When a potential customer shows interest in your website, they might not be sales-ready yet. It’s important not to alienate them by responding to their interest too quickly through a sales call, but by the same token, delaying a follow-up means a lead could turn cold.
How do you strike a balance between the two? This is where automated lead nurturing comes in.
Automated lead nurturing brings customers who might not be ready to buy and nurtures them into a position where you can make a sale.
An example of where this is used might be your email marketing. You send an email to customers in your database, and some of those customers might follow the link in the email to your webpage. If they continue to show interest, you escalate the information sent to them, until you’re ready to solicit a sale.
In this way, nurturing builds up your customers from the point where they weren’t ready to buy, to the point you successfully make a sale. The system’s also able to notify your sales team if a lead is hot – say, someone looking at your business’ costs page (often indicating interest to buy) for faster action by your team.
Companies that implement lead nurturing generate 50 per cent more sales ready leads, at a 33 per cent lower cost (Forrester Research). And the purchases that nurtured leads make are generally twice as big as non-nurtured leads (The Annuitas Group). By nurturing your leads, you get more sales of a larger quantum, and prevent leads going cold.
