Using Email to Nurture Leads | Business Direct Marketing Blog

Lead generation is one of the biggest challenges many business owners face. Without a steady pipeline of leads, sales will always be an uphill battle.

If you don?t work to convert your leads, however, you are throwing your marketing dollars away, so responding to and nurturing your leads should be ?Job One.? Numerous studies have shown that responding to leads very quickly (within 5 minutes or less) increases contact and sales rates dramatically, thus improving the overall effectiveness of marketing and sales.

Even if you reach your leads quickly, they may or may not be ready to buy quite yet so the next step after qualifying leads should be to nurture them until they are ready. Using email is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to manage and nurture your leads, priming them for the time when they?re ready to make a purchase and transition from being a lead to being a customer.

Check out these tips on how to create an effective lead nurturing campaign using email:

1. A purchased list is not a leads list. Make sure that your email list is clean, up-to-date and permission-based. Avoid being marked as spam by adding only those who have given their permission to be included.
2. Use a professional email marketing program. Programs such as Constant Contact, Aweber?and?MailChimp?are all excellent and cost-effective options. Unlike email clients such as Outlook, email marketing programs offer robust analytics tools and email publishing options, giving you the ability to track critical metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes; perform A/B experiments to determine the best subject lines, dates and times to publish, and even types of content. ?These programs can even automate responses.
3. Segment your list. Even small business owners with a brief menu of services or products should create different content, depending on such factors as how early a lead is in your sales process; where they?re located or even the source of the lead. The more focused your email content, the higher the likelihood that your lead will turn into a sale.
4. Pay attention to your subject headings and titles. The shorter and the more focused, the better. Test different subject headings to see which one generates higher open rates.
5. Include a compelling call-to-action. When you email your leads, make sure to include a compelling call-to-action. ?Experiment with what works well for your business.
6. Forget advice on the ?best time to email.??The best time to send an email marketing campaign is different for every company, since each list is specific to?that?company. Experiment with different times and days of the week to find the one best for yours.
7. Be consistent. Some companies can get away with sending random email marketing campaigns when they feel like it but it?s rare to do it successfully. Once you have determined when the best times to email are for your business (through testing), stick to a schedule so that your subscribers know when to expect to receive your emails.

Want to learn more about how to use online marketing techniques such as email marketing to grow your customer base? Register now for our webinar, ?The Power of Online Marketing for Attracting and Keeping Customers,? scheduled for next Wednesday, September 19, at 1:00 pm Central. Seats are filling up fast, so click here to reserve your spot now!

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Source: http://bdmtyler.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/using-email-to-nurture-leads/

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