Automated lead nurturing saves time and takes the guesswork out of nurturing your leads. Learn more about the best practices and how you can implement it.
Buyer journeys have become wildly unpredictable, and with so much access and information available to everyone these days, that's unlikely to change. For sales teams, this can be a major headache. How do you nurture a lead consistently when you aren't sure what they'll do next? Your business probably doesn't have the resources to handle it manually and even attempting to do it that way lends itself to missed opportunities. That's why automatic lead nurturing is on the rise and likely to play a huge role in the future of sales and marketing campaigns.
Automatic lead nurturing is the use of technology to automate various nurturing processes in an attempt to guide your customers through the sales funnel, no matter what their buyer journey looks like. Typically, a certain event or behavior will trigger a response so that your business engages with your leads consistently at exactly the right time.
For example, if you send an email, and the lead opens it, that activity might trigger whatever platform you use to send a follow-up email exactly 48 hours later. If a lead visits your website and adds products to their shopping cart but abandons it, the platform will send them a reminder email after a certain period of time. If your lead fills out a capture form with their personal information, your platform might send an email with a discount code every year on their birthday.
Lead nurturing is a crucial part of any sales or marketing strategy. It helps build strong relationships with leads and customers, shortens the sales cycle, improves the customer experience, and increases conversion rates. It can also help your business grow and find long-term success through customer loyalty. Automating the process seems like an easy decision. But if you're not yet convinced, here are some other key benefits to consider:
One of the most important rules for sales is that you don't want your outreach efforts to feel like sales. Rather than making a pitch, you want to build a relationship and help leads solve problems. At first glance, automating various aspects of your lead nurturing efforts may seem counterintuitive, but in reality, it can actually enhance your efforts to stand out. Take a look at some best practices that ensure your communications don't come across as robotic or salesy.
Personalized communication is everything when attempting to turn a lead into a customer. It's the best way to stand out among your competition and all the other information buyers have thrown at them each day. But how do you do that when automating your lead nurturing efforts and how do you do it at scale? There are several ways:
Just like any of your sales outreach efforts, you must find the right balance between too much nurturing and not enough. You don't want to be intrusive and annoy your leads, but you don't want to contact them so infrequently that they forget about you.
Using data to better understand buyer behavior is a great place to start. You'll gain insight into when engagement, open, click-through, and conversion rates are higher for various segments and aim to automate emails to go out on those days at those times. Monitor qualitative data as well, like customer feedback. If you're receiving multiple complaints, for example, you're probably sending too many emails. You can generate additional data by using A/B testing to help determine ideal timing for lead nurturing.
Using triggers based on behaviors can also help with timing. If someone visited your website and put something in their cart but abandoned it, you might want to send a reminder within 24 hours while it's still fresh on their minds. Tools like sales engagement platforms may also help you determine the right timing and frequency for actions like follow-up emails based on various factors.
Customers typically want to interact with live humans, not machines. When you implement automation, it's essential to ensure that communication remains authentic. Personalization is a great place to start, especially when using dynamic content. Make sure your messaging has a conversational tone. Incorporate real-world stories and testimonials from customers or behind-the-scenes information about your business. Add photos of yourself to your signature, link to your optimized social media profiles, or consider creating introductory videos to attach to your emails so leads can see the human behind the pitch. Show gratitude in every situation. Finally, integrate customized touchpoints among your automated efforts. If someone engages with a follow-up email or has an extra high lead score, give them a call or type out a manual email.
Because you're relying on technology for automated lead nurturing, your strategies are only as good as the tools you use. When looking for a platform, ask yourself these questions:
While you have many options available that can help with lead nurturing, sales engagement platforms, like Outreach.io and Salesloft, meet these requirements and then some. Both are excellent tools for automating lead nurturing and many other aspects of your sales process. Take a look at how they've helped some other organizations become more efficient and profitable through automation:
Salesloft's automation features helped Staffmark, a staffing and recruiting company, make their sales process four times faster than before. It also helped Alteryx, a data science company, double its reply rate with email personalization. Salesloft's cadence automation helped Georgia Tech scale its strategies and increased season ticket sales by 80%. Automation also helped 3M shrink its close time by 60%.
When Rootly found that it was outgrowing its current sales platform, it turned to Outreach.io, which led to 69% more meetings scheduled and 130% increase in emails delivered. Automated follow-ups helped the French healthcare firm Alan triple its sales team's productivity. Docusign reports that it saved its reps up to 10 hours per month, better aligned its marketing and sales teams, and most importantly, increased its sales by utilizing Outreach's automated follow-up features.
