Transform your business with our customer nurture campaign for organizations

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Let's talk about how to create a nurture campaign. This is step number 5 in my marketing funnel series. And if you haven't yet watched the previous videos in this series, you can find links to them down in the episode description box. But as we talked about in the very last video, customers aren't always immediately ready to buy your product or service. They might have clicked an ad, they might have visited your website to learn about your product, but they might not be yet ready to buy. Maybe they're doing initial research, maybe they're still considering some alternative solutions. Whatever the case may be, they might not yet be ready to buy. And that is why in the last video we talked about the importance of offering a lead magnet to attract potential customers to your email list, that you can follow up with them. And once they're on your email list, you can nurture their interest and you can keep your brand top of mind so that when they're ready to buy, they're more likely to buy from you. So that is what we're going to talk about in this video, specifically how to follow up with email subscribers in order to once again nurture their interest and to keep your brand top of mind. Now, there are many different ways to achieve this outcome, so I thought it'd be useful to talk about three of the most common approaches approach. Number 1. Is a guided journey. The idea here is to send a series of pre-scheduled emails that are designed to guide subscribers towards a specific outcome. So for example, if you're in the business of selling online guitar lessons, you might send a series of emails that are designed to help them learn a basic skill, a simple song or an essential technique, all with the ultimate goal of helping them build momentum when it comes to improving their ability to play the guitar. Now, oftentimes this guided journey relates back to the lead magnet that inspired people to join your email list in the first place. So, for example, if you're providing a Spring Lawn Care Checklist, well, on day number 1, after they first subscribe, you'll immediately send them that checklist. Then perhaps on day number 2, you'll send a reminder email to take action on the first item on that checklist, and you'll provide additional guidance or additional information about how to exactly complete that step. And this is most appropriate if your lead magnet is something that is intended to be followed over a series of days or even weeks, and especially if those steps are to be taken on a certain interval. So, for example, certain actions in that Spring Lawn care checklist might need to take place on specific days and with certain gaps of time between each item. So now your follow-up emails are not only providing additional information, but they're serving as a very helpful reminder of what to do and in what order over what duration of time. And that is one unique aspect of this approach. Emails are pre-scheduled to be sent out to subscribers based on when they joined your list. So rather than sending the exact same email on the same day to every subscriber, emails are sent out based on when someone signs up. So if they signed up yesterday, that is when they'll receive the first email and then you might have pre-scheduled the next email to go out 3 days after that. And then the next one, maybe two or three days after that, and that subscriber will get a personalized experience. The only other subscribers that are getting the exact same emails are those who also signed up on the exact same day. Whereas if somebody joins the next day, then all of their emails will be one day delayed relative to that other subscriber. Everybody is getting the email sequence based on the day that they signed up. Now, just to be clear, this doesn't prevent you from having the ability to send an email broadcast to everybody on your list at the very same time, If you have an important update to share. But the point here is, by default, a guided journey is a series of pre-scheduled emails that go out to each individual subscriber based on when they signed up. And those emails are sent independent of other email subscribers that might have joined on a different day. So it's very important to recognize the difference between a broadcast email that goes out to everybody and a guided journey set of pre-scheduled emails that go based on when they signed up. Now, just as with the lead magnet itself, the goal behind a guided journey is to help subscribers build real momentum towards solving their problem or meeting their need. And the way that you go about this is highly dependent on your business model. So for example, if you're in the business of providing lawn seed and other products like that that relate to lawn care, well, you probably have no problem giving away all the information that someone might need to improve their lawn. But of course you're not going to give away your product itself. So they need all the information on what to do. And then when they're ready to do it, they come to you and they buy your lawn seed or they buy other products and services from you to actually get the job done. Whereas if you're in the business of providing online guitar lessons, well, you probably don't want to give away your complete course because that is your product. And instead you really want to focus on helping subscribers build momentum with simple techniques or learning a simple songs. They can trial run your lessons and see if they work for them. And once they see that they're able to build momentum and that they can learn how to play the guitar at that point, you might offer them a chance to buy your product or to sign up for your online subscription service. With all of that said, it is worth noting that this is a nurture campaign and not a sales campaign. We're going to talk about how to put together a sales campaign in the next video in this series. But for now, the focus is really on simply nurturing their interest when it comes to solving their problem or overcoming whatever challenge they are facing. And about keeping your brand top of mind so that when they're ready to buy, they're more likely to buy from you. So it's perfectly okay to mention your product or service casually within the context of providing useful information. But the goal here is not to focus on pitching or trying to sell your product or service approach number to a consistent newsletter. The idea here is to simply send out useful information to all of your subscribers on a predictable and consistent basis. So for example, companies like Drumeo routinely send out free online drum lesson videos to their subscribers. James Clear sends out tips and tricks on how to develop better habits to his email subscribers. And of course, a company like Netflix routinely sends out email updates about the latest TV shows and movies that have been added to their service now. While I would categorize each of these as a newsletter. It's typically best to avoid using that word and instead choose a name for your newsletter based on your brand or your business or product name, and a little bit of information about what they should expect. So, for example, you could call it drumeo weekly or you could call it Basecamp tips and tricks. And in the case of Drumeo weekly, you're defining the brand and when they should expect to receive the updates. And in the case of Basecamp tips and tricks, you're once again including the brand in the word Basecamp. And then you're explaining a little bit about what they should expect as far as the content itself. And again, the overarching goal of this approach, as with any nurture campaign, is to help them nurture their interest in solving a problem or overcoming a challenge and keeping your brand top of mind. So we don't want to just send any random bits of information. The goal here is to provide information that is relevant to why they originally signed up on your email list. And once again, we're trying to help them build meaningful momentum towards ultimately solving a problem so that they're more interested in buying your product or signing up for your service or engaging with your business in some other meaningful way. Now, it's worth noting you can actually combine this approach with the previous approach. In fact, it's very common for someone to first join list. They get the lead magnet, they start receiving a pre-scheduled guided journey that walks them through how to use that lead magnet. And then once they've completed that process, then they start to receive the consistent newsletter with ongoing updates that might be also useful. And this is a very common approach. And using email automation software, you can configure this that again on day number one, they get the lead magnet, then they start going through the guided journey. They don't receive newsletter updates while they're going through that process. And it's only when they've completed that process that they then start to receive your regular newsletter with additional information that might be useful and relevant to them. Approach number 3. Sporadic updates. This is similar to the last approach in that you're sending useful email updates to all of the subscribers on your list. But this approach lacks the consistency. So for example, one month you might send two or three emails, the next month you might send no emails, and then the month after that maybe you send one or two emails again because you're reminded that you should be sending something to your list. But the problem here is that you're not really consistent, and I included this option in the list because it's a very common trap that many businesses fall into. They intend to do a good job of sending useful email updates to their entire list, but for one reason or another, they get distracted or they focus on other things. Or maybe they just don’t have good systems in place. And so their email updates are sporadic and they're not consistent in delivering value to their subscribers. As a result, this approach is significantly less effective at achieving the two outcomes that we're really trying to achieve here. And again, that is to nurture customer interest and to remain top of mind. And by not delivering emails on a regular basis, really failing to continue to nurture interest and to help subscribers maintain momentum in terms of their ability to solve their problem or to overcome a challenge. And of course, we're no longer top of mind if we're not sending emails on a regular basis. And so when a customer is finally ready to buy, if it's during a month or during a few weeks where we haven't been sending updates, well, they might end up buying from somebody else who is top of mind or whose product is just that much more convenient at the moment. Another issue with this approach is that can cause your emails to be marked as spam, and this can happen for two different reasons. Firstly, because you're sending emails more sporadically, people can forget who you are and forget that they signed up for your list and so they can start marking your emails as spam, simply believing that they never signed up for them in the first place. And second, even if they do remember joining your list and did intend to join your list. Well, because you're sending emails more sporadically, they might have moved on. They might have given up on solving that specific problem. And as a result, out of sheer frustration, they might start to mark your messages as spam simply because they don't want to receive them. And with either case, this can affect your deliverability when it comes to people who do want to receive your emails. So just having people out there marking your emails as spam can actually hurt your overall email deliverability, even to people who aren't marking them as spam. So the key takeaway here is that it's very, very important to be consistent and a great way to do this is to batch write and pre-schedule your emails in advance. So maybe once every two months or once a quarter, you write all the emails for that time period, you get them already, you schedule them for release. That way, if you get distracted with something else, you don't have to worry your emails are going out. And then of course you'll want to set a reminder to write the next batch of emails well ahead of time. Now, in some cases you can recycle old emails, or at least the ideas behind old emails, so you don't always need to start from a blank canvas. Your content doesn't always have to be completely original. In fact, in many cases there are going to be seasonal themes that you can bring back once a year, or there are going to be timeless insights or timeless lessons that you want to revisit from time to time, maybe from a fresh perspective. But the point is, you don't always need to come up with something completely new. Oftentimes there's a lot of benefit to going back to previous emails that performed very well and then finding a new approach to share that same insight once again. So with all of that said, I recommend that you either go with approach number two, where you send useful email updates to all of your subscribers, or you start with a combination of approach number one and number two, where you start with a guided journey and then you start sending regularly useful emails to all of your subscribers. But with that said, let's go over some best practices. Here are 6 things that you can do to improve your nurture campaign. Number one, write emails people will want to read. Every email that you send should be useful, educational, or very least entertaining. And ideally it should relate back to the reason why they subscribe to your email list in the first place. So we don't want to just send random content or random information. We want to focus on meeting that original need and providing ongoing value. And ideally what we want to do is train them to continue to look forward to your emails and to open and read them when they receive them. Now, of course, subscribers won't read every single email that you send, but this should be the ultimate goal. And what we want to avoid is training people to get used to seeing your emails and then just instantly archiving in deleting them. So it's very important that we're sending useful information. And even though people won't read everything, we want to strive towards that goal. Number two, use intriguing subject lines. Just as we talked about in an earlier video in this series, when it comes to the headline being the most important text on your website and oftentimes the only text someone will actually read to decide whether or not they're going to stick around and read more. The subject line serves the very same purpose when it comes to emails, and so it's not uncommon to actually spend as much time writing the subject line as you spend putting together the rest of the email, because it's that important. If someone reads the subject line and they're not interested in reading the email, then there's really no point in crafting a perfect email. The subject line is everything in terms of getting them to actually click on the email to open it and to read it. And the balance that you want to strike here is you want to create a subject line that creates intrigue and causes them to be curious enough to open the email while still ultimately delivering on that intrigue. So you don't want to oversell the email, you do want to hype something up, and then they read the email and it falls short because of course that's just going to train them to ignore your future emails. So instead you want to create intrigue and strike a balance between actually delivering on that intrigue. So it's very important to find a way to balance those two priorities, get them curious, get them interested, but make sure the email actually delivers. Number three, use professional email automation software. This should go without saying, but unfortunately, far too many businesses make the mistake of sending emails directly from their personal inbox. And the problem, of course, is this greatly hurts. Email deliverability and this lacks a lot of the core functionality that you're going to need when it comes to automating the sending of emails and the sending of email sequences. But really at the end of the day, if you have a list of more than ten people, you should be using professional email automation software like MailChimp Active Campaign Drip, or one of the many other services out there. And of course, as your list grows, this becomes even more essential. Number four, use a consistent name and email address. It's very important that when people receive emails from you or your business that the name is consistent, whether it's your personal name, whether it's your business name, or in some cases you might include both. Where it's Rick @ business name or something like that. But when your emails show up in their inbox, you want them to recognize your emails and you don't want this to change over time where suddenly they're receiving emails from your business, but they don't recognize the sender. And it's also important that the email address being used is also consistent, whether it's name at business dot com or whatever you end up using. You want to use the exact same email address so that you improve deliverability because of course email service providers look for patterns when it comes to who is sending emails. And if somebody's subscribed to one list and they routinely receive emails with a certain email address and then that email address changed over time, that can affect deliverability and can cause some email service providers to block or mark those emails as spam. So it's very important to use a consistent name and to use a consistent email address. The first is most important, the second is quite important, but in some cases it's not as impactful. But you just want to be cognizant of this and avoid changing things if you don't need to. Number five, use a simple responsive email design. Most email automation platforms like ActiveCampaign or MailChimp have many pre-built templates that you can use and then customize slightly when it comes to sending emails. But it's very important to go with a simple, clean, responsive design that is going to work well when it comes to desktop computers, tablet computers, mobile phones or anywhere else. Someone might be reading your email. So I highly recommend that you go with a single column layout, remove any extra clutter or any extra columns that are unnecessary and ideally keep it a really simple design with maybe a logo at the top and then just simple formatted text below that and a really clean and simple footer. You don't want to overly complicate things. You want it to work again on all major devices and you want it to be visually attractive and not overwhelming. So just go with a simple responsive design. Number six. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe. This may sound counterintuitive, but it's really important to make it as easy as possible for people to unsubscribe from your email list if they're no longer interested in receiving your emails. Not only is this good for business in the sense that if you're sending people emails that they don't want to receive, they're probably going to have a negative brand perception of your business and be less likely to recommend it to other people. But also what people tend to do when they can't figure out how to unsubscribe from emails they don't receive as they start to mark those emails as spam. And that can, as I mentioned earlier, start to affect your email deliverability, even with other subscribers who haven't marked your messages as spam, as major email service providers out there like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail start to see patterns where more and more of your subscribers are marking your messages as spam, they can actually reduce your overall email deliverability to other people on their service. So other people using Gmail or other people using Yahoo Mail, if they start to consider all of your emails as spam or more likely to be spam, the goal here is not to have the biggest email list possible. It's to have an engaged email list of people who want to hear from you. So if they don't want to hear from you, make it easy for them to unsubscribe and instead focus on writing more useful and engaging emails for the people who are on your list. So with all of that said, now is the time to create your nurture campaign. Start by deciding on the approach that you think is the best fit for your business, whether that is approach number two or perhaps a combination of approaches, number one and number two, and then focus on writing your first 5 to 7 emails using the best practices that we've covered throughout this video. Don't worry about making these emails perfect, but instead just focus on delivering useful and relevant information that is going to help nurture the interest of your potential customers. And of course, at the same time keep your brand top of mind. Next up, we're going to talk about how to create a sales campaign. So click the like button, subscribe to the channel, and then continue on to the next video. You can find a link right here in the video player as well as down below in the video description text.