What is lead nurturing? 5 Steps to a successful lead nurturing strategy

In its most basic definition, lead nurturing is the marketing practice of developing customer relationships. This is done using a number of platforms, including but not limited to social media, emails, blogs, and video content. The purpose is to invest in the customer journey, or sales funnel, to get prospective customers to convert and improve their viability as loyal and high-lifetime value consumers. Learn the best lead nurturing strategy for cultivating customer trust and rapport.

What are the benefits of lead nurturing? 

The greatest advantage of lead nurturing is that it creates sales-ready leads. This is important because 98% of e-commerce store visitors don’t make a purchase during their first visit. Lead nurturing targets these visitors to take them further along the sales funnel and into the conversion stage.

That’s not all; research also shows that nurtured leads spend 47% more per transaction than non-nurtured leads. By nurturing your customers, they remain loyal, become brand advocates, increase their lifetime value, and are less likely to churn.

Lead nurturing vs. lead generation — what’s the difference?

Beginning marketers tend to use the terms “lead nurturing” and “lead generation” interchangeably. However, there’s an important distinction. Lead generation is about building initial brand awareness using a multi-touchpoint approach. This includes SEO, social media, paid ads, etc. In other words, lead generation is getting customers to the initial sales funnel stage.

Lead nurturing is about cultivating relationships with customers once the initial awareness phase has already been established. You’re taking customers deeper into the sales funnel stages. This is done using more segmented and personalized mediums, such as emails, targeted content, webinars, exclusive offers, and even one-on-one consultations. 

Lead nurturing is an ongoing process even after customers have already converted. The goal is to keep customers loyal and increase their lifetime value. This means continued outreach with your product-qualified leads (customers who already have experience with your products).

How to create a lead nurturing strategy

Here are some lead nurturing tactics used by marketers and sales teams across both B2C and B2B industries.

1. Create personalized emails

Leads that subscribe demonstrate an initial interest. Nurture these leads through highly personalized messages. Personalization goes beyond addressing the recipient by name. Here are some examples of personalized messaging:

• Recommendation for a product the recipient has browsed in the past 72 hours
• Digital gifts (e.g. gift card, free shipping) sent to the recipient on his/her birthday or anniversary of signup
• Friendly reminder to the recipient that there are products sitting in his/her shopping cart
• Followup message within days of a purchase. This could be a simple thank-you message, a request to complete a product satisfaction survey, or an invitation to contact customer support for assistance.

2. Get lead scoring right

Segmentation is a fundamental lead nurturing element. This is a scoring process in which you assign a numerical value to customers based on their actions. The score is tallied, and the highest-scoring customers are considered high-value with a high conversion probability. This is the audience segment you want to prioritize and create targeted and customized content for.

There are a number of behavioral metrics to use when establishing a scoring system. Some metrics may be deemed more important than others and be assigned more points. Example metrics include:

• Number of site visits in a given period
• Average time on site per visit
• Product clicks
• Number of items placed in the shopping cart
• Subscriber email open-rate
• Email link click-through rate

3. Produce targeted content

Content marketing material should be aimed at smaller, segmented demographics, rather than content meant to be one-size-fits-all. For example, an athletic wear company can publish a blog post on The Top 10 Maternity Exercise Clothing Brands and send the link via email to its demographic that’s female and of childbearing age. This is much more targeted than a general article titled The Top 10 Exercise Clothing Brands.

4. Provide comprehensive material

Once customers are aware of your brand and are weighing between you and competitors, it’s time to disseminate comprehensive informational content. This goes beyond the typical 500-1000 word blog post or 10-minute video. By comprehensive, this includes lengthy e-books, white papers, and independent case studies released by authoritative industry experts. You can send these via email or social media posts with a link for instant access. Comprehensive content is intended for customers in the deep research and consideration phase. 

5. Perform A/B testing

Lead nurturing is a trial-and-error process. There’s no shortcut around testing what works and what doesn’t. Produce a variety of messaging, offers, and call-to-actions to determine what elicits the highest response rates. Areas you can perform A/B testing include:

• Email subject lines
• Call-to-actions at the end of a blog post or email message
• Product offers (e.g. free trial vs early bird access)

Simplify lead management with Lytics

Data is a core component at every stage of the lead nurturing process. Data enables segmentation, in turn leading to more targeted and personalized campaigns. With Lytics CDP, create campaigns that align your IT and marketing leads, all while incorporating the latest marketing automation tools for precision, speed, and efficiency.