Mastering email nurture campaigns: A guide to boosting customer engagement

By Rhonda Bradley January 9, 2024

Are you on the lookout for a ridiculously efficient approach to generate engagement and increase gross sales with out investing a whole lot of time or cash? Electronic mail nurture campaigns are the reply!

Everyone knows it’s vital to maintain our e-mail subscribers engaged, ship them personalised content material, and nurture them by means of the gross sales funnel. 

However should you’re working a small enterprise, that every one feels like a complete lot of labor.

That’s the place e-mail nurture campaigns step in. 

Utilizing easy automation instruments, an e-mail nurture marketing campaign pays consideration to how individuals work together together with your model. Then it sends a related sequence of emails to domesticate their curiosity and information them towards making a purchase order or dedication to your service.

The very best half? You possibly can put a number of nurture campaigns on autopilot and it most likely received’t value you a penny greater than what you already pay to your e-mail advertising service. 

Massive firms usually spend weeks or months writing e-mail campaigns, because of pink tape and multiple-approval processes. However as a small enterprise, you possibly can write, regulate, and approve your individual campaigns in below a few hours. 

On this information, you’ll uncover how simple it’s to create automated e-mail campaigns that nurture leads by means of the gross sales funnel and improve your engagement and gross sales — with little or no effort in your half.

What’s an e-mail nurture advertising marketing campaign?

An e-mail nurture marketing campaign is an automatic sequence of emails despatched in response to a particular person conduct. Its function is to have interaction readers and transfer them additional alongside the gross sales funnel. Nurture campaigns are a extremely efficient approach to information e-mail subscribers towards making a purchase order or dedication.

For instance, if somebody downloads a free useful resource in your web site or clicks on a hyperlink in your e-mail, it may possibly set off a preset sequence of emails that encourages them to have interaction additional, join a free trial, or make a purchase order. 

Nurture campaigns are absolutely automated after the preliminary setup. It’s like hiring a staff of proficient salespeople who want little or no coaching or supervision.

When an e-mail subscriber clicks on a hyperlink in an e-mail, reads a particular weblog submit, or abandons a procuring cart with out making the acquisition — these are all “behavioral triggers” that may automate the launch of an e-mail nurture marketing campaign.

Why create e-mail nurture campaigns?

Electronic mail nurture campaigns are an efficient approach to have interaction with individuals who work together together with your model so you possibly can information them towards making a purchase order. They assist to maneuver individuals alongside the gross sales funnel, encourage conversions, and deepen relationships together with your subscribers.

How do nurture emails work?

Electronic mail nurture campaigns work by offering helpful, related e-mail content material primarily based on a person’s pursuits, conduct, or stage within the advertising funnel.  

When subscribers work together together with your emails or web site, their conduct offers you clues about the place they’re at within the advertising funnel and what kind of merchandise or content material they like. You should utilize these clues as behavioral triggers that activate an automatic sequence of related emails.

Listed here are some methods subscribers would possibly work together together with your model:

• Obtain a free useful resource or lead magnet out of your web site.
• Click on on a weblog hyperlink in a publication.
• Observe hyperlinks to a free session with out scheduling one.
• Add merchandise to their procuring cart with out making the acquisition.
• End one in all your programs.

A superb e-mail advertising software program can monitor these sorts of interactions and use them as triggers to activate automated e-mail nurture campaigns. 

How lengthy ought to a nurture marketing campaign be?

Electronic mail nurture campaigns often encompass a sequence of three – 10 emails despatched at a frequency of 1-3 emails per week.

What’s the function of an e-mail nurture marketing campaign?

Some e-mail nurture campaigns goal to maintain readers engaged, or re-engaged, together with your model.

Others give attention to closing gross sales or encouraging individuals to enroll in a free trial.

Each are efficient so long as you select just one objective per nurture sequence.

7 greatest practices for e-mail nurture campaigns

These e-mail nurture marketing campaign greatest practices will assist you to create profitable, high-converting campaigns. You would possibly wish to bookmark this webpage so you’ve gotten a guidelines that can assist you create efficient e-mail nurture campaigns sooner or later.

#1 – Develop a high-quality e-mail listing

Growing a high-quality e-mail listing helps increase your sender popularity, deliverability, and open charges. It additionally offers you a extra correct image of how nicely your nurture campaigns are working.

Observe these tricks to construct and keep a high-quality e-mail listing: 

• Intention for a listing of extremely engaged subscribers moderately than merely making an attempt to spice up the variety of individuals in your listing
• Perceive the CAN-SPAM Act and punctiliously abide by its insurance policies
• Frequently clear your subscriber listing by removing inactive subscribers

How’s your e-mail listing? Eradicating inactive subscribers is a reasonably easy venture. Most e-mail advertising platforms allow you to bulk seek for subscribers who haven’t been energetic shortly. This makes it simple to bulk choose and bulk delete them out of your mailing listing.

Do this: Add “listing upkeep” to your quarterly schedule and watch your deliverability and open charges improve because the 12 months progresses!

#2 – Set one objective per marketing campaign

Every e-mail nurture marketing campaign ought to have one clear mission. 

Yours could be to encourage free consultations, make a purchase order, or get began with a free trial. 

For instance, Skillshare makes use of personalised nurture campaigns to encourage readers to re-enroll in its annual program.

Setting one clear objective for every nurture marketing campaign ensures that you just focus all efforts on guiding readers towards one particular, related end result.

#3 – Ship helpful, irresistible content material

Need to get your subscribers enthusiastic about opening your emails? Ship them solely one of the best! 

Contemplate sending unique content material that they received’t discover anyplace else. Comparable to probably the most helpful ideas or the most important reductions. 

Or ship them extra of what you already know they love. 

For instance, anytime I try the newest items on Artwork.com, I get follow-up emails about comparable merchandise. Since they take note of my shopping habits and ship extremely related suggestions, I respect their emails and infrequently have interaction with them.

Contemplate this: When was the final time you learn an e-mail that impressed you to “star” the sender since you didn’t wish to miss out on the subsequent one? How would possibly you create comparable FOMO (concern of lacking out) e-mail content material to your subscribers?

#4 – Maintain emails transient

The common skilled receives about 120 email messages per day. That leaves them little or no time to skim their emails and decide on what’s price studying.

To spice up your open charges and cut back unsubscribes, show your worth inside the first 5 seconds of every e-mail and hold the whole phrase depend to 100 words or less.

For instance, the MasterClass e-mail beneath makes use of only a few phrases to convey a particular low cost, product advantages, product highlights, and a call-to-action.

The very best nurture campaigns encompass brief emails that ship huge worth to the reader whereas persistently guiding them in the direction of your marketing campaign objective.

Struggling to write down brief emails? Do this: drop your prolonged e-mail messages into Chat GPT and ask it to condense or summarize the message for you. 

#5 – Unlock the ability of copywriting psychology

Enhance your open charges and conversions by leveraging proven copywriting techniques when writing nurture e-mail topic headers and CTAs. 

• Write compelling headlines that don’t mislead the reader.
• Personalize emails (and generally the topic line) with the individual’s identify.
• Make use of transient tales, quotes, and lists to maintain the physique content material participating.
• Write in a transparent and easy type, at a Sixth-Seventh grade studying degree.
• Contemplate incorporating a way of urgency in your CTA’s.
• When describing your services or products, make sure that to incorporate its advantages.

For instance, the Uber One e-mail beneath leads with a profit (“Seize your necessities the simpler method”), adopted by product highlights (“devoted real-time consumers, real-time order monitoring, and 24/7 assist”) and one other profit (“order your must-haves with out stress”).

Do you generally neglect to focus on the advantages of your services or products? 

Attempt the “promote me a pencil” copywriting train: Seize the closest object (or pencil) and make a listing of three issues it does to make your life higher. 

I’ve bought a cup of espresso subsequent to me as I write this. It perks me up, makes me joyful, and connects me to all my coffee-loving associates throughout the universe. 

Now apply this train to your product. Make a listing of the non-public advantages it delivers to your prospects, and use these advantages in your e-mail copywriting!

#6 – Conduct A/B testing in your e-mail nurture campaigns

Need to earn $48 for each $1 you spend on e-mail advertising? Firms that conduct A/B testing get a considerably higher-than-average return on their e-mail advertising funding.

You should utilize A/B testing (often included together with your e-mail advertising service), to check out variations of your nurture emails. Attempt experimenting with components corresponding to topic traces, content material, layouts, and CTAs to find which variations are getting your emails opened and are only at participating readers.

Test it out! 

A/B testing feels like one thing “techy” but it surely’s really fairly easy. Within the transient video beneath, Brandon from AWeber reveals you ways simple it’s to conduct A/B testing.

#7 – Check and Optimize the Outcomes of e-mail nurture campaigns

Utilizing knowledge to refine your e-mail campaigns is among the only methods to speed up your e-mail advertising outcomes.

Try your e-mail analytics commonly, paying particular consideration to open and click-through charges. This helps you uncover what kind of emails, topic traces, and CTAs get one of the best outcomes over time. You should utilize that data to repeatedly replace and optimize your campaigns for growing success.

By implementing one of the best practices above, your e-mail nurture campaigns can grow to be a strong instrument for driving engagement and conversions.

When was the final time you analyzed the outcomes of your e-mail advertising? It’s simple to do and you’ll full a fundamental verify in below a minute per day. Attempt it now!

The right way to arrange an e-mail nurture marketing campaign: a 5-step guidelines

Organising an e-mail nurture sequence may be fast and simple. The 5-step guidelines beneath will assist you to create organized, efficient nurture campaigns each time.

The first step: Outline one objective to your e-mail nurture marketing campaign

Every marketing campaign ought to give attention to one singular objective, to make sure that your efforts are channeled successfully. Most nurture campaigns give attention to both promoting a product/service or maintaining prospects engaged with their model. 

What’s your one objective for this e-mail nurture sequence?

• Promote a services or products
• Upsell or cross-sell services and products
• Get readers to enroll in a free trial, demo, or session
• Re-engage inactive prospects
• Maintain individuals engaged together with your model
• Drive site visitors to your web site or touchdown pages
• Nurture leads by guiding them to the subsequent step within the gross sales funnel
• Educate prospects about your services or products
• Promote an occasion, sale, or lead magnet

Select a singular mission to your nurture marketing campaign, then transfer on to creating the sequence within the subsequent step.

Step two: Develop your e-mail nurture marketing campaign

Growing a nurture marketing campaign requires making a number of choices about the way to personalize the sequence. 

Put all of it collectively: Mix your notes from steps one and two to immediately create your nurture marketing campaign technique.

Step three: Write and design your e-mail nurture marketing campaign

Writing e-mail campaigns is way simpler with the assistance of templates and AI-driven writing tools.

Nurture marketing campaign templates

Templates may help you rapidly write efficient emails, and plenty of e-mail advertising platforms present them free to prospects. For instance, AWeber supplies a selection of email templates and automated campaign template codes for customers.

Writing a nurture sequence for a lead magnet? Obtain this free template that can assist you rapidly write the whole e-mail sequence:

AI help for nurture campaigns

When you’re new to nurture campaigns, think about using AI instruments and applications that can assist you rapidly develop efficient campaigns. AI can offer you excellent enter when creating e-mail campaigns.

For instance, you possibly can share your marketing campaign technique and content material concepts with Chat GPT or Google’s Bard, then ask for its enter:

1. Ask AI to offer extra concepts or ideas for greater engagement charges. 
2. Ask AI to create a template to your e-mail sequence.
3. Drop in your accomplished emails and ask whether or not the development or writing could possibly be improved.

Needless to say a whole lot of AI strategies might not be related or applicable to your model or product. Keep true to your tone of voice and target market, and solely think about AI strategies which are a very good match for each.

Step 4: Arrange your nurture marketing campaign

Once you’re able to create your e-mail nurture marketing campaign, head over to your e-mail advertising platform and observe their directions for automated campaigns.

That is usually a easy course of that will get simpler and faster with every marketing campaign you create. For instance, we present you the way to create an e-mail nurture marketing campaign for brand new subscribers.

Step 5: Monitor and regulate your marketing campaign outcomes over time

As soon as your marketing campaign is up and working, you possibly can frequently enhance its outcomes by monitoring key metrics corresponding to open charges, click-through charges, conversion charges, and unsubscribe charges. 

You should utilize this knowledge to make changes to your marketing campaign for higher efficiency.

Keep in mind, the effectiveness of a nurture marketing campaign largely is determined by how related and helpful its content material is to your readers. When you constantly refine and regulate your technique primarily based on subscriber suggestions and conduct, your campaigns will enhance over time.

Launching an e-mail nurture marketing campaign the simple method

Electronic mail nurture campaigns are one of the crucial profitable methods to spice up gross sales, engagement, and conversions to your model. The very best nurture campaigns encompass brief emails that ship huge worth to the reader whereas guiding them in the direction of a singular marketing campaign objective.

Growing nurture campaigns is faster and simpler with expertise that does the heavy lifting for you.

At AWeber, we offer all the things you should create automated nurture campaigns. Our super-friendly person interface helps you create beautiful, participating emails inside a drag-and-drop editor. 

You possibly can arrange your first e-mail nurture marketing campaign proper now by signing up for the free version of AWeber (no credit card required).