Success in email marketing and email delivery involves taking care of a number of details, some obvious and some essentially hidden from view. Some of the technical aspects of it can get quite confusing and overwhelming if you’re trying it out for the first time.
We created this Email Delivery guide to help you understand and address some of these hidden factors that can make or break the success of your campaigns.
Download our Email Delivery: Technical Configuration Guide to learn how to set up your website, configure your DNS, and manage and grow your list(s).
Essentially, the receiving mail server will check to see if the domain has an MX record setup. If not, that’s a negative sign from an email delivery point of view. So, just setting up the MX record and at least one functioning email address will suffice.
List Management
Cleansing the list
Keeping your list clean is the key to successful email marketing and efficient calling campaigns. Any list loaded into SalesNexus can be cleansed to validate email addresses and identify spam traps.
Cleansing your list improves email delivery rates and avoids spam complaints.
SalesNexus is integrated with RampedUp to provide SalesNexus users instant access to additional contact information for any contact added to SalesNexus.
If all you have is an email, SalesNexus now allows you to instantly add Company, Title, Phone, Address and other details to the contact!
Watch the video to see how it works!
How it works
First, open up the contacts page. Next, click on the desired contact. If the email of that contact exists in the RampedUp database, then the RampedUp icon will appear at the top.
If the RampedUp icon is green, that means that RampedUp has data on that contact. However, that data needs to be updated or synchronized in SalesNexus.
Therefore, you have the option to update the contact information through RampedUp Integration.
You can check the information currently in the SalesNexus Database for that contact by heading to the right side of the page. View the notes, click on the additional fields, and you should see all the known details of that particular contact.
To use the RampedUp integration to update the contact’s details, simply click on the RampedUp icon.
Free vs. Paid Options
After you click the RampedUp icon, a message will appear asking you to choose an option to update the contact with missing info from RampedUp.
You can choose between the FREE or the PAID options.
By clicking the FREE option, you will be able to update that contact’s information, but the details provided will be limited.
If you choose the PAID option, 1 credit will be deducted from your credits. You will then gain full access to all the available information for that contact.
Success
Once you make your choice, a success message will pop up. It will tell you that the information has been updated.
As a result, you can then check the resulting data in the contact record.
What’s Included in SalesNexus
All SalesNexus users get unlimited access to the basic RampedUp contact info. This includes:
Full name
Personal Email address
Title
Location
Company name
Phone number
Company address
Company Email address
All SalesNexus users get 25 credits per month to download the complete RampedUp contact info. This includes:
Social Media handles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn accounts)
Education
Skills
Company details (location, number, revenue range, primary industry, specialties, number of employees, status, number of followers…)
Current and former titles
Job history (former companies/employers)
You can purchase additional credits via SalesNexus.
With the online CRM solutions available today, you can integrate your sales and marketing strategies to nurture your leads. In this podcast, SalesNexus CEO Craig Klein speaks with MarTech Podcast host Benjamin Shapiro about the reasons small-medium businesses could take advantage of an online CRM solution to service their customers and scale their business. Learn how to connect with your customers, take them through your sales funnel, nurture your leads, and optimize your digital marketing investments with a reliable online CRM solution.
BS: The first thing that sticks out to me is that online CRM solutions are big sales-driven organization tools. Although it’s not necessarily a marketing tool, it’s a way to build relationships on the sales side of the house.
CK: You just pointed out the main problem that most organizations (regardless of size) deal with: the line between marketing and sales. When we started SalesNexus, that was the first thing that hit me over the head. I come from a sales background, and one of the uses of online CRM solutions is to organize the sales effort. However, we quickly learned that digital marketing was going to be essential to filling our funnel.
Moreover, there’s this big disconnect of measuring what was happening in the digital marketing part of things. And then what happens to those leads once they get handed off to a salesperson. We couldn’t really bring together all the data so that we could really optimize the whole process. So that’s where we’ve focused in terms of delivering solutions to that problem for smaller businesses that don’t have the huge marketing and IT staff to figure all that out for them.
Areas for growth for SMBs
BS: I feel like technology has become more advanced, right? The ‘sales forcification’ of online CRM solutions and some marketing technologies. There’s been providers like yourself, HubSpot, Pipedrive – all are a bit of a different take on how you recognize who the actual people are.
CRM is customer relationship management. It’s about building one-to-one relationships with a person and a prospect. Talk to me about why an online CRM solution is essential specifically for SMBs – for small and medium-sized businesses.
CK: Well, to me, there are two things that SMBs really don’t do well. And have a huge ROI for them if they invest even a little bit in them.
Lead Response – Most SMBs, based on our experience over the last 15 years. When you talk about the response to digital marketing, sales leads that are coming through your website, or calls that are coming in based on digital advertising, they’re doing a terrible job of responding to those leads. They are waiting too long. They’re not handling them properly. They’re not following up enough.
Lead Nurturing – They’re not nurturing the leads. The people that come into the funnel initially, and then don’t buy right away. They get thrown over the salesman’s shoulder and into the waste bucket and they forget about them.
Taking your customer through the CRM funnels
BS: You’re saying that there’s a process for the merger between marketing and sales. And I think the line is a little gray here. When somebody gets through your website, fills out a form, gives you a phone call, or leaves a message. There’s the initial onboarding. How do you make sure you’re maximizing the purchase intent or the interest that they have at the time of them filling the form and keep the iron hot? And then if you’re not able to get to the close, how do you keep a relationship with somebody? Eventually, there’s a third part of getting them across the finish line. And that is very much traditional sales. What are the stages that you set up in a CRM or the “funnels” in marketing terminology?
CK: Well, of course, it really depends on the market that you’re in. When we’re talking about salespeople, we’re mostly talking about B2B with some exceptions. With B2B, the organization typically is very sales-driven. Marketing is there because it has to be. Especially in a medium-sized company, the salespeople are what the executives envision as their connection to the marketplace.
Transitioning customers into digital marketing
So that creates this divide between the two groups right out of the box. For example, we’re here in Houston with lots of energy-related companies. These are companies that have been hugely successful for 20 – 30 years. They’re very sales-driven. And then for whatever reason after decades of sending salespeople out to go knock on doors, the lights go on. Then they’ve decided, “You know what? We need to start investing in digital marketing.”
Now here they are trying to inject these new types of opportunities into an old-school sales team. So we find ourselves very often helping customers manage that transition. If you don’t come at it as a marketer with the perspective of a marketer. Knowing as you mentioned earlier, the mindset of a buyer when they engage with that form, and really thinking about that and building a process that’s based upon that journey that the buyer needs to go through. Then you’re really going to damage the ROI on the entire campaign. So it’s a cultural change, ultimately.
The overlap between Marketing and Sales
BS: Talk to me more about the overlap between marketing and sales. I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that online CRM solutions are traditionally a sales-driven tool. But now there is the notion of the blending of CRM, understanding the relationship marketing email, and even prospecting is building into CRM. Where does the marketing part start? Where does it overlap with sales? And when is it really just the sales team’s responsibility?
CK: Ultimately they’re both overlapped completely. In a perfect world, that’s the way it would work. Because even when I’m closing a deal as a salesperson, there are messages that my customers are going to receive one way or the other. My retargeting ads or the email campaign they happen to be on, in a perfect world, those should all work well together.
In the end, that’s what we try to achieve. That’s kind of an ideal. And it’s not as if there’s no technology out there that does all of this. We’re different in that we’ve simplified it and combined it into one solution. That’s easy for a medium-size organization that doesn’t have the big back-office staff to manage, connect, and maintain it all.
How the sales process drives the marketing messages
The way we make things work for our customers is the sales process instantly drives the marketing messages. As soon as you come in as a conversion and engage with a salesperson, we begin to learn information about you. All that goes into the online CRM. Then that changes the messaging that you’re seeing. So even as you’re down at the closing end of the funnel, the CRM is using that information to change the messaging that you’re getting. Although that’s in a perfect world. Most companies developing all the content that would be needed to support all of the nuances in their sales process is probably a little bit beyond their scope.
BS: So what you’re saying is basically the marketing automation component of SalesNexus, the way that your platform works is as someone moves through one of the pipeline stages, it would change the language that’s being sent out to them using the marketing automation technology.
CK: That’s right. And you described it as stages. Typically what we see is at the top of the funnel is the need to focus on the customer’s pain. What is the problem that they have that drove them to fill out your form? Let’s stay focused on that at the top of the funnel.
Once you’ve uncovered an opportunity, then it’s really at that point more about establishing credibility. So that’s where things like case studies, testimonials, and things like that come into play. Just that one little change – being able to automatically switch somebody from a, “You have a problem, we have a solution” type of email campaign to a “Here’s how we’ve yielded success for our customers” type of campaign as they move through the funnel. Just that one little change can be huge.
Nurturing leads using marketing
CK: Certainly the marketing messages have to reflect the sales approach as well. We talked about earlier being able to nurture leads in this way. As when the salesperson just gives up. Once they go, “This deal’s not going to close. I’ve got to focus on the people that I am going to close this month, so I can hit my numbers.” We want to make sure that those people go on to some kind of drip campaign.
That’s where I see most companies just really are missing an opportunity because in B2B, for sure where it’s not so much of an impulse type. The reason people don’t buy is almost never because they’re saying “I don’t want to ever do business with you.” It’s almost always other things that are really out of the control of the brand. It’s things like, their budget, the unavailability of the decision-maker, or being in a contract with another vendor.
BS: I’ll use a dating metaphor: It’s the right person, right place, right time. And if one of those variables is out of whack, you’re either not getting a first date or you’re not selling your services.
CK: Therefore, you just got to be there. Six months from now, when something changes in their world, and all of a sudden it’s the right time. You want to be the last message they got.
Nurturing your leads
BS: Talk to me a little bit more about that nurture phase. When you’re going through the pipeline. You’re learning about them. You’re trying to build credibility or you’re actually getting to the point where you’re selling, and they’re just not ready at that time or there’s something that’s missing. How do you keep the relationship alive and how do you still preserve some momentum? So when they are ready, you are top of mind.
CK: It can be more nuanced than this, of course. At a really simple level, you want to go back to the pain. Additionally, just keep offering valuable content. That’s basically saying, “Hey, if you have this problem, then here are some tips. Here are some tricks. Here’s some interesting stuff that may be helpful to you.” So that’s how you’re going to keep that line of communication open as long as possible. If you keep going for the close in your email messages, eventually you’re going to annoy them and turn them off, and they unsubscribe.
Therefore, you want to go back to – “I can just be helpful here. Once your problem gets significant enough that you need more help than what I’m sending you, then call me. I’m here. We’ll talk about how it can help in other ways.”
Focusing on the customer’s pain
BS: That’s interesting. I would think that the nurture content changes depending on where someone is in the funnel, right? If somebody is in the “learn” phase, doing nurture content that talks about how to address the pain, makes sense. If somebody gets to that credibility portion, and they’re not ready to move forward, you’re not necessarily saying, “Hey, here’s more information about why we’re credible.” You’re going back and saying, “Is this still your pain point?” Is that because you’re simplifying the process here? Or is that really a best practice? No matter where someone is in the funnel, just keep reminding them that there is a way to address the pain that they’re feeling?
CK: As I said, it can be more nuanced. For instance, you may have a major competitor that when you close a deal, it’s almost always for them. Well, when you know, that’s what happened in a given deal, maybe you want a set of messages that really contrast you with that competitor.
I try to keep it pretty simple. Especially for a medium organization. Those who are just jumping into this for the first time. It doesn’t have to be very nuanced. What you’re wanting to do is just maintain brand awareness over a period of time. That’s 90% of the battle.
Reasons SMBs don’t have a CRM solution
BS: Craig, any last words for today about why SMBs need a CRM solution? What’s the biggest reason why they don’t have one?
CK: Well, the Achilles heel of the CRM world, of course, is that salespeople hate using them. So that’s the biggest reason why most companies don’t have them. The management just hasn’t figured out a way to twist anybody’s arm enough to get them to use it. So that’s another reason why doing this type of thing to me is a win-win for everybody involved. It’s a win for the business because what you’re doing is you’re giving the salespeople a reason to play the game with the CRM.
Advantages to having an online CRM solution
CK: The flip side of that is that there’s a huge win for the marketing group as well. In a small-medium-sized business, maybe they’re making that first big investment in say, Ad Words to drive traffic to the site. Well, the first thing they’re going to find out is they can drive conversions with all sorts of different techniques and tactics in Ad Words. But then they hand them off to the salespeople. However, they have absolutely no way to know whether the leads that come from that landing page or that ad campaign are the ones that the salespeople are closing. They just lose the tracking.
Then going into the board meeting at the end of the quarter and reporting on the results of your advertising. You can say “I spent a hundred thousand dollars in this quarter… I got X number of leads… I got this number of conversions.” Unfortunately, that’s all you can say because the sales guys are not going to give you credit. They’re not going to say, “We hit our numbers this quarter because of all those great leads from marketing.” Instead, they’re going to say, “It was our wonderful selling.” So you’ve got to be able to tie that together. And if you don’t have all this information in one system, you really can’t.
Optimizing your digital marketing investments
CK: That’s one thing that I’m really excited about. We just released a new capability that literally tracks the conversions coming in based on Ad words, Ad groups, and that kind of fine detail. As a result, you can do a pipeline report and a close report that says, “I might be getting a lot of conversions from this ad where I’m spending a lot of money advertising. But I’m not closing very many. But over here, I’ve got this ad campaign that I’m not really emphasizing or spending a lot of money on. Moreover, percentage-wise, I’m closing a bunch of those leads. So let’s redirect that advertising spending based on what’s happening in the sales process. That’s a huge game-changer in terms of optimizing your digital marketing investments.
BS: I think that’s a good point is that an online CRM solution allows you to capture the data. Not only from your marketing efforts but connect it to sales. So you’re able to see end-to-end from what campaign is driving impressions to web conversions and form fills, and then are those actually being closed and producing revenue.
And so that end-to-end reporting is something that’s really powerful to not just optimize, to drive people to and through your website, and make sure they’re actually creating business results.
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The MarTech Podcast tells the stories of world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success.
Most people today have their smartphones with them 24/7. Have you considered using text message marketing to communicate with prospective and current clients? How can you use text message marketing in the right way to nurture your sales leads?
Unlike other forms of marketing, text message marketing have a 70% response rate!
SalesNexus CEO Craig Klein virtually gets together with host Arlen Robinson on the eCommerce Marketing Podcast to uncover the secrets of a successful lead nurturing campaign using text messages. Watch the video below to find out how to utilize CRM tools to nurture your sales leads using Text Message Marketing.
What is Text Message Marketing?
Text Message Marketing is a means of communicating relevant knowledge, tips/advice, promotions, sales, and other relevant information to customers and prospects. This is done using SMS (short message service) text messages delivered to their mobile devices.
SalesNexus started from the need to build a bigger mousetrap. About 20 years ago, I was managing sales teams and I needed tools to help me manage the team. And I wasn’t really happy with the tools that I had available back then. So I decided to build what I thought would really work for a small to medium-sized business sales team. Of course, this was back before Salesforce and other tools were even around. Tools have changed a lot since then.
What are some ways to nurture leads that people aren’t too familiar with that can help businesses out?
Back in the days when we started SalesNexus, we didn’t have the range of tools we do today. Google AdWords was a new thing. It was unique. Now, there are just so many options. It’s just overwhelming. If you’re starting a business, you show up at the local AMA meeting or something and start meeting all these marketing experts. You start telling them about your business and what you want to do with your business. And next thing you know, you’ve got proposals from 10 different people. Proposing 10 different, totally different strategies. All of which are tens of thousands of dollars each. And you don’t know how to choose.
How do you know which one is the right one?
Unfortunately in my story, I spent a lot of money trying to figure out which one works. What’s ironic really is the original digital marketing channel was email marketing. And it really is still one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to build your business. Now, of course, it has to be done in coordination with all the other channels that you’re marketing through. But the way I like to use email marketing is to test out messages. That’s because it’s so easy to just put together a campaign and get some data back immediately.
Email marketing is eminently measurable. Especially for a new business or a business that’s introducing new products, let’s say. You can measure and test the response to messaging very quickly. You can get messaging, packaging, pricing, and really optimize very quickly using email marketing at a very low cost. Once you really feel like you’ve got everything dialed in, then you go start spending some money on AdWords or any other channels that you might like to choose. By the time you’re making those larger investments, you already know that you’ve got the messaging, packaging, and pricing all dialed in.
However, it hasn’t always been like that.
If we think back in the days before Salesforce and all those other solutions, and before a lot of these other social media marketing channels. Prior to that, it was a lot of trial and error. But it was of a thicker cost to it to be able to market on some of the channels that were out there back in those days.
Consequently, if you’re going to really test out something on AdWords, let’s say. You’re probably going to need to spend at least a month, maybe two months. There’s a lot of time involved in just setting everything up and getting it going. But you’re also going to need to spend five to ten thousand dollars minimum to really drive enough traffic to get meaningful data. With an email campaign, you could learn the same thing with an email campaign that costs you maybe a thousand dollars and might take you one or two weeks to put together.
What makes Text Message Marketing different?
Text message marketing is a different form of communication that you’re having with prospective clients. It’s different from email marketing in that it’s so much more effective in terms of response rates.
With text messaging, at least 70% of people respond to a text. Whereas only 1-2 % respond to an email.
So it’s just night and day. However, I think that that by itself makes it really tempting for people to overuse it and abuse it. And so I think you’ve got to be careful. Ideally, You should offer people something valuable to them and use that as a way to entice them to take a step towards you.
You don’t want to show up saying, “Hey, buy something from me today.” Approach it in a different manner by saying, “Hi, I have something for you that you might find valuable. Don’t worry, you don’t spend any money. And if you like it, I’d like to talk to you, or here’s something else I’d like you to do.”
That works. It builds trust in the relationship. And that’s the kind of relationship that’s going to last forever. So text message marketing has to be integrated into that kind of thing. You can blast a lot of people with a text message, but if they don’t see value in that text message, they get more annoyed by spammy texts than they do by spammy emails.
Moreover, text message marketing is different in the fact that people are always with their smartphones. You could be reaching out to someone in the midst of whatever it is they are doing throughout the day. They can be doing anything when they get that message. And in that sense, timing is important. It’s not like an email where you’re sending something to somebody’s inbox. With an email that’s sitting in the inbox, they’re going to get to it when they get to it. They’re going to read it when they get a chance to.
Text message marketing is different in that a text message warrants instant attention or an instant reaction.
What works and what doesn’t when it comes to Text Message Marketing?
You know what works great is when the relationship heats up.
So somebody’s on your site and they’ve requested some information, or they just made a purchase or something like that. That’s a great time to send a text message. They have you on their brain already. So then you have to think about the “heat” of the relationship. When the customer is very engaged with your brand, that’s when the permission is there to text them, and possibly even frequently.
However, when the engagement really drops back down, you probably also want to drop down the frequency of texting. You may even want to possibly turn it off altogether until they show some interest again. Otherwise, you’re just going to wear them out and they’re going to ignore you. You have to hit them while it’s hot, so to speak, when there may have already been some previous engagement that you’ve had with them.
And you’re just kind of following up on that previous engagement and offering something else, offering more value, or just furthering the conversation. Maybe you’re getting information from them, but it’s a little bit more time if you just had some recent engagement with them. That’s opposed to kind of a blind, out-of-the-blue text that comes maybe, let’s say a month later after some engagement.
The bottom line with text message marketing is you’ve got to be careful.
You don’t want people to reply with “stop” and stop all communications. After that, you kind of lost them. You want to be proactive in giving them the opportunity to say, “Hey, stop texting me” without saying “stop”. In your message, you can say, “Hey, thanks for your recent purchase. Here’s a coupon for 10 percent off your next one” or something like that. But then at the end of that message, you can also add something else. Something along the lines of, “Hey, if you’d like to adjust the frequency of these messages, or if you’d like to choose your method of conversation or communication, click here now.” So if they want to change the relationship, the communication, they can without just shutting it off.
Ultimately, you have to leave it up to them. You don’t want to force anything down their throat because again, ultimately if you get that “stop”, you really lose them.
What tools or strategies can you use to manage lead nurturing with text message marketing?
Well, based on my experience, I’ve been doing this with thousands of companies over the last fifteen-plus years. The hardest thing for most businesses, including me, including our business, is it’s very difficult to talk about your own business in your own products and services without sounding like a salesperson.
You just always want to tell them what a wonderful product you have. And that’s the nature of business. You’re excited about it. It’s hard to get to really think about the customer’s needs and how you can help them meet their needs. That’s where you got to start, I think. If you have some tools, and tips, and tricks, and advice, and lessons learned, and case studies, and those kinds of things. These are all things where you can help somebody that’s on that buying journey navigate that road using their own criteria. That’s what works in terms of nurturing leads. Because that way you position yourself as a resource of trusted, valuable information, not a salesperson.
What we did recently is release a guide.
We wrote it specifically for our customers who are most often trying to create their first email campaign to nurture leads. We call it the email campaign creation guide, but it really applies to any kind of marketing campaign.
One of the things that I think is so valuable about it is that there are a few pages. It’s not long. We’re not talking about a 20-page thing here. We’re talking five 5 or 10 (pages). And there’s a couple of pages where we just walk the reader through. How do you really understand what’s going on in your customers’ minds? What are the questions they’re asking themselves? And then how can you position your own company and offerings to be the answer to those questions?
So I think going through that exercise and then developing that content, whether it be free PDF’s or blog articles or videos that you create or actual products, in some cases, that’s the key. This is because you can’t have a relationship with someone if you’re always asking them for something. That’s not a healthy relationship.
You have to have a way of giving back.
The thing is, a lot of times, it’s hard for a business not to come off sales. Because obviously they want sales, they want to increase their revenue, the profits, all of that. But the bottom line is, these days customers are a little bit savvier. And people are generally a lot more turned off when it comes to aggressive sales tactics, overly aggressive sales tactics. These days people can kind of sniff that out very quickly.
I think people would rather be informed, educated. Then if that information has provided them with value, and they trust that value coming from whatever source that is, whatever brand that is, then you can have somebody become a loyal customer because you’ve provided value to them. You’ve educated them, you’ve helped them out. So that’s what it comes down to in a lot of marketing and sales and buying, is timing.
I may wake up in the morning and have a question on my mind, or a problem, or a challenge, or an opportunity that I’m focused on. And I might do a little Googling and look for answers, and I may end up on your website. I might sign up or do something right and end up in your funnel. So it’s easy to treat that as, “OK, this person is ready to be sold.”
At which, absolutely you should offer them the opportunity to spend some money. But at the same time, you have to be aware that they might not be quite ready.
They might still be in that education phase of the buying process.
They’re just learning. And so when you get that, you can offer them the opportunity to buy something and they may not take it. Sometimes the smart thing to do is take a step back and say, “OK, well, let’s switch over to more of an education series for this customer.” The good news is that most businesses are really bad at doing all this stuff we’re talking about. They really don’t have much of a lead nurturing campaign in place. So if you just have a very simple, once every couple of weeks type of a drip, or you’re just keeping your brand in front of these customers and maintaining that great relationship of trust, then whenever they decide, “OK, it’s time for me to spend some money on this,” you’re going to be the one they contact because why wouldn’t they?
I think you also really do have to be on the pulse of those prospects and their reactions too. Because you could encounter the case where you find out based on the activity, based on the click-through, based on where they’re going on your site, it could be they need to be in a different spot of your pipeline. They may be that type of person that takes a lot to sell them or win them over. Maybe they would need to do more research. They have to be educated.
For that type of person then, your funnel needs to be a little bit different.
You may want to switch it to more of an educational funnel over a longer period of time. Because that’s just that type of person. And I think the main thing is you have to be quick to recognize that. Then maybe segment your last segment, your text communications, and put people in those correct funnels because you’re communicating with them totally differently.
It’s challenging, it’s difficult. Again, it’s just the same as creating that content marketing strategy that we talked about. It’s hard to do that for your own business. I could talk to any business owner and help them figure that out for themselves. But then if you put me in a room and ask me to do it for myself, I don’t even know what to do. And it’s the same challenge with segmenting. It’s very difficult for most businesses to really work that out and come up with a reasonably simple way to do it. Because they see so much nuance and subtlety in their different customers that they tend to overcomplicate it. And it really doesn’t need to be. If you overcomplicate it, it just makes it so unworkable and unmanageable that that is not sustainable.
It really has to be pretty simple.
Although it has to be more complex than just ‘people that bought from us before,’ and ‘people that haven’t bought from us yet’. You got to be a little more subtle than that. But it can’t be every person’s eye color, and what alma mater, what college they went to, and income level, and 10 other variables. And you’re managing different campaigns for all those different groups. You know, that’s a little too complex for most businesses.
Are there any particular tools that have been successful with lead nurturing using text message marketing?
Especially in the last year or so, we’ve had a lot of clients that we worked with that are in the health and wellness space. Everything from manufacturing and marketing, different kinds of immunity, boosting supplements, and things like that to more medical treatments and things like that. This particular business is owned by a doctor who had developed this very specialized treatment. And they ironically, about six months before the lockdown, had come up with a way to provide this treatment primarily remotely. So it’s great timing for them.
But they didn’t have any kind of automation of any of the relationships. It was all salespeople on the phone. What they did was exactly what we talked about earlier. We worked with them. We helped them come up with an education series. Then, we came up with the list of five questions that somebody who probably needs that treatment has in their mind. And we created a little PDF for every one of those questions. If you’re asking yourself this question, here’s some information you might want to know. And then we put that together as a little campaign.
And that drew people in to setting appointments with them right on the website. Then what we did that really changed the game was people would engage with those PDFs that we created that was an email campaign. They would engage with those PDFs, and show some interest, but not set an appointment with the clinic to do the initial assessment. So those people that got almost there but didn’t quite get all the way into the appointment with the technician.
Those people started getting text messages
It went from 50% of the people that looked at the PDF would then set an appointment right afterward, to eighty-nine 89%, which is almost all of them. Which is almost unheard of. And then they continued to add the text messaging into, OK, after you’ve had your first assessment with them, then there are a lot of people that would not take the next step. That’s when it’s time to make the purchase.
So that’s when they introduce text messages to, if they were starting to stall rather than just a here’s ten percent off, “Please buy from me.” They sent text messages to take the customer back up to that education series. “OK, you’re not ready. Great. Here’s the next question that most people are asking themselves. Here’s a valuable resource that might help you with that question.” And it works every time it’s tried.
Really, it’s all about having that informative content for the customer that’s going to help them answer their own questions so that they’re ready to make the purchase with your business.
So I think where a lot of businesses fail is that after that initial kind of sales type outreach, where they’re offering some type of discount, maybe they were somewhere in the pipeline, maybe they requested information. And people that don’t respond to that offering – the discount. I think a lot of businesses look at that as a lost cause and maybe even remove them from the funnel. But like you said, well, what you can then do is just switch them into more of an educational pipeline and don’t give up on them, so to speak, because if they’re still in there, they still haven’t opted out. They still haven’t replied with stop, then, you know, you still have a chance.
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If you’re going through your normal sales process, emails can help streamline your sales pipeline. Help customers move through the pipeline by educating them. Get them more engaged with your brand. Take their temperature – know when they’re stalling or confused and things like that.
In our digital world, customers have more ways to engage with you. They need more contact with your brand before they get confident enough to part with their money. You can come up with ways to automate at least some of your touchpoints.
Lead Nurturing does not Have to be so Complex
One example is a company that has been able to successfully use email marketing to generate new leads. This company would write a blog once or twice a month, and then they would send an email about these articles to their customers. From those emails, each of their sales representatives has been able to gain a new lead each month.
If you’re an expert in your field and have the ability to create content that your audience will find interesting, then all you need to do is get an email in front of your customers.
Emails are simple and easy to test out because there’s very little investment and risk. You can try it, assess the data, and use it as a test before you invest in more expensive forms of advertising. Once you figure out which emails get results, you can assume that those same messages will work with other marketing strategies.
Take note that Targeting Digital Ads may now be inefficient due to people working from home.
Spend and Pray
The problem with most marketing is that you start spending money at a very high rate, right out of the gate. It takes time to get tuned-up and optimized and to really start working. Therefore, you don’t actually start seeing results except in small doses over a long period of time – it could be months before you see ROI from your investment.
In the meantime, you are shelling out thousands of dollars hoping that months down the road you’re going to get a payoff. Plus, if you are not an expert in this field and have to rely on a consultant. You must trust their word on when you could possibly see any ROIs. Right now, this doesn’t really work because you don’t know that the market is going to look like 6 months from now, everything could change very quickly.
Test, Measure and Optimize
Email marketing can be a very powerful tool because you don’t have to spend much money on it. Your investment can be very minimal and you can start seeing results very quickly. Once you start seeing results, you can use the data you’ve accumulated to invest more money on the things that have been working with certain audiences. You can then proceed with digital advertising with the assurance that it’s going to work and pay off more quickly.
Lead nurturing is an important part of the sales and marketing process. When done properly with lead management software, it can help your company send the right content. More so, you can send tailored marketing messages to leads at the right time based on their individual preferences and level of engagement.
Before the internet and CRM software, it was a full time job to nurture a lead. Unfortunately, lead nurturing requires a substantial amount time and effort since it’s so detailed and nuanced.
That’s why it’s important to leverage software such as lead management software to automate the process. For example, here’s a video showing why our software provides a powerful and effective solution for companies who need lead nurturing.
Still not convinced? Here are several reasons why you should use lead management software to automate lead nurturing.
Lead nurturing requires a substantial amount time and effort since it’s so detailed and nuanced.
Reasons Why You Should Use Automated Lead Nurturing
1. Lead mangement software Can Save You Time
Is your sales team stressed out trying to keep track of all the business cards they collected at networking events? Also, are they are manually scheduling follow up calls? Automated lead nurturing can help them save valuable time. Just upload their contact information and sort the leads into different marketing campaigns and hit save.
The leads will receive automated messages based on how the marketing campaign is structured. This simple tool can prevent your sales and marketing team from wasting valuable time chasing leads who aren’t converting. It will also give them the freedom to focus on other important tasks.
2. Automated Lead Nurturing Can Improve Your Conversion Rate
With SalesNexus, you can instantly receive a notification when a lead engages with your content. Since you can get real time information when they click links, you can learn more about which topics interest them. This type of insight into their behavior can help improve your conversion rate and increase the overall ROI by 20%.
3. Automate Lead Nurturing and it Can Help Make Sure that You Never Forget a Lead
Are you worried that a hot lead might slip through the cracks? Luckily you’ll never have to stress about losing a lead ever again when you use our lead management software. After you configure the marketing campaign, you can just upload the lead’s information into our system.
4. Automated Lead Nurturing Can Provide More Data When Paired with a CRM
Another reason why you should consider lead management software is that it provides powerful information when combined with your CRM. The analytical data gathered from the lead nurturing tool can dramatically improve your company’s sales and marketing process. Employees can look at the lead’s previous actions and history and customize their conversations according to their specific needs. Ultimately, when you automate lead nurturing, you can help your company create more effective and efficient marketing campaigns.
If your company hasn’t started automating lead nurturing, your sales team is wasting time on leads that are not interested. Automated lead nurturing can help push your leads through the company’s sales funnel and increase your close rate.
With SalesNexus, you can instantly receive a notification when a lead engages with your content.
For more information about our services, please call us at (800) 862-0134. SalesNexus allows you to automate and manage responses to leads, while also making it easy to nurture them. You can also try our software out during a free 30-day trial. SalesNexus makes it easy for you to grow your business Our CRM, Marketing Automation and Lead Generation tools.
Small businesses have to leverage every bit of technological know-how to remain competitive and attract leads. At the same time, they have to remain true to their loyal customer base. For many small businesses, this means using email lists and automation to send out newsletters and updates to their customers. But maintaining newsletters for older customers can hinder business growth. Instead, look to email marketing for lead nurturing and not for customer maintenance. Here are a few ways to transform your current email marketing practices into lead nurturing emails.
Small businesses have to leverage every bit of technological know-how to remain competitive and attract leads. At the same time, they have to remain true to their loyal customer base.
Lead Nurturing Tip 1: Drop Your Newsletter
Small manufacturing businesses long avoided marketing their products. Instead, they relied on older customers and industry relationships. Now that overseas markets are cutting in on their business, manufacturers are turning to marketing techniques. For example, Stacey Bales and Sara Mortensen are owners of a multi-million dollar Illinois-based industrial plating company. They told Crain’s Chicago Business News that the company’s growth relies on its multi-channel marketing strategy. Social media and website channels bring in customers and young talent. On the email side, they maintain a newsletter solely for older clients.
As those clients fade away so will their newsletter. If your business relies on older clients then a newsletter makes sense. However, this is not a cure-all. Do this only if analytics reveal that those emails are opened. Nurturing new leads via email requires personalized messaging and relevant information. Updates and ongoing news will not engage a new customer.
Lead Nurturing Tip 2: Break Down Silos
Congratulations, you’ve dropped your newsletter. You are one step closer to nurturing leads. Now you need personalized messaging and relevant information that will keep leads engaged. This information is acquired by breaking down silos. Marketers and sales reps need to exchange information.
Understanding the questions that new customers frequently ask sales personnel helps marketers anticipate potential client needs. Lead nurturing emails feature those questions in the subject line. These generate higher numbers of opens which translate to higher numbers of conversions.
But relationship building isn’t always about answering questions. You can use email as a way to break down the barriers between consumer and marketer. Use your emails as an opportunity to increase the personalization of your follow-up email.
If a lead is warm, then send an automated email that ends with a question. Marketing strategist Seth Price calls this form of questioning an “empathy trigger“. Ending an email with a question such as “Did you get the information you were looking for?” opens up the chance for an exchange.
Should you receive a direct reply from the lead, then you can follow up with a manual email tailored specifically for this hot lead.
Ending an email with a question such as “Did you get the information you were looking for?” opens up the chance for an exchange.
Lead Nurturing Tip 3: Link to Website Content
You’ve ditched the newsletter. You’ve broken silos and gained greater customer insights. Your lead nurturing activities are working. Leads are opening your emails. Some leads have moved from warm to hot. Now you must entice them to your website where they can engage your product or service.
Offering resources like check-lists or e-books are frequently used carrots. But before sending emails that link to resources, ensure that your website is deemed trustworthy and professional. The site should load quickly. Monitor site analytics to see where leads stay engaged and when they bounce.
Update and improve content as necessary. And don’t send every lead to the same page. Target your leads and direct them to the product, service or resource that they will find most engaging.
Depending on your industry, you can provide a trial service period. Software-as-a-Service providers can use this opportunity to offer a basic trial membership with the plan of upselling to a premium package at a later date. Other strategies include providing a range of industry-relevant video, audio and even augmented reality content.
Offering resources like check-lists or e-books are frequently used carrots. But before sending emails that link to resources, ensure that your website is deemed trustworthy and professional. The site should load quickly. Monitor site analytics to see where leads stay engaged and when they bounce.
Lead Nurturing Tip 4: Discover Additional Channels
Emails are only a portion of a well-constructed lead nurturing emails campaign. Most marketers incorporate social media contacts, texts and calls to foster relationships. Other marketers have gone the traditional route and nurtured leads with snail mail and innovative packaging.
One universal email marketing technique is to follow up within three days of contact. Then, follow-up an additional dozen times over 100 days using a mix of channels. Messaging must be consistent across channels. Using your initial email as an anchor can help keep your message consistent even when the medium changes.
Last year, researchers found that lead nurturing practices can move up to 20 percent of leads from the “not ready to purchase” category to conversion. Starting with engaging, lead nurturing emails and moving to personalized messaging can help foster relationships and nurture leads.
One universal marketing technique is to follow up within three days of contact. Then, follow-up an additional dozen times over 100 days using a mix of channels. Messaging must be consistent across channels. Using your initial email as an anchor can help keep your message consistent even when the medium changes.
Digital marketers are looking for new and effective ways to market over email. Some choose to use a content newsletter on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to keep their consumers attention. However, this has not proven to be an extremely effective way of gaining new clients. In fact, the newsletter often becomes a vanity project rather than a true form of lead nurturing. For that reason, unless it is leading directly to sales a content newsletter might be better left off the list of marketing tactics.
Purpose of a Newsletter
The purpose of a content newsletter is often to inform, educate and keep the attention of the reader. For example, many newsletters inform the reader about the latest news and information on a particular industry, product or sector. For example, a stereo company might produce a newsletter about new releases of content and software that are available on their system. They might include the fact that Amazon Echo is now compatible for example. They may also include much more general news like any new cars that Tesla puts out, new iPhones or new releases of Android. While these are major advances in consumer technology, they do not answer any particular concerns that the stereo speaker consumers have. If they are interested in those general tech insights, there are probably other sites or outlets that are a better source of information.
Direct Response
Email marketing for lead nurturing is really about creating a direct response platform that answers the consumer’s questions and moves them one step closer towards an actual purchase or buying decision. Email marketing must be extremely responsive to the consumer’s needs based on the feedback and insights they have already provided.
For example, if the consumer enters a chat with a representative and is asking about the price often, perhaps they feel that the cost is too high for them. This consumer needs to be marketed to each time there is a sale or promotion. Price is the key pain point for this consumer and email marketers have to know that.
Another way to determine the main concern of the consumer is the source of the lead acquisition. A lead for an accounting software firm that is acquired from a high-end accounting firm has a very sophisticated set of needs. They are looking for extremely professional tools to help them get to optimal results. To nurture this lead, the email marketer needs to constantly provide the top features that differentiate the tool. They need to advertise new features as well as the top factors that would allow a sophisticated buyer to choose them over the competition.
Specific Questions
Email marketers must imagine the specific questions that consumers have in their minds. Those are the ones that once answered, allow them to make a buying decision. Marketers may even want to survey their prospects on the issues that most concern them. They can then go about knocking down the concerns one by one. Unfortunately, content newsletters do not answer any specific questions and therefore do a poor job lead nurturing.
For example, an email marketer for a meal kit delivery service might identify several problems. Will the food taste good? Will I have time to make the meal? How difficult is it to make the meals? Are these meals expensive? What happens if I am out of town for a week? Each concern is a legitimate reason why a consumer may choose not purchase the service. However, its the marketer’s job to take these question on one by one and get to yes. They cannot do this in a newsletter. Rather, they need effective subjects lines, content and direct answers. Only then will the consumer make the decision to buy.
SalesNexus is a leading provider of sales and digital marketing advisory. For more information, please contact us.
Email is not the primary avenue for marketing professionals anymore. What email is, however, is a primary resource for feeding your leads pool with quality and viable potential customers.
Like any tool, half of the job is figuring out how to best employ those tools. The impact of social media, video, mobile devices and other technology empowered platforms and mediums have changed the landscape of marketing. That doesn’t mean that businesses change the tools they use – they simply change the way they use their tools.
The world of marketing is all about the “customer experience” today. Enhanced by a myriad of options, from tweeting this to blogging that and various customer engagement tactics businesses are now generating leads like never before. That is the good news.
The bad news is, that with so many new and advanced lead generation options there will inevitably be more leads that go “cold.” Unlike those “warm” leads that we discussed earlier that have viable potential, these leads have been left as scraps to be thrown out or at best recycled.
What if…
What if those “cold” leads were just not ready yet? What if these leads were interested prospects who just wanted more information before making a decision? What if these were leads individuals who were going to become customers but became sick, became busy or something else demanded their attention and they simply forgot? What if lead nurturing is the solution and email is the answer? There is enough evidence to suggest that it could very well be just that for many businesses.
Charity Nurtures Leads
Lead nurturing isn’t designed or even expected to show immediate or instant results. Businesses will feel the impact of lead nurturing over the course of time and eventually those benefits will become obvious. Every campaign requires good planning and the right implementation in order to be successful. Email lead nurturing campaigns are no different.
The Non-Profit organization Charity: Water did more than improve the flow of donations and revenue to help their cause. They also engaged their audience, used mobile-friendly communications and used a lead nurturing plan designed to cover 18 months! That is serious nurturing with real results.
Shopify Doesn’t Sell
You don’t have to be a Non-Profit in order to benefit from and use a lead nurturing campaign though. The lead nurturing email campaign that Shopify employs isn’t about using their services to help set up an online store but about “…offering top-notch marketing and small business tips.” Sure, there is a CTA embedded in there and that’s fine. What you won’t find is a push, urgency or pressure to buy anything. Therein lies the secret of email lead nurturing – it just adds up.
The Lead Nurturing Math
If a company sends out two batches of emails per month to those who haven’t responded (the cold leads), an email lead nurturing program can deliver impact even with limited response. As an example, if only a 2% click rate came back on those two batches of sent emails those numbers will add up. To keep it manageable, assume there were 100 people on the “cold” list. That will equate to a mere 4 new viable additions to your lead pool that month but over the course of the year…
How many marketers, if they were told that they could revive 50 dead leads a year with minimal effort, would reject that offer? If you have a team of 10 superstar marketers, what could they do with 500 quality leads? Looks like you might need a bigger office, right?
That is the secret and power of email lead nurturing done right.
attention of the reader. For example, many newsletters inform the reader about the latest news and information on a particular industry, product or sector. For example, a stereo company might produce a newsletter about new releases of content and software that are available on their system. They might include the fact that Amazon Echo is now compatible for example. They may also include much more general news like any new cars that Tesla puts out, new iPhones or new releases of Android. While these are major advances in consumer technology, they do not answer any particular concerns that the stereo speaker consumers have. If they are interested in those general tech insights, there are probably other sites or outlets that are a better source of information.
deliver impact even with limited response. As an example, if only a 2% click rate came back on those two batches of sent emails those numbers will add up. To keep it manageable, assume there were 100 people on the “cold” list. That will equate to a mere 4 new viable additions to your lead pool that month but over the course of the year…