Have you ever built 20 email marketing campaigns, just to find out that only one works?
The key to a successful marketing campaign is segmenting your target audience correctly and being customer-obsessed. But your job isn’t just to take people to websites and have them fill out a form to become a lead; it’s to be responsible for the entire customer journey. In fact, 56% of high performing marketers actively map the customer journey across their company. To successfully join this effort, you need to properly nurture customers.
Say goodbye to running email experiments that will waste your time – here are three email nurture journeys you r business marketing teams need to build now.
The top-of-mind nurture
B2C companies are experts at the top-of-mind nurture. My local wine shop sends me a weekly update of their tasting events and featured recipes on food and wine pairing. Nordstrom sends me daily reminders about exclusive sales “just for me.” These brands know it’s possible to stay in touch with a prospect who may be a good fit, but is not yet sales-ready.
To create a top-of-mind nurture campaign, your small business should use educational and research-based content that establishes your company as a trusted advisor. You can include offers like webinars that explore trending topics in your industry, or content that shows how others are using your product. Don’t have the time or talent to make a webinar or demo? No worries — any free resource, whether an ebook, blog post, or how-to guide, can work.
All you have to do is think of what free content your audience will find valuable.
Moreover, sharing thought-leadership content sometimes help the audience become better at their jobs or in their industry.
Once you feed your customers content that’s helpful and not salesy, sprinkle in secondary or tertiary call-to-actions (CTAs) like demos or trials to entice them to want more. Then, send an email every 7-9 days — an email every week is too frequent and every two weeks might not be enough.
The in-trial nurture, triggered by product actions
Most B2B companies have a trial period so users can take a test drive before moving forward. For example, Salesforce has a 14 day free trial for small businesses to use their CRM system, Salesforce Essentials.
Before a team can create content for an in-trial nurture, a ton of research has to be done. As a marketer, you want your product’s action triggers to connect to your marketing automation. This will help you send triggered emails based on users’ actions versus a time-based email journey.
Here’s an example of how an in-trial nurture campaign was an ensured success:
- While the data science team was consulted, it was learned that by performing a certain action, the user will have an X% higher probability to buy the product
- We also found out that our users are more likely to convert if they log-in more than once in their first two days of the trial.
- By collaborating with our customer support team, we found out what blockers prevented users from taking a specific action.
These kernels of knowledge helped us adjust our email cadence, grow our content, and let us hone in on creating videos, how-to articles, and content to feed our in-trial nurture.
If you don’t have a data science team or a customer support team, don’t worry. You can easily gather customer feedback by setting up focus groups with customers. Talk to your trialists. Talk to people who have never bought from you. Talk to people who always have. You get the point—talk to your customers!
In addition to finding actions that lead to a high propensity to convert, make sure you’re looking for features that create habit loops for your customers. Which features make users want to log-in more frequently? How do you use emails or even in-app messaging to encourage those actions? Asking yourself these questions will help you craft a successful in-trial nurture triggered by product actions.
The upsell or cross-sell nurture
Want to improve your customer’s lifetime value? Upsell and cross-sell nurtures can help. All you have to do is create a nurture campaign targeted to existing customers, then provide them with information and incentives to expand the list of products they currently use.
With upsell and cross-sell nurtures, your goal should be to inspire and show customers how they can reach maximum potential with your company’s products and services. The best part about this type of nurture? You’re already at an advantage because you’re talking to your biggest fans – not cold leads.
But make sure you’re intentional with your content, sending relevant information on specific products or services that would be beneficial to a specific segment of clients. Personalized recommendations within this nurture type are the key to success – use variable tags or dynamic content to ensure the right customers receive the right content. Also, make sure you explain the value of a new or existing unused product without being overly aggressive. Since your target list will include customers, you can be more patient with this program, spacing out emails between 10-15 days.
This blog post is an adaption of an article by Salesforce. To read the original article, click here. https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2020/01/smb-email-nurture-journeys.html
