Approximately 50% of the Leads of a B2B company are qualified, but they are not yet at the ideal moment of purchase, is what a survey by the Gleanster Research institute tells us.
And exactly to stimulate the interest of that contact who has already made a first interaction and lead it more smoothly towards the next stage of the sales funnel , is that some companies are investing in lead nurturing campaigns with the aim of boosting sales.
What is lead nurturing and why invest in it?
The technique consists of sending, in an automated way, a sequence of emails with content related to which the user showed interest a few days before. The strategy is still timidly used in Latin America, but we have already been using it in RD Station with several of our clients, with excellent results.
The benefits are visible: surveys show that investing in nutrition campaigns can increase a company's sales amount by 50% from online contacts. That at a cost 33% lower than the cost of acquiring new contacts, according to data from Forrester Research. That is, in addition to increasing opportunities and conversions, the cost of customer acquisition ends up being lowered.
The role of nutrition and the reason to use it is that it leaves the Leads more ready to advance to the next phase of the sales funnel. With this resource, they mature the purchase intention while receiving information relevant to each of the stages: Learning, Problem Recognition, Solution Consideration and Evaluation and Purchase.
In this way, the salesperson does not waste time approaching contacts who are not yet ready for it. It only engages when Leads are actually further along in the process so they can be more proactive in serving the most advanced customers while still monetizing on customers with slightly less interest, acting just as a "prompter." of orders", without a great effort in attention. The image below visually explains that maturation process:
The benefits of using a lead nurturing campaign
- Ease and time savings for professionals
As the process is automated – the emails are previously written and included in the system so that they are sent periodically to Leads with the same profile – it does not require the direct participation of the marketing and sales teams in sending content suggestions. for Leads to access. That saves time for professionals and makes the whole process cheaper.
- Send targeted and relevant emails
The fact that the delivery is automated does not mean that the messages have to be generic. Emails are extremely segmented – the content has to do with what the user has downloaded on the site and the material is relevant to the moment, as the first message is typically sent a day after the user downloaded content related on the company site. Which means he's still on the subject. This greater precision in the content ends up guaranteeing better results in the engagement.
An investigation carried out by the specialist Dan Zarella evaluated that the click rate rises considerably: it goes from 3% in a normal campaign and goes to 8% in a Leads nutrition campaign.
- Establish monitoring in an organized and disciplined manner.
The seller will not have to worry about remembering to send emails to maintain contact with those Leads throughout the days. Automated shipping is going to play that role very well and prevent possible failures due to lack of time or forgetfulness of the professional.
- Generate more opportunities.
Once the campaign is produced only once for a certain group of Leads with the concerned profile, automatic delivery allows these people to have close contact with the company for several days. The result, as we have already said, is that the strategy ends up generating opportunities in greater volume for the sales team. It is worth repeating: by doing a well-done campaign, it is possible to increase a company's sales volume by 50%.
- Generate more qualified leads
Since the content sent has the objective of clarifying some topics of interest to the Lead and bringing them closer to the company, the result is that the strategy ends up generating smarter Leads, because they end up becoming well informed about problems that the company's products and services have. They help to solve and with the idea of the purchase more mature. That way, it becomes much easier to sell to those customers.
- better and bigger sales
According to Annuitas Group, Nurtured Leads generate 47% higher sales than Nurtured Leads. As they have more information about the advantages and the way the product or service works, the potential client clearly sees the benefits of the purchase and ends up acquiring more complete packages of the version of the product or service.
- Ability to analyze results and adjust process
By running a nutrition campaign, it is possible to have full control over the results. Your company manages to measure what type of email has a bad conversion and reformulate the message or change the sequence of emails to obtain better results.
How to run a lead nurturing campaign
First, identify the content your company already owns (publications, eBooks, presentations, webinars, etc.) and how it can be leveraged in that process. Ideally, think carefully about the emails and the sequence with which they will be sent based on a specific offer that your company wants to disclose.
Check the points that must be planned so that the campaign is well armed:
- Make a list of main campaign goals
What offer, event or content do you plan to disclose?
- Determine who the buyer persona is
What is the customer profile of each campaign? What is your position? What materials did you download on the site?
- Point out which is the triggering event
What content should the buyer persona (potential customer) have downloaded to show interest in the software in question?
- Define which offers will be sent at each stage
That is the moment to define what content your company has already produced that is interesting to attract the attention of the Lead in each of the stages:
Learning – suggested reading of introductory eBooks on the subject are a good option;
Problem Recognition – deeper content that leads to spotting mistakes and discovering opportunities, such as checklists and assessment tools;
Solution consideration – case studies, free diagnostics, solution assembly guides;
Evaluation and purchase – budgets, comparisons with competitors, free trial.
- Evaluate what is the duration time of the campaign and the interval between messages
Imagine that if the total time of the sales cycle of your product is 15 days, the ideal is to program so that the campaign lasts 10 days, for example. That way, you can send 5 emails in total, sending them every other day.
- Compose the body of the email
Considering the logical sequence, it is interesting to mention some aspects of the previous email and show that the content deepens with each message.
- Create messages in the system
After mounting the framework of the campaign and the content, it is time to insert the messages into the system. In RD Station , you can create email messages by accessing the following options in the menu: Engage->Email.
Take a look at one of the emails from our nutrition campaigns:
- Riding the flow of nutrition
After crafting each message, you must create a nutrition campaign and identify the order in which they are sent. Using RD Station to create a nutrition campaign, go to Engage-> Marketing Automation.
That's a more basic way to start sending nutrition campaigns to your customers. The process progresses as you manage to identify the different stages of the Leads within the purchasing process and, according to the interest (downloaded content), you define different campaigns to shoot for each group.
How to advance in the purchase process?
The buying process , or buying journey, is the trajectory that we usually follow until we reach a purchase decision .
A potential DR client, for example, can start their process by becoming interested in learning more about Digital Marketing and sales. This is the Discovery and Learn phase . This potential client can do an internet search and come up with one of our blog articles. There he has contact with content such as Internet Advertising: what you need to know .
From then on, they may be interested in more complete material in the eBook or webinar format, and as they begin to understand more about the subject, they may realize that they are missing out on opportunities by not investing in Inbound Marketing , i.e. , does a Problem Recognition and begins to look for alternatives that help him in the management of activities.
Since he has already been studying the contents of RD, it is natural for him to consider our tool, RD Station Marketing , as a Solution , mainly after contact with the testimonials and success stories of our clients.
In the event that this potential client has the opportunity to find the necessary information to remove all the doubts involved in this process, they will possibly make the Purchase Decision .
These are the main stages of the purchase process that can be translated to them through an e-mail nutrition flow.
Learn more about how to create content based on your persona's buying journey .
Example of a Nutrition Flow based on the stages of the purchase process
After having created rich content available for download by converting into a Landing Page, and having created a segmentation to engage by email with the right Leads, it is time to write the emails that are going to be part of the flow, as we present below. continuation:
E-mail 1) Discovery and Learning : This is the time to introduce yourself, thank you for the interest in the material that the Lead requested to download, say that you hope that the material will help you better understand a certain issue. Close the conversation by explaining that soon the Lead will receive more information that will help them deepen their knowledge. You can include a CTA that leads to the subscription of a Newsletter or to follow you on Social Networks.
E-mail 2) Acknowledgment of the problem : Contextualize the Lead briefly about the previous message (“Now that you have read e-book X and understood how…), it is important to show the problem that the Lead is facing (after all, since he asked for download your material, it is because they want to better understand a matter for which they need help). "Do you want to have access to more content like this?" Include a CTA for a new Landing Page with a content-rich offer, or to another blog post.
E-mail 3) Consideration of the solution : Now is the time to demonstrate that you have the ideal solution to solve the Lead's problem through the testimonials or success stories of your clients. Include a CTA to a landing page requesting the Lead's phone or site page like "I want to talk to an expert", "Try now!", "Talk to a consultant", "Try the software for 30 days" etc
E-mail 4) Decision : Present the benefits of having your services or solutions. A good way to get the Lead's attention is to highlight competitive differentials in topics. At the end, include a CTA that leads to the Landing Page that requests the Lead's phone number or to the offer on the site.
recommendations
Wait at least 5 days between sending one email and another , so you avoid annoying Leads with too many emails and increase the chances of getting good open rates. Thus, the importance of contextualizing the Leads in the first contact to avoid unsubscribing from the list or detection as spam.
Ideally, run the nurturing pipeline through marketing automation . In this way, it can be defined that if a click is made on the CTAs of emails 3 and 4, the Lead is marked as an Opportunity and can be routed to the sales team.
You may be thinking: In this way, much fewer Leads will be sent to the sales team! And this is true. But if your sales team is aligned with your Digital Marketing strategy, through a consultative sales approach, there will be great possibilities of increasing the conversion rate of opportunities into real sales.
Learn how to make your own template with our checkout builder .
If you have not yet implemented it in your company, start using the strategy and then tell us the results.
