Long ago we talked about leads and their importance in any online marketing strategy, especially in eCommerce. We then mentioned 'lead nurturing' as a key lead strategy that we would discuss more extensively.
And since what is promised is debt, today we are going to dedicate the post to talk about lead nurturing. If you have read previous posts of mine, you already know that the use of English names in marketing is something that I don't get along with.

Face that stays on a client when you say "we are going to improve engagement using a lead nurturing strategy"
Things not to proceed origin of the world of marketing but sales, mostly in SMEs, where if you tell a customer "we will improve your performance digital to get more leads and increase ROI 'the answer you get is: What than? or ein ?.
However, I break a spear in favor of lead nurturing being called that and not "lead nutrition" or worse yet, "lead nutrition," which would be getting out of the pan and onto the coals. So let's leave the name as it is.
What is a lead?
A lead is a potential customer, understanding as such a person who has shown interest in the products or services we offer. If we had a physical store, a lead would be the person who visits the store and asks us about a product but has not yet decided to buy it.
We could say that it is the intermediate step between the target audience to which we direct our message and the final buyer. It is someone who has filled out a form, answered an email marketing campaign or interacted with us through social networks, and who "takes the lead" with respect to the rest of the public to take an interest in us.
(With over a decade in the Islamabad property market, at Skymarketingwe know the business of real estate including the projects such at blue world city islamabad, capital smart city islamabad and park view city)

What is lead nurturing
Well, as its name suggests, leads must be fed if you want them to remain leads. It is just the opposite of what happens with trolls (don't feed the troll, my friend). Remember that a lead is someone who has shown sufficient interest in our eCommerce to leave us their contact details (eMail, social networks, telephone, etc.), usually through a registration form.
Unlike trolls, which are bugs that have a hard time dying even if you don't feed them, leads are delicate creatures, like tamagotchis. If you don't feed them, they die right away. And if you feed them what you shouldn't, like qnnit, you run the risk of their food becoming indigestible and turning into evil trolls.
What leads "eat"
And what do the leads eat? Well, they feed on things that have value for them. That "value" can be two types:
1. Target value (monetary)
I mean, money. In the form of discount vouchers, flash offers, personalized discounts, free shipping or anything that saves money . Sorry, not anything.
If you offer him a voucher of 5 miserable pesos from 200 pesos of purchase (and I swear by Mark Zuckerberg that I have seen this) you will see how the lead metamorphoses, his fangs lengthen and his claws come out. And you will have it well deserved, for trying to tease them. So if you decide to offer objective value to your leads, it must be a value capable of tilting the balance towards the purchase decision. The target value goes beyond discounts.
May include gifts, event invitations, free tickets, travel. ... and a long etcetera of things that can be assigned a value in euros.
2. Subjective value
The fundamental subjective value that we can offer a lead is information that is useful to them. And therein lies the heart of the matter. You have to combine the interests of a certain lead profile with ours.
In other words, if we bombard our leads with information about how wonderful our products are, we run the risk of trollification . And if we do it only with related information but without mentioning our product (for example kitchen recipes if you sell frying pans) you run the risk of keeping your leads in a state of permanent hibernation in which they follow you, consume the information but do nothing .
There are other types of subjective values, related to the power and attributes of the brand, the stimulation of curiosity towards news or ethical, social, environmental or corporate social responsibility values. Both types of value have different objectives.
The objective value is more focused on the conversion of the lead into a customer, while the subjective value pursues the loyalty of the lead and its repeated exposure to our brand. The ideal is to use a combination of both, but it depends a lot on each case. In any case, lead nurturing is a strategy that aims to establish and maintain a permanent relationship with a potential client.
How to design a simple lead nurturing strategy in 4 steps
Within Inbound Marketing, lead nurturing is one of the parts that allows more versatility, although it is not exempt from the aforementioned risks of abandonment and / or trollification. Although traditionally eMail has been (and continues to be) the most widely used communication channel, social networks are not far behind. But let's go by parts:
Step 1: Segmentation and lead scoring
If you sell different products, the first thing is to segment your lead database according to the interests of each one. However, this is not enough, since not all leads in your database have the same value for you.
Therefore, some sort of classification is necessary. If you intend to do this well, the logical thing is to use a CRM , many of which already incorporate lead scoring tools (in my days of business management, long ago, we called this ABC of clients).
Basically, lead scoring aims to assign a score or value to each lead to properly categorize it and focus well on the messages sent to them. Although many different variables can be managed, we can classify them into two main categories: those of the client's socioeconomic profile and interaction variables, and organize the leads according to a matrix: In a matrix of this style, each letter represents a value, being To the maximum.
We position each lead according to the variables we have defined, both in their profile (purchasing level, age, profession, geographic location, etc.) and their degree of interaction (number of visits, follower on social networks, response to e- mails, abandoned carts, etc).
The degree of interest of each lead corresponds to the letter and the color (warm = more interesting). In many cases, the type and content of the contact that we make will vary according to the classification within the lead scoring matrix that we are going to address.
Don't forget that this matrix is dynamic: leads can jump from category if their conditions or degree of interaction change. It is not a still photo. As an example of this: Are my followers on social networks leads? Yes, from the moment they have a gap in this matrix, but if they are only followers and we have no more data from them, they will always be at the bottom.
That brings up something fundamental: lead nurturing seeks to make our leads move up the scoring scale and always move up and to the right in the matrix. And that is not going to happen alone, we have to help them evolve.
Step 2: Defining content
When we already have a classification or scoring, we can think about what menu we are going to serve each type of lead. Type A are especially important, so they should be treated differently from the rest and much more personalized , since their potential to become clients (and also good clients) is much higher.
A good lead nurturing strategy cannot treat all leads in the same way, since not all of them are going to respond equally nor are their potentials the same. The greater the purchase potential, the more meat will have to be put on the grill in the form of discounts or contributions of monetary value.
Step 3: Channel definition
As we said before, the most used is the eMail, either in the form of a newsletter or specific offers. In this sense, the higher the degree of customization and adaptation to the profile, the easier it will be for us to achieve the desired conversion from lead to customer.
But there is life beyond email:
1. Social networks
In this case, the most recommended if we want a personalized communication is the direct message . For this, it will help us a lot to prepare lists that correspond to the lead scoring classification we have prepared.
2. Blog
The capture of leads and lead nurturing are primary objectives of an eCommerce blog, so this must be taken into account when designing and defining its content, sections and menus. In many cases, the blog acts as a landing page (if it is focused on specific topics) or as an alternative gateway.
It goes something like this: We publish on the blog thinking about our leads, we send them a newsletter / message on social networks with recent publications, and in those especially attractive publications we include calls to action that lead to our eCommerce. All this, without going over. There are too many examples of blogs that want to take this to the extreme they get the opposite effect.
3. Mobile applications.
If our eCommerce has a mobile app, it is time to use push notifications for this purpose.
4. SMS / WhatsApp and the like.
Ideal for sending short messages, personal and with specific offers, usually with very short expiry dates, like a flash offer.
5. Remarketing
Although remarketing is not a specific lead nurturing strategy, it can be used as such, and is actually used as a reminder, especially in abandoned cart cases. In any of the channels, you must look for the double adaptation of the message: to the channel and the type of lead.
Step 4: Measurement and feedback
As in all marketing actions, measurement is essential to be able to assess whether we are having the success we were looking for or we have to modify the strategy. It is important to define KPIs in the field of lead nurturing in order to fit this aspect of marketing into our global strategy.
In this sense, we must be clear about how the leads in the previous matrix move, since if the trend is to the left or down (or both), it is that we are obviously not doing well and we must review our lead nurturing strategy.
Conclusions
It is very important not to overfeed the leads, who can die of empacho. Both the quantity and the frequency with which we contact them must be carefully evaluated and segmented according to the different types of leads, and even the market in which we operate. A lead nurturing strategy for car insurance, which is renewed once a year, is not the same as for an eCommerce in the retail sector.
Nor is it the same if we are dedicated to B2B than to B2C. In this case, the rule that we have once enunciated regarding the frequency and duration of offers is applicable to lead nurturing: the frequency of contact with the lead must correspond, in principle, with the frequency with which we want you to visit our website. . And this in turn will depend on the frequency with which we can offer you product news or promotions, as well as the length of the purchase cycle of a given product or sector.
That said, there are very few sectors that justify sending a daily eMail . The best way to define this contact frequency is to carry out tests with different delivery frequencies, which can range from week to quarter, or simply depend on seasonal campaigns or on specific dates. Finally, it should be noted that lead nurturing without adequate automation is almost impossible to tackle, at least if we want to have a good degree of customization.
That is why current CRMs have been stacked and almost all allow, to a greater or lesser extent, this type of strategy. But be careful: the definition part of the content is difficult to automate, so a lead nurturing strategy requires, to be successful, a lot of dedication and deep knowledge of our potential clients.