If your business has salespeople whose main responsibility is to convert leads into customers, you may be surprised to learn that over 50% of the leads businesses generate are not ready to buy although qualified. The question now is, what do you do with those leads? You can’t discard them because you have already invested money and time in generating them so you must do something about them.
This is where email marketing comes to help you convert the leads into customers. By setting up an automated email workflow which delivers targeted content and messages to your leads, you can keep them in the loop and even convince them to buy or try out your product.
The beauty with email marketing is that it can be automated so that it can work in the background to help you close your existing leads and increase revenue as you get busy generating more enquiries.
What it Takes to Convert Leads into Customers
Have you ever received a constant bombardment and overflow of promotional emails from businesses you haven’t considered buying from? It can be annoying and frustrating. That is the same experience your customers go through if you continue sending them these emails while they haven’t shown a strong interest in purchasing your product. It is like hitting a dead wall.
In order to evoke some reactions from your prospects, you should first educate them on a few things about your product. Even that education needs to be targeted so that only the things they are supposed to know to generate interest in your product are actually communicated.
You can achieve this by setting up a series of automated emails which go out to leads that make an enquiry, but haven’t graduated to customers as yet. The following is a simple 5-part email workflow that can help you get started on this.
Educational Email
The first emails you send should be educational in nature and focused on providing valuable information to your prospects. Here you can insert a link to a blog post in your email so that the leads can get more information that will hopefully make them want to buy or know more about your products.
Educating your customers helps you to build a sense of authority and show your prospects that you fully understand whatever product you are fronting to them.
Problem Email
This second series of emails is still educative in nature, but their main goal is to convince your customers why the problem they came to you with, is still worth solving. For instance, if you are running a carpet business, you could do an email with a link to a post that discusses the risk of your prospects not cleaning their carpets. It creates a sense of urgency in the problem and gives reason for your prospects to consider solving it.
Solution Email
Once your leads are convinced that indeed the problem they have is worth solving, this series of emails now follow to further convince them that your product is the answer to their problems. Still with the carpet cleaning company, you can tell your prospects on why it is important to use professional carpet cleaning services instead of doing the job themselves.
This positions you and your company as the suitable vehicle to get the job done.
The Case Study Email
This stage of email marketing involves sending your customers testimonials and case studies that promote your business as the best partner to work with and the assurance of amazing results that awaits them. This type of emails will give your leads the confidence they have been gathering all along and the conviction to respond to your quote and purchase your services.
The Hail Mary Pass Email
If you haven’t managed to convince your leads through the above emails, this last one may sound a bit desperate, but can revive your chances of a deal depending on how well you do it. You may offer your leads a discount of the quoted price as an incentive to get them into the bus.
Although some people think that this is a self-defeating move because it dents your margins, it can give you that final chance to convert your leads into customers.
To operationalise the above workflow, you should consider integrating your website or CRM with your email marketing software. The best way to approach this is to hire a professional email marketing company to help you with the automation and integration.
You never know how much you are losing until you try it!
Contact us today at info@imaginecreation.net to see hoe we can take your company to the next level
