Leveraging Automation for Effective Nurture Email Campaigns

Email nurture campaigns help businesses turn leads into loyal paying customers. By keeping in touch with your leads and showcasing the value you have to offer, email nurture campaigns help build lasting relationships through email sequences until your leads are ready to make a purchase.

And the best part? Nurture email campaigns can be automated, easy to set up, and incredibly cost-effective when done right. Think of it as a newsletter but for sales. In this article, we’ll cover the following:

What exactly is email nurturing
The benefits of email nurture sequences
Common types of nurture emails
And 4 best practices to know when launching a nurture email campaign

If you’re ready to generate more customers on autopilot, then read on!

What are Nurture Emails?

Nurture emails are a series of emails typically sent to warm leads to help guide them through your sales funnel to convert them into paying customers. Also known as email nurture sequences, they are used be used to build trust in your brand and cultivate relationships with your leads as they proceed through your sales funnel stages.

While the ultimate goal of your email nurture campaign is to convert leads, there are all kinds of ways to achieve that in your campaign. You can use humor to your advantage, help leads solve a pain point, or educate them on how to achieve a certain goal relevant to your brand.

As your prospects are guided through your sales funnel, your emails will then become more promotional in nature. Towards the end of your campaign, you can start sending discounts, trial offers, or limited-time-only deals to finally close the sale as well as your email nurture campaign.

What are the benefits of running nurture email campaigns?

Running email nurture campaigns is an underrated email marketing tactic that comes with a long list of benefits. Here are some key ones that are worth knowing.

Nurture Email Campaigns Build Trust & Boost Conversions

The leads you gather through lead magnets have some level of interest in your brand, but the vast majority are still not ready to make a purchase. In fact, roughly 96% of website visitors are not ready to buy, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be convinced otherwise down the line.

When a lead gives their contact information in exchange for value, imagine the likelihood they’ll make a purchase if the first email they receive is a sales pitch. Not likely.

Now consider the outcome if a lead signs up and then receives a series of emails that give them value of some kind. If the lead is opening your emails, engaging with them, or even sharing them, then that clearly indicates they like what they see and trust your content. As a result, it’s far more likely they make a purchase when pitched to at the right time.

Nurture Email Campaigns Boost Engagement & Are Cost-Effective

According to Invesp, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost. The same study also notes that lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts.

Through email automation, creating and setting up an email nurture sequence is incredibly simple and saves countless hours of manual work. If you’re building an email list of leads, there’s essentially no reason not to run email nurturing campaigns.

Types of Nurture Email Campaigns

Email nurture campaigns can come in all shapes and sizes depending on your goals, product, and target audience. Here are a few examples of the email types commonly seen in email nurture sequences.

Welcome Emails

Welcome emails are emails sent when a new lead signs up to your list. This email introduces your brand, sets expectations, and may include a link to content the lead signed up for if done through a lead magnet.

Welcome emails are usually quite long in design but concise in text. Further resources are often included, and it’s not uncommon to find subtle calls to action here and there.

Educational Emails

Educational emails are what most leads sign up for, especially through lead magnets. Many sites offer ebooks, guides, or even free consultations in exchange for emails.

Educational content is the bread and butter of email nurture campaigns. By offering value to prospects, you become an authority in your space and build trust with your leads. You also decrease the likelihood they go to a competitor after signing up and benefiting from your emails. As a result, it’s far more likely they make a purchase with you rather than elsewhere if your campaign was effective.

Social proof is a powerful driver to quickly convert leads into customers. Showing testimonials, reviews, or successful case studies is a great element to have within your nurture campaign.

Source: reallygoodemails.com

Here, popular cereal brand Magic Spoon does a wonderful job leveraging funny reviews and sharing them with leads to build interest and drive interaction. If it aligns with your brand, incorporating humor into your emails is one of the best ways to drive sales and get people to share your content.

Launching Successful Nurture Email Campaigns: 4 Best Practices

You’ve made the right choice and are ready to launch an awesome email nurture campaign. But before you do, here are some key best practices to consider.

Segment Your Audience and Target Accordingly

According to Hubspot, email subscriber segmentation is the most effective strategy for email marketing. Segmenting your email list means organizing them based on certain criteria like age, interest level, location, etc.

Effectively segmenting your leads largely depends on your lead magnets. Customers signing up to access a guide are not the same as customers signing up for a 15% discount. Segmenting the two will allow you to send better and more targeted email sequences and as a result, maximize your conversion rates.

Utilize Email Automation Tools

Email automation is the heart of an effective email nurturing campaign. With mail merge tools, you can easily personalize your emails to include the names of subscribers and other key details they included when signing up.

Personalizing your emails is great, but being able to run your campaigns on autopilot is even better. That’s where tools like Instantly can help you maximize your time and resources with scheduled campaigns. Once your lead signs up, everything from the welcome email to the free offer pitch can be scheduled to run with minimal oversight.

Keep Your Emails Short and Concise

Nurture emails tend to be long by design, but text-wise, they are brief and concise. Effective emails have bold headlines, engaging visuals, and short and concise text. It’s important to keep in mind that a nurture email sequence is not a newsletter (those are for long-term customer nurturing) but rather a campaign with the goal of turning leads into customers.

Even when showcasing a product success story or generally storytelling in an email, it’s not uncommon for paragraphs to be one sentence long. The overall email should not take more than 5 minutes to digest.

Test and Track Email Performance

You can’t have a powerful email nurture campaign without testing your emails. There are a lot of variables when crafting an email, such as the subject line, visuals, email content, and nature of your offers.

Luckily, you can track key email metrics that let you know where the problem is if your campaign is not performing well, such as:

Open rate: if your open rates are not ideal, ensure your subject lines are catchy enough to be clicked on. Be sure to test your subject lines among segments of your email list.
Click-through rate (CTR): knowing how many people are clicking links in your email after they’ve opened it is a major purpose behind your campaign. You can track the number of clicks you get from a campaign using custom tracking domains.
Email contents: perhaps your subject lines are in order, but the contents of your emails are not resonating well with your subscribers. Email copy, visuals, or CTAs are all things to carefully consider in the case of a subpar click-through rate.
Offer type: what type of offers resonate the most with your subscribers? Discounts, free guides, or free trials? For example, if you’re a SaaS service, an invitation to a free trial when there normally isn’t one is a strong offer.

Sending one version of an email to a set of subscribers and the other version to a different set is known as A/B testing and is a smart way to learn what the best approach is for your campaign.

Key Takeaways

Email nurture campaigns are a super cost-effective way to nurture leads, drive conversions, and boost revenue, all on autopilot. When crafting an email nurture campaign, keep in mind to:

Segment your list and create target campaigns for each.
Leverage email automation, such as mail merge tools for personalization.
Keep your emails short and easy to digest.
A/B test your emails and track campaign performance.