AI Content: Friend or Foe? The Data Shows the Surprising Truth
Perhaps no technology has been as hyped, or as feared, as generative AI. Launched by the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, already two-thirds of...
Email is still the 800 lb gorilla when it comes to digital marketing, and it’s no secret why. For every dollar invested in email marketing, a company will see $42.00 in return, on average, according to a 2021 study by Litmus.
And if you’re looking to make your email marketing efforts even more effective and haven’t ever implemented a nurture campaign, there’s no better time than now. Nurture campaigns are a series of automated emails to specific targets in which the content changes depending on actions that the targets take.
Once they are set up, nurture campaigns require very little manual work, so long as you’re using a good platform to power the campaign. They enable you to reach a large number of prospects and current customers with relevant, personalized messages and appropriate follow-up. It’s a great way to nurture leads and prospects and encourage them to move to the next step of the buyer’s journey.
Nurture campaigns lend themselves to a wide array of purposes:
The first step in putting together a nurture campaign is to decide what technology platform you will use to automate it. Popular marketing automation platforms include HubSpot, MailChimp and Salesforce Pardot, but there are dozens more.
Next, determine what your goal is and what outcome you want to achieve. The possibilities are endless. You could aim to accelerate the sales cycle, convert dormant leads into active ones, increase upsell conversion rates or increase sales of a specific product. If you can transform these qualitative goals into quantitative targets — such as reducing the amount of time it takes to convert a new lead into a sale by 5% — all the better.
Once you have your goal in mind, determine what kinds of people you would best be served targeting. Questions you can ask yourself at this stage could include:
Once you have a clear understanding of who you want to reach and the actions that will trigger the campaign, it’s time to create your structure. First, determine how many emails you want to send and how often. Best practice is to send no more than one email per week, and the number of emails is typically three to five.
As for a structure, let’s say you’re doing a re-engagement campaign for leads that haven’t interacted with your site or other emails for sixty days. Your flow structure could look something like this:
With the flow created, get to writing those emails. Here are a few tips to help ensure they are effective:
Finally, rigorously A/B test your emails by subject line, sending dates and times, CTA designs, copy lengths — go wild. The only way you’ll know for sure what resonates best is through testing. The more you test, the more information you will have to make future campaigns even more effective.
Want some one-on-one advice about designing and executing on nurture campaigns? Contact us!
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