Are Your Leads Feeling Meh? Guide to Lead Nurturing & Re-Engaging Your Leads

jross

November 28, 2016 (Updated: May 4, 2023)

This post was originally posted on Accelweb.ca by Jill Mcarthur

You’ve gathered some leads, some of them make a purchase but sometimes your buyers just aren’t ready to make a purchase decision yet.

Your future buyers could be at any stage of the buying process. It could be their first time visiting your site, or maybe they’ve just bought one of your products, or they could be in the spectrum somewhere in between.

This is where lead nurturing comes in – you can build new relationships with these potential customers and keep your company top of their mind for when it comes time for them to make a purchase decision.

What is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing means developing relationships with future customers during every stage of the sales funnel. The focus of lead nurturing is to build communication between your business and the customer by listening to their needs and providing relevant information when they need it so that when it comes time to make a decision, you’re business is top of their mind.

How to Effectively Nurture Your Leads

Lead Nurturing allows you to stay in contact and in conversation with your leads. They might not be ready to buy now – but through Lead Nurturing they will remember your brand and the information you provided them when they were just shopping around.

Maintain contact with your leads. Without contact, you can’t do much else. Don’t let your leads hit the unsubscribe button – keep them engaged with the right kind of content at the right time (but not too much – nobody wants spam).
Let your potential customers know exactly what you offer. Clear information that resonates with your leads will keep them up to speed with the solutions you offer to fix their problem or answer their questions.
Market specifically to your leads. Keep an eye out for what interests them specifically. Were they interested in a sale recently or a certain product? Gathering lead data is key to moving your leads to the next stage of the sales funnel.
Monitor your leads. Keep your lead scoring system up to date when customers are moving from one stage to the next. Having your leads moving through the sales funnel (either closer or further from a sale) could mean time for a new strategy or a different approach.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring works in tandem with Lead Nurturing. Lead scoring is based on assigning a value to each action the customer performs to determine if a lead is serious about buying or just looking around.

For example, maybe for your company, opening an email is more important than reading a blog post, so it would be assigned a higher value.

Developing a lead scoring system to determine who your leads are and how to communicate with the best. It provides your team with organized data on each individual lead so you can better serve them. Your lead scores provide insight into who is at what stage in the sales funnel and what kind of strategy you should implement next.

This is where life of the lead comes into play. Based on the actions your lead has taken, you can decide how to follow up with that particular person.

Check out these stats on lead nurturing to see how it can really impact your ROI.

How to Re-Engage Your Leads

Don’t give up on your leads

It’s key to maintain that point of contact because without it, there is no lead.

Just because your future buyers don’t make a purchase right away or after a couple points of contact, doesn’t mean that they’re over it. Watch their life of lead to see what actions they are taking so you can follow up with them based on what they have been showing interest in. And don’t forget about those leads that have already bought something!

Find out why your leads haven’t made a purchase yet

Target your leads by intent and you can re-strategize.

There are a number of reasons why a lead may have gone cold. Was it a lack of proper follow up, lost communication, under or over selling a product, or an abandoned shopping cart?

Depending on what the reason is, you might be able to help them make a decision. Maybe your pricing was a bit too high, so next time there is a sale, send a discount email their way.

Re-build a relationship with your leads

Don’t just focus on making a sale. Offer your leads something that they can get excited about and re-engage with your business. It can be as simple as sending out a useful piece of content.

On top of that, always use clear, concise communication to make sure your leads get the right message. Your communication should always have a point to it. Solve a problem, answer a question, or add some value to your potential buyers. This is another place life of the lead can make your life a bit easier. Use the info that your lead has given you to follow up with them properly.

Test your timing

Nobody can seem to come to a unanimous decision on that perfect time to reach out to your leads. If your to-do list has “connect to leads” set for every Monday morning, maybe it’s time to switch up your timing. Play around with time of day and days of the week to see when you get the best responses and from who.

Spacing out your content is also critical to keeping your leads on your list. Spam is universally annoying, so make sure you’re not sending out emails too frequently or your leads might end up as an unsubscribe. A/B testing can be very helpful for this.

Reach out and see who’s still around

Whether it’s sending out some fresh content, cleaning out old lists, or even just asking who is still interested can remind your leads that you’re still around and that you haven’t forgotten them. It also might be worth it to ask your leads to update their contact information to straighten up your contact lists and to reach out to them in the future.

Personalize your content

Sometimes a catch-all email isn’t enough to catch the interest of your entire list. You probably get a few of these a day yourself. They can often seem cold and impersonal and verge on the edge of spam.

Add something personal to your emails – something as simple as their first name in the subject line can catch their interest in the email and make them more likely to open it.

You can always get a bit more creative here as well. Go as in depth as reading into their life of lead to send a custom email based on a sale item that they’ve clicked on your site.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is all about creating content that has value to your potential buyers or even for existing ones.

If your leads are on the cold side, Content Marketing can help to re-engage them with your brand. Figure out what your leads are interested in and hone in on that. Content can be in the form of emails, blog posts, videos, ebooks, anything based on what your leads have interacted with.

Content Marketing is also multidimensional – keep your content personalized and strategic based on both timing and in the actual content. Timing can be the difference between an open email and a forgotten one. If you know that your lead is more responsive in the afternoon, then that’s when your emails should be going out.

Marketing Automation is Key

Marketing Automation can fill in the gaps for re-engaging your leads. You can track your leads and their actions, even if the trail is running cold (thank you life of the lead). This leads to highly targeted potential customers. key

Timing becomes an automated process based off the lead’s behaviours. Instead of relying on guesswork, you can strategize a drip campaign to target your leads at the right time.

Content marketing is also easier to manage and more direct. By using dynamic content, you can target exactly what your leads have shown interest in and build from that to optimize your campaign.