Lead nurturing should be a careful balance between building trust with potential customers, but not being too pushy. It shortens the sales cycle and lets you develop better relationships with prospects.
This article takes a look at what lead nurturing is, it’s importance and different lead nurturing techniques for sales teams to follow. You’ll also learn how to use monday sales CRM to create systems for lead nurturing.
What is lead nurturing?
Lead nurturing is the process of engaging with your target audience, knowing their needs, and qualify them for the sales process. In lead management, this is the step that comes right after lead generation.
Here are the common elements of lead nurturing:
Segment leads based on profile characteristics and needs
Educating prospects
Engaging with leads regularly
Cultivating awareness about your company and offering
The end goal of lead nurturing is to convert them into paying customers with the least amount of friction.
Why nurture leads?
Not all leads that you generate are sales-ready. Only a small portion of them will convert. And lead nurturing is an essential process to filter sales-ready leads. Here are some other reasons why your company should follow a lead nurturing process:
Create a personalized sales process
Establish your brand as an expert in your niche
Build strong customer relationships
More sales and higher sales value
Increase lead generation ROI
Lead nurturing techniques
There are numerous lead nurturing techniques you can follow. Your choice would be on what your ideal buyer wants and which channel they use the most.
Automated email campaigns
Also known as email drip campaigns, this lead nurturing technique involves sending automated communications to leads over a period of time using an email marketing tool.
To kickstart email campaigns, you’ll need the prospects’ email addresses, which they may willingly give you when signing for a lead magnet — like when downloading an ebook or signing up for updates.
The content of the emails should be related to the action leads took. For example, if people download an ebook from your website on how to start an online business, you can create email content that complements that topic. If people sign up for updates on your website, they are warmed-up leads — they are more interested in what you offer and you can send out promotional emails to nurture them into paying customers.
Pro tip: Make sure you segment your email addresses properly. They should mainly be two lists — promotional and educational. You don’t want to mix up leads because sending promotional emails to leads who are at the top of the funnel will do more harm than good.
With monday sales CRM, you can manage your email campaigns from one place — sync leads from your mailing lists, get stats on campaigns, and qualify leads.
Lead scoring
The most effective lead nurturing systems is based on personalized communication. And the first step in this technique is lead scoring — a process where leads are prioritized based on their perceived value (for example: chances of becoming a customer) and assigned numerical values. With lead scoring, you can identify where prospects is in the buying process and know when, where, and how to address each lead.
Lead scoring systems are based on criteria that vary for different companies. Here are some common points that determine lead scoring:
Lead fit – Demographics, budget, authority, and need
Level of interest – downloading a lead magnet, starting a free trial, etc.
Lead behavior
Once you know which leads are more valuable, you can prioritize your lead nurturing activities accordingly and gradually create a sales crm pipeline containing highly-qualified leads.
With monday sales CRM, you can score leads automatically based on parameters you set. Each lead is weighted and given a final score on the board.
Multiple touchpoints
Email campaigns are no longer enough to execute a successful lead nurturing strategy. According to a report, it takes a prospect goes through an average of 8 touch points before they get on a meeting with the company.
So, consider different content types to nurture your leads. Use a combination of techniques such as marketing automation, paid ads, social media, and direct sales outreach.
Track the performance of each touchpoint and analyze what works best. This will help you streamline lead nurturing and make the most of your efforts.
There are so many techniques involved in multi-touchpoint nurturing. So, make sure that the sales and marketing teams are well aligned to bring in the best results, which brings us to the next point.
Align sales and marketing
Bringing sales and marketing teams on the same page will bring in better lead nurturing processes and win more business over time. It will help eliminate friction and provide a consistent experience across the sales funnel.
The first step is for both teams to decide on shared goals, integrated workflows, and clear communication. Although this may vary from company to company, here are a few ways sales and marketing activities can be aligned:
Personalized marketing: In this process, you create personalized lead nurturing strategies for each prospect in the pipeline. There won’t be a barrier between sales and marketing because the buyer journey will be integrated from lead generation to conversion.
Clear communication: Agree on the definition of common terms such as qualified leads and hot leads. This sounds simple, but many companies leave this crucial step out. According to a report, the strongest companies are 45% more likely to have a formal lead definition shared between sales and marketing than the average company.
Combine workflows: Use a CRM to implement strategies and let everyone gain visibility on the different activities. The best choice would be a CRM that will enable you to integrate other marketing and sales tools that the teams use.
Read: The Lead Management Process: A Practical Guide
How monday sales CRM helps in lead nurturing
monday sales CRM is a customizable CRM platform that lets you track and manage your leads and automate communication to drive more sales. Here are some of the features available on monday sales CRM that will make your lead nurturing process easier and more effective:
Manage and track your email campaigns under one platform by integrating your email marketing software to monday.com.
Ensure the collaboration of sales and marketing teams by syncing activities and bringing more transparency across the organization.
Score leads with customizable scoring parameters and set automation in place so that you never miss out on a qualified lead.
Know how effective your lead nurturing process is with the help of customizable boards. Observe how leads are progressing along the sales funnel.
FAQs
What are examples of lead nurturing?
Examples of lead nurturing include promotional email campaigns, newsletters, blog posts, social media campaigns, and paid retargeting.
How to nurture cold leads?
You can nurture cold leads based on what actions they took. For example, if someone signed up for a webinar related to your company’s niche, you can send them email content related to that topic. Whichever technique you choose, keep in mind to not promote your product/service aggressively to cold leads because they’re more likely to lose interest.
What is a lead nurturing email?
A lead nurturing email is an automated email, often part of a drip campaign, which sales or marketing professionals send to leads in order to influence their buying decision. These emails can be informational or promotional in nature. The end goal is to convert them into a paying customer.
Nurture and convert more leads with monday sales CRM
Lead nurturing will help you grow your business and fast-track your sales process. It allows you to accustom your leads to hearing about your company and products, so when the time comes for them to buy, they are more likely to choose you.
The first step to creating successful lead nurturing processes is to understand your audience’s needs and create campaigns accordingly. Since nurturing leads spans across multiple touchpoints, a CRM like monday sales CRM will help you centralize all the processes.
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