What is email contact nurturing?
Put simply, email contact nurturing is building a continuing relationship with your customer or prospect base. Why would you want to spend time on this?
As with most sales related activities, to be successful, its all about building trust.
Trust takes time to build up, studies have shown that someone typically interacts with a new organisation seven times, before committing to a purchase. Hence, the so-called “Rule of Seven“.
A person will look to their foundational influences as the basis for building trust. After these influences have taken root, less solid influences, such as marketing and advertising can have an impact. To be successful, these influences need to build on the foundations. This is why personalisation and correctly targeting your customer is so important.
Building trust
How do I nurture contacts?
Obviously there are many different ways, some involving alcohol, but we will focus on the role of email marketing to nurture contacts.
According to a survey, 49% of email marketeers send weekly emails. A further 30% send more than one email per week. Of course this survey includes consumer and retail, which tends to market more aggressively than B2B. Sending too many emails can increase your unsubscribe rate and eventually lead to fewer clicks.
Let’s look at common B2B use cases:
Product or Service to Launch
Strategy: Initial promotion and subsequent nurture.
- Introductory message
- Product/Service feature highlight message
- Repeat for further highlights
- Benefits summary
If applicable, the final message can include a “last chance discount” message.
Subscription Service
Strategy: Promotion plus regular nurture to match tempo of the subscription, eg, monthly, quarterly.
- Introductory message
- In this months issue preview
- Your second months issue highlights
- In your final months issue
After three nurtures and no call to action, its likely time to admit defeat.
Event to promote
Strategy: Initial promotion and subsequent nurture countdown as the event deadline approaches.
- Introductory message
- 45 days to go
- 15 days to go
- Last chance to attend
Discount rates for early registration can help get early clicks.
How frequently should contact nurturing messages be sent?
There is no single answer to this question. Different industries and different needs demand different email frequencies. Lets look at a few examples of contact nurturing that works.
For a promotional message
Marketwise has seen good results with the following messaging structure.
- Day 1 – initial promotion message
- Day 7 – further information
- Day 9 – last chance to act message
Subscription service
Marketwise has supported publishers of monthly journals looking to build new subscribers.
- Day 1 – initial offer and details
- Day 15 – new details from this months magazine
- Day 31 – the next months issue details
- Day 45 – last chance to subscribe + new detail from month 2 magazine
Informational Newsletter – Monthly
One of the most common forms of marketing communications. A roll up of significant news and blog posts. Newsletters can have a relatively low open rate, so anything more than monthly is likely to drop off quickly. Conversely, a well written newsletter, that an audience expect each month can be well received and build trust.
Blog – Weekly
Used to build engagement, interest and eventually trust. Should not be overtly “salesy”, or will be ignored. Must be relevant and interesting to the recipient. Blogs often cover a wide range of topics, so its important to remember the critical “be relevant” message. Irrelevant and frequent blog messages will lead to unsubscribes.
How much does email contact nurturing cost?
Contact nurturing pricing is deeply discounted compared to our “Promote” pricing. This allows you to nurture frequently and have the best chance to still meet your return on investment goals. Please remember that our nurture service only applies to contacts that you have already paid for with a promote package.
Summary
Nurturing contacts has been shown to work, it will improve your total open rate and total clicks. Remember to look at overall metrics. Individual nurture messages may not look like they are performing well, but they should be regarded as improving the original promotional message’s overall metrics.
As always, the key is to be relevant, interesting and useful.
For further tips on email marketing, please choose from the options below:
FAQ for Email Marketing
Is email marketing worth it?
Many studies have shown a great ROI for email marketing, averaging at a 30x to 40x return. The key is to use high quality data and send relevant, engaging messages. We can advise.
How do I target email marketing?
Build your ideal audience. Based on what market segment they work in, what they do and what they specialise in. Add in geographic location and you have a well targeted email list. Now you need to send relevant and interesting messages to build trust.
How do I improve email open rates?
Two main factors. The subject line and email deliverability. The subject line should be short, create some intrigue or curiosity and avoid spammy words. You build trust with an audience over time.
Email deliverability depends on good email data and a good email reputation.
How do I improve my CTR?
Some quick tips are:
Keep your message short, to the point and easily skim-able.
Be relevant and create curiosity in your audience
Have a single Call to Action button with a clear message on it "Download the report".
What is A/B testing?
This simply means testing two versions of something. Most common is Subject Line testing. Send out two different versions and see which gets the best response. Testing message content is possible as well. Ensure you only change one thing, so you know what made a difference.
How can I avoid the Spam filters?
Two main causes:
1. Technical reasons, poor email reputation and lack of email authentication.
2. Message content is spammy. Cut out flowery language and keep it professional.
What is contact nurturing?
This simply means sending multiple messages over time, to build up trust and a stronger relationship with your audience. Its rare to be able to send a single message and expect a brilliant response. Build trust with a series of engaging messages.