already have an account and they
add something to their cart. But they do not purchase it immediately. This is a
trigger.
A
competent salesman will send an email to the lead offering a discount or a
bundle related to the item in the cart in a bid to get them to convert. If
things go right, that is a converted lead, there it can be considered
successfully nurtured.
That was only one trigger. There are many different types of triggers and manually following them up is impossible. But with email automation, you can set up a system to detect triggers and immediately follow up with a relevant email.
3.Personalize Emails According To Audience Persona
Emails are so successful because of their
potential for personalization. People love it when they think brands are
talking to them rather than talking at them. Personalization gets that feeling
across admirably.
But once again, the difficulty is that
writing so many personalized emails manually is not possible. No matter how
niche your product or service may be, you will always get a diverse range of
audiences with their own preferences and likings.
With email marketing automation that is
possible. But first, you need different audience personas. Different personas
may differ in things like how they like their content, do they want a formal
tone or a casual one, more readable or less readable. You can set up the
automation system to write emails using a reword tool
to cater to each person's liking.
Using an API of a reword tool, you can integrate it into the email automation system and have it create personalized emails for every audience type. This helps in lead nurturing as each recipient gets an email that is to their liking and evokes positive emotions in them.
4. Automation Helps With Monitoring Analytics
Lead nurturing is all about checking what
works and what does not. That means a marketer has to take note of failed
attempts and successful attempts and try to paint a better picture of the
efficacy of their marketing tactics.
We have been touting the benefits of email
marketing, but poor emails get left unread all the time. Minimizing the rate of
unread emails is necessary for the success of lead nurturing through email
marketing.
Using automated email marketing means that
you have to use a system that takes care of the automation. Such systems are
often outfitted with analytical software that can track performance metrics
such as the open rate, click-through rate, and revenue generated by emails.
By monitoring and analyzing these metrics, automated systems can help marketers learn the weaknesses of their strategy and patch them. Ultimately, this helps you create better email marketing strategies.
5. Lets You Nurture Leads At Scale
As your company grows, you need to scale
your operations with it. That includes your lead nurturing efforts too. With
automated email marketing, scaling becomes easier as it is simply a question of
setting up systems rather than hiring more people.
With automation, you can set up an emailing
system that works 24/7 without requiring explicit input from a human. That
helps you to stay on top of lead conversion opportunities by programming
behavior triggers.
Suffice it to say, you will not be letting
opportunities simply pass by. Naturally, that will help you stay on top of your
lead nurturing efforts as well.
Conclusion
There you have it, the power of automated
email marketing for lead conversions and nurturing. Emails can be personalized
quite easily and with automation in the mix, running drip campaigns and
responding to behavior triggers.
This helps you stay on top of leadconversion opportunities and greatly improve your lead nurturing efforts.
