While Marketing Automation can help in executing lead nurturing campaigns successfully, lead nurturing continues to remain an integral part of every agency’s or companies marketing plan.
In case you aren’t familiar with what lead nurturing means, it refers to the way your company communicates with leads or prospects, with the intention to turn them into lucrative customers.
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A study by Marketing Sherpa revealed that 79% of campaign leads never turns into sales. This poor performance is a result of no lead nurturing practices. Another research by Marketo, the organizations that do excel in lead nurturing generates 50 percent more qualifying or sales-ready leads and spends 33 percent lower costs.
Lead nurturing involves building relationships with clients or potential customers by sending relevant and personalized emails at every juncture of the customer’s journey. By determining what your prospects need and providing them with the required information, you’ll have a much higher chance of turning them into long term lucrative customers.
Lead nurturing alone isn’t going to help your sales team achieve your company’s marketing goals. However, by implementing well-thought-out strategies, the likelihood of your lead nurturing and generation being successful is much higher.
Aside from marketing automation, the use of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is a central part of any strategic approach. By using the right CRM, you can increase your sales productivity-allowing you to acquire more deals, maximize sales, predict accuracy, and also improve real-time decisions.
One of the key benefits of using CRM is a substantial increase in the sales. As per the survey conducted by Tech News World on more than 500 Organizations in North America, it was found that sales enhanced by 54%.
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Here are the best strategies for nurturing leads using CRM:
Whether it’s pushing targeted content or sending personalized emails, the lead nurturing strategies you deploy must be grounded in consumer data to be successful.
The right CRM will enable you to easily access data regarding the interactions your organization has with each client. The key here is to select a CRM that has the flexibility to fulfill your operational, deployment, and access needs.
Also, before selecting your CRM, make sure that it’ll perform all the tasks you need it for, that it merge with existing software. Finally, ensure that your sales, as well as your marketing team, are comfortable using it.
Email marketing is still the most effective tactic for lead nurturing. Sending personalized emails can help in generating more revenue than non-personalized emails.
Additionally, you’ll need timely and accurate data to deliver personalized content for it to be successful.
Having said that, you can customize your content on the basis of behavioral data, like when leads visit key web pages or download particular content.
Furthermore, you also have the option to automate the process, delivering emails immediately after those online actions.
Once your sales & marketing team starts entering relevant and accurate data into the CRM system, they’ll have a much better understanding of customers and prospects.
For instance, let’s just say some prospects attended your webinar. And when your sales team examined the reports, they found that some viewers didn’t like the content or it wasn’t related to their interests.
Acquiring such customer insights can help considerably in improving future engagements with your prospects since you can simply disable the options to invite them for such events again.
Consequently, CRM can boost customer engagement and accelerate sales cycles.
Effective lead nurturing isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s essential that your leads receive at least ten communications from your company, starting from the time they visit your site to when they purchase for the first time.
However, most B2B marketers stop at five (according to the Lead Nurturing Study in 2015), greatly reducing their chances of being successful.
Note that lead nurturing is not transactional, if done the right way, it’s transformational, gradually turning prospects into profitable buyers.
To make your lead nurturing tactics effective, you’ll have to monitor your leads regularly, and if needed, even amend your strategy. By using CRM, you can track and manage your leads, and also determine which customer stage they’re in.
Similar to sales, lead data like customers’ queries, discussions, communications can be monitored. This will help you in getting quality leads and determine actions that convert prospects into buyers, thereby reaching your sales goals.
By using the right CRM, you can be easily reachable and available to clients at appropriate intervals. Apart from that, you can also use it to ensure that your SMS marketing campaigns are consistent. At present, SMS is among the most interactive and immediate communication mediums available to B2B marketers and businesses.
As such, if your sales tactics integrate SMS messages, it can be a huge win for your business. There are several prospects who prefer most long-form interactions to be done through texts, instead of emails or phone calls.
This means you need to be agile and adept even if it’s not your preferred approach. By tweaking into your leads’ desired means of communication and modifying accordingly, your company will stand out from the rest.
Without a sound tactic, most of your lead nurturing and lead generation efforts will go to waste. As such, by using CRM in conjunction with an effective strategy, you’ll have the required resources to devise effective lead nurturing campaigns, increasing your conversions, boosting sales, and ultimately growing your business.