The lead nurture funnel is a sales funnel which can “nurture” leads over a long period of time. It turns subscribers into customers by building relationships through email marketing. A lead nurture funnel aims to connect with an audience and offer value through email messages. Once someone joins an email list, they expect to receive information relating to the topic they signed up for. So if someone signs up for an ebook, for example, on the topic of affiliate marketing, they will receive emails relating to that particular topic.
Here’s an ebook I give away in order to help people understand affiliate marketing (above). Once on my list, subscribers will be given information regarding the topic. I’ll recommend products which have helped me, from which I’ll earn commissions.
Lead Nurture Funnel – Nurturing Leads
The idea of lead nurture can be used to turn a cold audience into a hot one. A “cold” lead is someone who perhaps isn’t already aware of your products and services. They might have only just heard about your topic, so they are perhaps not yet ready to buy from you.
A “hot” lead is someone who already knows the products; they are bursting to get out their credit card and make a purchase. Hot leads might be found on a review website, for example. On a review website, someone is actively looking for the products being discussed/offered. They are just looking for one final bit of information before they make a buying decision. They are ready to buy. A cold visitor is not ready to buy yet and so the lead nurturing process can warm them up a little with regular, timely messages to their inbox regarding the topic they signed up for. This is known as lead nurturing.
In many cases, a lead may purchase a product or service from an email list several months or even years after signing up. This is more likely to happen if they have been regularly opening email messages and benefiting from them in some way. The lead is therefore “nurtured” from a cold state (not ready to purchase), into a “hot” buying state of mind where they understand the product and what it can do for them.
Lead Nurturing With Email Marketing
With a follow up email series, advertisers can set up a number of email messages to automatically be sent to their subscribers at regular intervals. Many affiliate marketers even send emails every single day to their subscribers. Some people will purchase products quite quickly from an email list, particularly if the products have been “pre-positioned” through a video advert or some piece of content.
Other subscribers will never purchase, some will opt out and some will take months or even years before they make a purchase. For these subscribers it’s worth having a long list of emails to send out. Or, you can line up a series of automated emails, and follow up with “live” emails which you manually send. This is to build rapport and trust with your subscribers over a longer time frame.
Strategy For Building Email Follow Ups
A good strategy for building your email follow up series is to think about what the subscriber wants, needs and would enjoy. Most email marketers aim to offer value to their subscribers; inspire, educate, entertain and inform. If you do this well, your subscribers are more likely to open your emails when you send them out.
A good lead nurturing system will help the subscriber understand your products and/or service too. In particular, your messages should help them understand why your products are useful to them. If you convey this message well, your subscribers are likely to know whether they are a good fit for your products, and whether your products are a good fit for them. Either way, you should have offered them some helpful insights which are of use to them.
Once you’ve had a number of people go through your sales funnel, you’re in a better place to analyse your data. The more subscribers you get, the easier it should be to see which emails have the largest impact on them. You can, for example, learn which emails are converting subscribers into customers. You can then use this intel to determine which emails you want to put earlier in your sales funnel.
The high converting emails can be put earlier in the funnel to encourage more subscribers to become customers. You’ll need to have a large number of subscribers through your funnel before you know which messages are having the greatest influence on them.
Email Open Rates & Subject Line
Open rates of an email marketing campaign are pretty important. If your subscribers aren’t opening your emails they won’t be buying from your either! Once you get some data on your open rates you can move your best performing emails to the front of the queue and move the worst performing ones to the back – or remove them completely.
You can also use a subject line tester to help you write compelling subject lines which get larger open rates from subscribers.
Good email headings get larger open rates and you’re more likely to build trust if your subscribers are opening your emails regularly. This, in turn helps the nurturing process.
Product Range & Up-Selling
Although not all sales funnels have product ranges, a good sales funnel will have multiple products to sell to the customer. Once the customer buys something, the sales system kicks in and they are automatically offered another product within a range.
You’re probably experienced “up-selling” if you’ve even been into a fast food restaurant. That’s when the person behind the counter offers you another product to go with what you’ve already purchased. In McDonald’s they will ask you “do you want fries with that” and in Burger King they’ll ask if you want to go “Supersized“!
In a lead nurture funnel, the lead is “nurtured” throughout their journey. A purchase of a low valued product at the front end of the sales range leads to another product further up the list. So if you purchase something of a low value, you’re automatically offered the next level of product.
In a digital marketing system this might look like this:
Lead Nurture Funnel – Summary
The purpose of a lead nurture funnel is to nurture a potential customer and inform them of your products or services. You can keep them informed and update them of changes in your products. Over time, a good funnel should convert cold leads into warm buying customers. Depending on your particular business model, this can be done through email messages which are set up to automatically send on a regular basis.
Through helping the lead understand something (offering value), you gain their trust. If someone gets to know, like and trust you, they are much more likely to make a purchase from you; particularly if you have made a good impression and helped them with something already.
Learn more about building your own funnel with this free video series. You’ll be able to access a series of videos explaining how you can earn from the internet through various strategies.
