We're continuing to explore how the different elements of an effective digital marketing campaign all fit together. We've covered lead generation, blogging, social media, email marketing, and search engine optimization to date, now it's time to take a look at managing the leads we're creating by nurturing them to maturity.
Element 6: LEAD MANAGEMENT
Once you have driven relevant traffic to your website, made them an offer, and enticed visitors to claim it the result is a real live lead. What now?! Don't panic, don't grab the phone and scare them away, don't send them a coupon. Nurture them.
Lead management as part of an inbound marketing plan puts a workflow to lead nurturing. To nurture your leads you need to stay in contact with them, help them through the sales funnel with additional offers, and not miss a beat.
You want to help tell your leads a story about your services, your ability to deliver them, and give them a comfortable way to learn at their pace. You want to gently remind them of the urgency and value in acting swiftly and give them a reason to act on your offer.
If you're unable or unwilling to properly nurture your leads the results will surely affect your bottom line and cost you a number of sales. Failure to follow up in a timely manner can cost you the sale, are you prepared to let nothing slip and truly dedicate time necessary?
Assuming your answer is yes and you'd like to learn more about what to do to improve your results let's dig in. In this case I think our best bet is to look at a few elements to spend your time on and a few mistakes you'll want to avoid.
DO TAKE THESE STEPS
1. Set up email campaigns - A great way to bring past contacts to your site and introduce them to your great offers. Continue to build your database and keep in touch with them often.
2. Set up workflows for your offers - This will ensure timely thank you messages and 'next step' emails are delivered. If done right, you'll be able to walk prospects through the sales cycle gently and deliver them through the bottom of the sales funnel.
3. Segment your leads into target groups - The best way to market effectively to your database is to know who they are and where they are in the sales cycle. Understanding your target demographic's individual personas and what to send them can make all the difference.
4. Give your leads options in your emails - Emails with multiple offers bleed value, making your recipients more likely to take a look. Once opened, your email should explain what's in it for them and give them several paths to take next steps.
DON'T MAKE THESE MISTAKES
1. Move too fast to 'close' your leads - you can blow a lead out of the water and make them uneasy by moving too fast. If you don't identify which point of the funnel they entered you can ask them for too much too fast.
2. Expect them to take the next step unprompted - doing nothing gets you nothing. If you think they're going to convert through the funnel without sending invitations you're wrong.
3. Spam your leads - there is such a thing as over communicating. No matter how many emails you send if they're not ready or interested you're not going to convert them. You will make them unsubscribe.
4. Make offers with no conversion - you sent them email, they opened it and poked around..... and nothing? If you don't make a compelling offer with a simple conversion for them you'll never capture them properly.
Lead Management can be a tricky and time consuming element of your inbound marketing campaign. You'll need to master the art of email timing and delivery while adhering to the science of inbound marketing principles. If you're constantly evaluating your past efforts, reviewing conversion numbers, and making adjustments you'll no doubt see improvements. You'll get out of email marketing what you put it into it, assuming you're applying the instruction of this email.
