Lead nurturing emails are the perfect way to keep in touch with your prospects after they’ve converted.
On average, lead nurturing emails get 4-10 more responses than standalone emails. This offers you the chance to move your prospects further down the sales funnel, build positive relationships, boost trust and generate additional sales along the way.
In fact, research has found that the businesses that excel in their lead nurturing efforts generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost!
Despite this, however, only 29% of brands currently nurture their existing customers beyond the initial purchase. So, if you’re looking to outstrip your competitors, lead nurturing emails are one of the top tools you can use to make it happen.
What’s more, email marketing is constantly evolving – which means that, at the time of writing, you have a huge variety of tools at your disposal to maximise the power of your email campaigns.
However, as your chosen inbound marketing partner will tell you (if you have one), no matter how many tools you are using and how many metrics you are tracking, it ultimately all comes down to writing a compelling email.
So, how can you write an email that not only looks good, but performs exceptionally?
Read on to discover our seven top tips for writing powerful, high-performing lead nurturing emails...
7 tips to write high-performing lead nurturing emails
1. Include personalisation
Email allows for various types of personalisation.
For example, you can use the name field in the subject line to automatically insert the name of the person you are writing to. If the email looks like it’s specifically for that person rather than sent out as a mass communication, there’s more chance that they will take a look.
Remember to segment your audience. Send different emails to different groups within your list based on their sector, behaviour and buyer personas.
For example, if you are a recruitment agency, you could send one email targeting candidates and another targeting employers; this means that the messaging and tone of voice will need to be altered appropriately.
Alternatively, you could send emails to different groups based on how they signed up to your list or the products they’ve purchased. This type of personalisation has been proven to increase open rates in transactional emails.
There is one caveat: the overuse of personalisation can have the opposite effect entirely. For example, don’t use their name in every other sentence otherwise it can start to sound a little excessive and slightly creepy!
2. Write in a personal tone
Emails work best when they're written in a personable way.
Think about the emails that people always open first – those that come from people they know, such as friends and family.
Emails are, for the most part, a personal form of communication. So, make sure your emails sound like they are being written from one person to another by:
- using your own name in the ‘From’ line, rather than your company name
- mentioning ‘you’ rather than ‘our customers’
- adopting a light-hearted tone (as long as this fits with your brand)
Remember: you’re trying to build a relationship as part of your lead nurturing process, and a personalised tone is the best way of doing this!
3. Keep the content succinct and easy to read
Email copy should be easy to read, which means short paragraphs, concise sentences and the use of bullet points.
That does not mean the email itself has to be short – long emails get read, too (though typically, the most read emails are between 50 to 125 words).
However, they should be easy to read on any device, including a small mobile screen. If you present subscribers with a huge block of text, they’ll delete the email before they’ve read the opening sentence.
In the same vein, it’s been found that people will, on average, spend around 13.4 seconds reading an email. And as an adult's typical reading speed is around 250 words per minute, this means your copy needs to capture their attention and interest in approximately the first 18 words!
Getting this right takes time and practice; by teaming up with an experienced inbound marketing partner, you’ll have the support of a dedicated content team with the know-how to get this right off the bat!
4. Keep the focus on the reader
Always make the reader the focus of each email. When it comes to lead nurturing, you should be focusing on what they want to read, what they want to know, the questions they have and the solutions they are looking for.
Focus your attention on their pain points, such what keeps them up at night, and how your product or service will resolve their problem.
Avoid the temptation to talk about your business in every email. While people will be interested in the latest happenings, this should be secondary. Focus on the benefits of everything. After all, it’s not about what you do, it’s about what you can do to help!
5. Provide consistent value
At the end of the day, to write emails that get opened, read and acted on, you need to ensure you consistently provide value. You can use all the tricks in the book to get more emails opened, but the only thing that works in the long-term is creating value-packed emails that people actually want to read.
Your ultimate goal should be to get subscribers on the lookout for your emails and to want to read them as soon as they arrive – and you can only do that by providing them with valuable information and resources.
Otherwise, no matter what else you do, your emails will get ignored.
6. Make sure every email has a call to action that matches up to its overall goal
One of the simplest ways to improve your email marketing is to make sure every single email you write has a defined goal, and that the call to action (CTA) you use aligns with this goal. This stops you from spending valuable time writing emails which don’t achieve your goal and are filled with fluff.
Your goal could be to incite readers to:
- read your latest blog post
- download your new white paper
- check out your latest product
- share your blog on Twitter
- reply to a question
- forward the email to a friend
It could be anything – just make sure you don’t cram in multiple goals, but instead keep it to one.
Giving each email a goal helps to structure your emails and makes them easier to plan and write – as well as providing subscribers the opportunity to act on them.
Don’t be put off by the sales lingo; the CTA is simply the place in the email where you tell your readers exactly what you want them to do next.
It could be as easy as: “Read the latest blog here”. It shouldn't be pushy, but be clear and direct, leaving no room for confusion. People are far more likely to take action if they know what they should be doing.
7. Optimise for deliverability
Part of writing killer lead nurturing emails is doing so in a way that means they will actually reach your recipients’ inboxes in the first place!
Simple things like limiting the use of exclamation marks per email to just one or two, not using all caps, avoiding words like “free” and ensuring there are no spelling mistakes can make a huge difference to the deliverability of your emails.
By implementing these tips, you’ll be all set to super-charge your lead nurturing efforts.
Just a few simple changes can make all the difference to the open and click-through rates of your lead-nurturing emails.
But writing good emails is just one element – if you want to run a successful email marketing campaign, there is a lot more that goes into this, from planning through to measuring and testing.
To get the lowdown on the whole process, be sure to take a look at our essential guide to inbound marketing here.
At Angelfish, we’re proud to be inbound marketing partners to a variety of different businesses – and just one of the services we offer through this partnership is the creation and distribution of impactful lead nurturing emails!
If you’d like to learn more about this as well as the other services we provide, be sure to arrange your free one-hour consultation with us by following the link below.
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