How to use email marketing to nurture sales leads

A common problem most businesses encounter in the sales process is finding a way to convert their sales leads. Your marketing efforts generate awareness and, eventually, leads, but while for some this is enough many potential clients might require a bit more convincing. Email marketing can help your marketing department build the trusting relationship needed to convert a potential sale.

how to go about setting up a lead-nurturing email campaign

The purpose of a lead nurturing email campaign is to introduce the subscriber to your product or service, while at the same time gathering information from them. That way you ready the recipient for the sales push, but the information you gathered on the recipient also gives the sales team insight into where that person is in the buying cycle and what their specific needs are. This means your sales team can contact potential clients at the time when they are most likely to make a purchase.

What do you consider to be a valuable lead?

First of all, you'll need to decide what your ideal lead looks like, so you know what kind of lead you're trying to create. (This is probably something that should be discussed between your marketing and sales teams.) What sales leads would you consider to be worth following up on?

When answering this question, consider whether or not your potential client really needs your product or service, and, if so, how urgently they'd be looking to make a purchase. How big a client are the likely to become, i.e. how much and how often will they spend? Make sure you're dealing with the correct person - if you're pitching your ice cream to the five-year old, keep in mind that mom will be the one making the decision. If it's a B2B sale, you don't want to market your product to a junior, but rather to an authoritative decision maker in the company.

How does it work?

Think about past sales calls you've received, or pitches you've heard. When these come out of the blue, we typically dismiss them. Sometimes you'll even find a few months later, when one of your friends have bought the product, that it is actually something that you want - but when you first received that call you had never heard of the product and so had absolutely no interest in it.

Your lead nurturing email campaign should slowly introduce potential customers to your product. Remember, you don't want to overwhelm them with an aggressive sales push; you simply want to slowly begin sending them emails containing short bits of valuable information, addressing their need and explaining how your product can offer a solution.

So, think about the questions your clients will want you to answer: What's in this for me? How will this product or service improve my life? Do I really need it? Can I afford it? Is this the best option, or will another company offer me a better deal? Now set up your value-laden, informative email series and slowly supply them with answers to these questions. Include useful elements, like discount coupons, links to articles or PDF downloads, or webinars - anything that might provide them with more information that could entice them to buy.

What now?

Once you've set up your nurturing campaign, you should see an increase in quality sales leads - which also means a higher sales conversion rate. As with all your email campaigns, keep an eye on your reports and statistics (and, in this case, also follow up with your sales team) to track your progress. If you run an effective lead nurturing campaign, and continually tweak it according to the trends you pick up among your subscribers, your campaign will eventually send through a constant flow of quality sales leads.

A lead-nurturing campaign takes the guesswork from your sales process - instead of being faced with masses of leads they know are unlikely to convert, your sales team will be able to hone in on those prospects that they know are ready buy.

*GraphicMail www.graphicmail.com aims to help organisations with their communications - by providing mobile and email marketing applications that are designed to be both cost effective and easy to use.