No matter how long you’ve been in business, creating an effective email nurture sequence is essential!
With a nurture sequence, you’ll create genuine relationships with your leads and leverage those into conversions. It’s an essential and, once you’ve figured it out, easy marketing technique.
Not sure where to start? This guide will take you through the best practices for developing an effective email nurture sequence. Let’s dive in!
Why Is Email Marketing Important?
Email marketing is a fantastic tool for finding new customers and building relationships with existing customers!
It has so many benefits. From raising brand awareness to nurturing current customers, email is a cost-effective marketing tool.
You can create targeted email lists that give you access to a primed and ready-to-go audience. Email gives you direct access to your customer base. You can use it to inspire them, educate them, and persuade them.
It’s super easy to send an email. Sending an effective email takes a little more practice. Once you get the hang of it, email marketing will be one of the best tools in your toolbox!
What Is An Email Nurture Sequence?
An email nurture sequence is a type of sales funnel. It includes a series of automated emails that go out to any lead that signs up for your mailing list. You can create sequences for existing customers and subscribers, too. This is a great way to keep in touch and let your audience know when you have a release coming!
An email nurture sequence (like the name implies) allows you to nurture the relationship between you and your audience.
You can use it to build trust and educate them on your products or services. A nurture sequence gives you a platform to demonstrate your expertise. More importantly, it’s a path that converts a lead into a paying customer.
You might think that’s a lot to ask from a couple of emails! But not just any emails will work.
You need to have a clear plan for your email nurture sequence so it will actually help you achieve your goals!
Best Practices for An Email Nurture Sequence
You’re (hopefully) already consistently sending emails out to your audience…
That’s the basis of a strong email nurture sequence! Consistency and strategy make a huge difference. You can (and should) automate the process for better results and less effort on your part.
On the other hand, sequences that aren’t automated can cause problems long-term. You’re more likely to go off-topic or share information that’s not relevant to your leads.
The person who has been engaging with you for a while doesn’t need to hear the same info that a brand-new lead does. That’s when people disengage.
Following these email nurture sequence best practices will help you make the most out of each email.
Keep Things Relevant
One of the wonders of an automated email nurture sequence is that you can control the order that your audience receives emails.
What should they hear first? What should they hear third?
You are in charge, so you can decide how to share your content with them so they get real value from it.
Your leads join your mailing list from a particular lead magnet, right? You know what led them to you, so you can design a whole sequence that focuses on the specific point you can help them with.
Build a relationship by talking to them about the thing that brought them to you. Once you think they’re ready, you can guide the transition to the sale.
Figure Out How Long The Series Should Be
How long should an email nurture sequence actually be? That answer totally depends on you, your audience, and your business goals.
Some people do full year-long series. Others, who are on a shorter sales cycle, do shorter series.
It depends on what your business goals and objectives are. And, of course, what your sales funnel looks like.
Don’t forget—once you’ve achieved an objective with your nurture sequence, remove that customer. Instead, move them into a different post-purchase nurture series. This way, they’ll continue to receive emails that are relevant to them.
Establish How Frequently You’ll Send The Nurture Emails
Now that you know how long your series is and how to keep it relevant, it’s time to decide on your email frequency.
That largely depends on what relationship you have with the lead.
Are they a new lead? You can get away with daily emails for new leads because they’re generally hottest at the start. They’ve signed up to hear from you—if you make them wait two weeks, they might forget who you are.
The beginning is where you can make a serious impression and establish a genuine connection. Frequent emails packed with relatable content and value will do that.
After a bit of time, when you feel it’s right, you can reduce your frequency.
Go from daily emails to every other day. From there, gradually become more sparse so that you don’t overwhelm customers. But avoid going more than 10-14 days between emails so you stay relevant.
Prioritize Valuable Content Over Selling
You don’t need to be selling all of the time to be successful at sales. You should also provide powerful content that aligns with your goals.
The content you create and share should inspire belief in you, your products, or your services.
Win your audience over with quality, not quantity.
Closely Monitor Your Metrics
While you’re putting together your new email nurture sequence, think about how you’ll measure its success.
Keeping an eye on your analytics gives you a quantifiable way of determining how well it’s doing. When you track each component’s success, you can adjust things that aren’t working and continually improve.
The first thing you need to do is figure out what core metrics you want to track. Consider using any (or even all) of the following metrics:
- Open rates
- Unsubscribe rates
- Link clicks
- Email-driven website traffic
- Average time to take action
- Average lead scores
You’ll also want a simple platform you can use to collect, measure, and analyze the data. Using a spreadsheet to collect information and using it as a connector to your Data Google Studio is an option if you want to visually present it in a report.
You can also set up split tests for your email nurture sequence. That means sending out two different versions of your emails to different leads. You can see what works better.
You don’t have to use big differences when split testing, though!
What’s the difference between different subject titles or send times? Does different formatting have an effect?
Keep analyzing your data. Regularly check on it to refine your email nurture sequence until it’s working flawlessly.
Don’t underestimate the power of a really good email nurture sequence. If you’re building your own business, you can’t afford not to master this skill.
Automating the process makes it easy to build a relationship that converts. Bring your leads from discovery to purchase with ease!
Before you can nail your email nurture sequence, you need to drive traffic to your website and email list! Make sure you’re focused on building organic traffic.
Looking for strategies to drive traffic to your website (and capture leads)? Check out these favorite posts:
- 6 Steps To Develop A Winning Content Marketing Strategy In 2021
- How Traffic Data Can (and Should) Drive Your Marketing Strategy
- Stop Trying To Get Website Traffic And Focus On This Instead
- 7 Possible Reasons Your Website’s Search Rankings Have Dropped
