5 examples of lead nurturing
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Lead nurturing or lead growth is a strategy that consists on establishing a relationship with the customers, providing them the content they demand at all times. The goal of this marketing strategy is to establish a relationship of trust with the customer in order to ensure that, at the end of the process, he/she purchases the product or uses the services offered by the company.
In the beginning, lead nurturing was understood as an email marketing strategy. This understanding of the concept has changed, and it already covers other ways of approaching the customer. This process has taken place because of changes in user behavior, which is more difficult to predict now than it was a few years ago. Due to these changes, lead nurturing has become a multi-channel strategy, as it will look for ways to make the users convert or purchase the company’s product on different platforms.
Lead nurturing can be considered a fully personalized marketing strategy. In lead nurturing, the goal of message personalization is to make the customer feel more welcome when reaching the campaign and, in this way, he/she ends up buying the products.
In lead nurturing, personalization does not mean only to include the name of the user who receives the message. It means also offering the content he/she wants. This full personalization, that starts in the way you treat the user and includes the content he/she receives, is intended to lead the user so he/she finally buys the product. It seeks to maintain the users’ interest throughout the process, so that they end up buying.
The ultimate goal of lead nurturing is to sell products or services to the customer. But in addition to this goal, lead nurturing aims at keeping the user’s interest for a longer time, so that he/she receives impacts and thus, his/her satisfaction degree is greater and the purchase is better.
Lead nurturing process
Lead nurturing consists of 6 steps in the user’s purchase cycle. This cycle covers the whole process, from the beginning, with the first impact, until it reaches the end:
- Inform: It is the first impact the user receives. The user begins to have knowledge of the product or service the company wishes to sell. Here, it is about showing, widely, what the benefits of buying the company’s product can be. This does not necessarily mean that the company is carrying out an advertising presentation. Here, the company just mentions the benefits that having the company’s products or services can offer the user.
- Educate: The impacts multiply. In this stage, the user already knows what the company sells, its interest and objective. The ultimate goal of this stage is for the client to fully understand what the product or service consists of, in order to move to a higher stage that covers the involvement of the user or customer in the company’s entire process.
- Involve: Involvement is a step that goes beyond customer education. In this stage of the process, the user will want to register for the service or perform an action for which he/she has been previously prepared. If the previous steps were successful, the involvement shall be easy to carry out.
- Validate: The fourth step is based on offering an assurance to the customer, and that he/she is completely convinced of what he/she is going to do. Even if the customer gets involved in the process, it is possible that at any given time, he/she would want to abandon it. Here, the company must close all the exits for this not to happen and to move the customer towards the fifth step.
- Convert: It is the most important step. Here, the user purchases the product, decides that he/she wants it and searches for it. Once he/she finds it, he/she buys it and the process comes to an end, or almost to an end.
- Maintain: As with any purchase process, the process does not exactly end here. The door to future agreements remains open. Maintaining the customer within a portfolio of potential customers for the future may be an ideal solution for the company.
5 examples of lead nurturing
To better understand lead nurturing, these are examples of 5 different types of messages that can be included in this digital marketing practice:
1.- Welcome messages
It is the most common contact message usually sent by a company. This first message to establish the company-customer contact is one of the most important ones, as it lays the foundations of the subsequent relationship between the customer and the company.
Additionally, it will be the first impression of the company that the customer will have, so it is very important to highlight the benefits of using the service to which the user has subscribed or enrolled from this moment.
Welcome messages must always be personalized messages. At least the customer’s name must be present in the message, and all communication must be addressed to the user who has registered or enrolled in the service.
In the lead nurturing process, welcome messages can be considered as the way to involve the user in the service, as it must be taken into account that the customer has followed a previous process of getting to know the product and brand in order to register.
2.- Promotions
Promotions are another form a company can use to communicate regularly. Promotions are used to obtain conversions more directly than usual.
Through this kind of business, brands such as Cherokee Workwear hope to convince customers with attractive prices, discounts on purchases or acquisitions, etc. In addition, these offers usually appear on special days, such as Book Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Black Friday. Promotions look for an excuse to locate a reason for them and attract users to them.
Offers and promotions are usually presented through colorful messages, full of images and attractive slogans. When it comes to a promotion, the company uses all their strategies so that the product they want to sell can be sold more easily and directly.
3.- Subscription to a service
Email marketing is one of the channels with the highest customer acquisition rate. Lead nurturing starts from this knowledge and takes advantage of the possibilities of this tool to attract new customers towards the company’s portfolio.
As Asana does, many companies look for new customers by offering more advantageous services, access to cheaper prices, and more advantages in comparison with the old service they had contracted. Telephone companies, banks and insurers are frequent users of this kind of communication, which is based on finding that are disappointed with the services they are currently subscribed to and taking them into their client base. The degree of success of these campaigns is based on the customer’s desire to change what they currently have.
The subscription to a service is the first step for a company, as this is still the first stage, to involve. The user is not familiar with the service, but through email messages, phone calls, SMS or social networks, it is possible to reach the users and let them know what the service offered is and what they can get through it.
4.- Urgency and opportunity for lead nurturing campaigns
Another way to carry out lead nurturing is to send the user a message informing him/her it will be the last opportunity to obtain the service or product. In general, this is a strategy that aims at the user making the purchase with the knowledge that there will not be another opportunity like it if he/she misses it.
This strategy is usually very common for ecommerce websites, travel agencies, airlines or hotels, such as the case of GAME. These kinds of messages are usually accompanied by powerful images and calls to action.
5.- Offer focused on the product
Finally, another common example of lead nurturing is messages focused on a particular product. These messages can be sent at the beginning and serve as an introduction for the user to become familiar with the dynamics of the company; but they can also be sent later on, using tracking systems to present offers based on the customer’s interests.
Amazon is a company that usually sends messages based on the searches the customer has carried out, thus providing information regarding products they have in stock that may be of interest to the aforementioned customer.
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