Boosting your sales conversion with lead nurture.
With marketing automation on the rise and a range of platforms available to use with varying budgets to suit most business needs, the days of cold calling your pipeline could be over and we should start to see warmer, more quality leads.
Which should only result in one outcome for your business, higher sales conversion. Right?
To reap the rewards of a successful lead nurture journey, you need to get inside the mind of your consumers and map out their ideal journey. From first contact right through to point of sale, your journey needs to provide them with an engaging hook, enough information to keep them interested, but not overwhelm them, and most importantly how your product is the solution to their problems.
Let’s explore the key factors of the journey and how you can build yours.
If we start at the beginning, the first thing to consider is your data.
Who are you building this journey for? What are their pain points? And how can you offer a solution? But most importantly what is the purpose of this journey?
Think about where these leads have come from, is it data that you have purchased, a collated list of people who have had some initial interaction with your business via the website or a contact form. Or is this journey a follow up to a recent activity or event you have completed.
You may find when looking at your leads that you don’t just have a one size fits all, in which case you might need to consider building out slightly different journeys to suit those varying needs or consider building in different routes to your journey.
Creating a plan
You can’t go wrong with an old-fashioned pen and paper when you’re planning what your journey will look like. The likelihood is that your first draft will be amended as you go and it’s much quicker to cross out and make changes offline and then build out your journey on your software once you have it finalised.
There are three main elements of a nurture journey.
- Inform
The draw in, those useful nuggets of information that your customers will relate to and find useful and keep them wanting more from you.
- Decision
Each time you inform your customers you want to accompany this with a decision. Are they ready to speak to someone? Do they want more information? Or is now not the right time for them? You can capture these decisions by including download buttons, contact forms or opt out options. Although you may find your overall pot of leads will shrink, the quality of lead by the end of the journey will be of far greater quality.
- Action
What do you want your customers to do following your communication?
Common CTA’s (Call to Actions) include:
- Downloading content
- Filling in a form
- Visiting a landing page
- Reading a blog or article
With the right tracking in place, you will be able to see whether your audience have interacted with this action. One you have this insight you’ll be able to act on that and either push them further through a lead nurture journey or follow up with a call depending on which stage they are at.
Creating your content and building your journey
Once you’ve spent some time planning what your goals are for this nurture journey, you’ve sorted your data and you know what content you want to include within your journey, the next step is to build out your content.
Depending on what you are trying to achieve will depend on the length of your journey. Aim for 3 as a minimum which allows for an introduction and entice, an evidence-based email, where you can offer your solution and then your get in touch email to round it off. Of course, if you have a specific subject with lots of content you want to include then you can make your journey longer, although any more than 8 and you may start to see a drop off along the way.
When building your journey you want to aim for a pattern in actions:
- Send email
- Wait between 3- 4 days
- Have they opened email or clicked links?
- If yes, continue to next step in journey
- If no, then send them a second chance email, which slightly differs from the first.
- Waite – 3-4 days
- Have they opened email?
- If yes, take them to next step in journey
- If no, then remove from journey.
Our guide to building out your journey available here, will help you visualise this process.
Tracking is the key to success
So, you’ve written your content, built out your journey and now your ready to go. But before you hit that all important button to make it live, ensure you have your tracking in place.
Most marketing automation software’s will have this built in and all you’ll need to do is put in an email address for notifications and you’ll be able to track the progress of your leads as they move through the journey. This real time information will enable you to pass those leads onto the relevant teams so they can touch base while they’re still hot.
Once your journey is finished, book in some time to really evaluate each stage of the journey. Which areas did people drop out and why? How come people didn’t open the first email but opened the follow up? All this will shape the way you build your future journeys and have an impact of your lead conversion moving forward.
Don’t forget to make use of the resources available to you
To help get you started with your own 2022 marketing strategy, we have created a downloadable infographic that can be accessed via the Gamma Portal. Simply go to >> Help & Support >> Gamma Accelerate >> Collateral and search ‘Building lead nurture journeys’
Every Gamma Channel Partner has free access to Accelerate, our online partner marketing portal; a simple and secure platform that’s designed to make it easy for you to customise white-label marketing material, generate new leads and engage with prospects and customers.
To access Accelerate go to the Gamma Portal >> Help and Support >> Gamma Accelerate
