Automated lead nurturing focuses your time and energy on meeting audiences where they are and developing your relationship with them until they become loyal customers.
While 74% of businesses say their most significant priority is converting leads into customers, roughly 96% of those who visit your website are not yet ready to purchase. Honing in on customers’ needs by targeting them based on their position on the marketing funnel leads to 72% more conversions.
Automated lead nurturing does precisely this.
Nurturing your leads from brand awareness to loyal customers can take time, especially if you have thousands of leads per day. Keep reading to learn how automated lead nurturing helps you.
Key Takeaways
- Nurturing your leads increases conversions by targeting a customer’s immediate needs and shifting them down the marketing funnel.
- Begin lead nurturing by segmenting your audience to home in on their needs.
- Email presents the most effective means of lead nurturing.
Automated Lead Nurturing Tasks
Lead nurturing is a crucial component of any marketing strategy. It’s a way to convey that your business is trustworthy, interesting, and valuable. The problem is that many marketers don’t have enough time to nurture leads properly. By automating the following lead nurturing tasks, you can decrease the likelihood of errors and increase customer conversions by meeting your audience where they need you.
Contact List Segmentation
The first step in automated lead nurturing is list segmentation. Lead segmentation allows you to separate customers based on their perceived requirements. Automated programs such as MXTR segment leads based on:
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- Demographics: This is what a lead probably wants based on your audience analytics.
- Example: On a bridal site, a lead in India would look for red accessories instead of white traditionally worn in the U.S.
- Website behavior: This refers to where a lead goes on your app or website and what they searched for.
- Example: If a lead searches for size 12 loafers, send them more suggestions for that size and type of shoe.
- Demographics: This is what a lead probably wants based on your audience analytics.
- Stage of the marketing funnel: Each stage warrants a different type of interaction, as shown in the image below.
- Example: If a customer purchased several automobile parts in the past, ask them for feedback and add them to a reward’s program to engage and lead them into the loyalty stage.
Source: Amazon Ads
Lead Scores
Automated systems also provide lead scores. For example, the system can assign a certain number of points for each lead’s action. Filling out a form might give five points. Subscribing to emails might receive four. Leads who interact with your emails or frequently visit your website or app receive higher scores. Leads with the highest scores receive more attention than leads with a lower score.
Lead Routing
Once you understand your customer’s needs and which leads to follow, you can route them to the appropriate salesperson. The following image shows an effective lead routing system:
Image source: Novocall
Automation can ensure the right leads end up in the right hands, but not without proper guidance. To ensure that your automation processes work, you’ll need to:
- House the rules for your organization’s lead management in a central repository
- Monitor and maintain information about leads to find patterns and generalizations
- Automate the practices so the system routes your leads to the appropriate location
Lead routing ensures that customers receive a rapid response based directly on solutions to their needs.
Email Marketing
Automated lead nurturing relies heavily on email marketing. Automated systems send the right email type to each customer based on your segmented audience data.
The following types of emails sent at the right time can guide your customers to the next stage in the marketing funnel:
- Welcome emails to new subscribers or sign-ups
- Thank you emails for purchases or feedback
- Onboarding emails to educate new leads about products or take them through the steps of signing up
- Newsletters and updates
- Sales, exclusive offers, and discounts
- Re-engagement emails to remind them of previous actions such as searches or unpurchased items in their cart
- Notifications
These emails should be pre-created and sent out at the right time to ensure the customer is primed for action.
Automated workflow templates route emails to the correct place within the system based on customer behavior. These automated workflow templates identify the flow of information and suggest the next kind of email the system should send based on customer behavior.
For example, if a customer searches for mystery games but doesn’t make a purchase, an immediate email might not entice them to act. However, after a couple of days, bring the idea back to their mind by emailing some mystery game suggestions. Perhaps at that point, they will be ready to act.
SMS Campaigns and Push Notifications
Staying connected with your leads improves your chances of converting them. SMS campaigns involve using segmented data to send texts and notifications of important content like sales or reminders to complete a purchase.
Push notifications also target the user by notifying them of dynamic content. Dynamic content is content that changes based on the customer’s segmentation group. Push notifications shouldn’t interfere with a customer’s ability to see or use their browser, or your notifications will become an irritant instead of a useful tool.
Analytics and Reports
Analytics and reports provide crucial information regarding how well your marketing practices work. Information that can help you decipher the effectiveness of your campaigns includes:
- Detailed analytics
- Time-span reports
- Region-wide reports
- Live updates
Depending on the data, if something doesn’t work, you can try further testing or start afresh.
For a continued understanding of lead nurturing, watch the following video:
Marketing Automation Done Right With MXTR
MXTR supports your lead nurturing automation. With their software, any authorized personnel can follow your consumers’ data from anywhere, meaning your brand’s presence and decision-making process remain consistent.
Contact MXTR for more information about how they can help your business automatically nurture leads.
Featured Image: Istockphoto
