Lead nurturing is the process of developing that relationship with your potential customer by sending targeted, relevant, and valuable messages to them in a timely manner. Companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate more sales-ready leads at a lower cost-per-lead.

Email Marketing Best Practices:

List Building

• Create opt-in opportunities.
• Give people a reason to opt-in.
• Only send messages to people who have explicitly opted in.

Sending

• Stay relevant.
• Get personal. Use a name and email address in the “from” line of your email that your recipients will recognize.
• Get into the mind of your recipient and ask, “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM) Make the value clear in both the email body and the subject line.
• Don’t rely on images.
• Be consistent.
• Brush up on CAN-SPAM regulations to make sure your email practices comply.

Converting

• What do I do here? When someone opens your email, make it clear what they’re supposed to do.
• The landing page is part of your email campaign. Make sure your email offer and landing page flow.

Measuring

• Click-Through Rate (CTR) measures response.
• What about open rate? Open rate is an increasingly unreliable metric. Focus instead on how many clicks your email received.
• Unsubscribe rate measures annoyance and spam. You want to make sure your unsubscribe rate does not exceed 5%.
• Conversion rate measures actions. Test different landing pages to improve the conversion on your website.

Lead nurturing is all about developing relationships with your leads. Do it right and it can payoff big time.

For more information on nurturing leads with email marketing download our “Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing”.