Hooray! Another successful trade show under your belt, and it’s time to nurture the email leads you’ve received.
Here are five email lead nurturing tips you can use to take your trade show leads from strangers to customers.
Trade Show Email Lead Nurturing Tips:
Tip 1: Get Strangers and Prospects to Self Identify
In a recent post, we shared that only 3% of your prospects are ready to buy at any moment.
Here’s what this means for you:
- 7% plan on making a change
- 30% have a need, but they’re not ready to buy
- 30% don’t have a need
- 30% will never buy from your company (even if they have a need)
So this means only 40% of your leads require your attention; so you’ll need to create content that helps you identify the leads requiring consistent attention. You’ll want to sort your email leads into the following buckets.
- Cold leads: these are the 30% of prospects who have a need, but they’re not ready to buy. These prospects are in the market for your products or services, but they don’t have a concrete timeframe for their decision.
- Warm leads: the 7% of customers who plan on making a change in the near future. These customers are legitimately interested but need specific things to happen before they’re ready to buy.
- Hot leads: this group refers to the 3% of customers who are willing and able to buy in the short term. They’re looking to make a decision quickly.
Next, create content that’s specifically tailored to each group.
Give cold leads:
- Education
- Lead magnets
- Guides
- Whitepapers
- Tools
Give warm leads:
- Signature content showing them how you get results
- Customer case studies
- Live case studies
- Online reviews and testimonials
Give hot leads:
- Quotes
- Proposals
- Demos
- Tours
- 1-on-1 engagement
The more prospects engage with your content, the warmer they get.
Doing it this way allows you to nurture leads in a way that produces value for everyone. You qualify your leads and move them towards a sale; your prospects get value throughout their relationship with you.
Tip 2: Let Prospects Create Your Autoresponder Sequence
Relationships are built slowly, over many interactions. Each email you send is an interaction.
When it comes to email nurturing, there are two ways to go about it. You can (a.) use broadcast emails, one–time messages sent to your list at a set time, or (b.) drip campaign sequences – a series of emails that are automatically sent on a schedule. The emails you collected during the trade show are opportunities for relationships, but autoresponders, for example, only work well if you know which messages resonate with your list.
Here’s an easy way to identify the emails that you can add to your autoresponder follow-up sequence.
- Write once-off broadcast emails to the people on your list
- Track the broadcast emails that each segment responds to
- Add your top-performing messages to the appropriate autoresponder sequence
- Use this strategy to build an autoresponder sequence that becomes more profitable over time
Use your broadcast emails to segment your list, identify the content prospects’ value, then add that content to your autoresponder sequence. Over time, it’s an easy, no-hassle way to build a profitable email nurturing program.
Tip 3: Bounce Your Email Leads Around
Invite your prospects to follow you on social media. If you’re like most people, this is an immediate red flag.
But if your approach is structured properly, it can work wonders. Most organizations post the same content across their social media profiles. All of the content that’s posted on Facebook is also on Twitter, YouTube, etc. These companies are shooting themselves in the foot. If all of your social media profiles post the same content, there’s no reason for customers to follow you on other platforms. If they can go to your Facebook page to get the content you post on YouTube, there’s no reason for them to subscribe to your YouTube channel. You’re training your customers to ignore you.
Here’s a better idea.
Send broadcast content via email, occasionally pointing to your social media profiles. And make sure that you don’t post the same content on each of your profiles. If you post stats and facts on one (Facebook), post case studies and testimonials on another (Instagram). Doing it this way means you’re teaching your prospects (and customers) that it’s valuable to follow and engage with each of your social media profiles. It’s another touchpoint you can use to amplify the success of your email lead nurturing campaigns.
Tip 4: Bribe Your Subscribers with Trade Show Exclusives
It’s common for companies to offer mugs, totes, pens, and other promotional items. These items serve as reminders, but this isn’t the kind of value we are talking about here. We’re also not talking about demos or free trials.
We’re talking about the resources you provide to customers that move them closer to a sale.
These items could be:
- An irresistible offer
- Connection a person or much-need resource
- Exclusive information
- A promise, warranty, or guarantee
- Something your competitors can’t or won’t provide
Here are a few presale examples that demonstrate what I’m talking about.
- Guarantee: we guarantee you’ll receive [outcome], or we’ll give you double your money back
- Warranty: our hard drives are backed by an unprecedented 5-year guarantee.
- Irresistible offer: we’ll teach you to code and help you find a 60K+ job within 6 months, from start to finish.
- Connections: our VIP customers will also receive access to our quarterly mastermind sessions, filled with more than a dozen Fortune 500 leaders.
- Exclusive information: we’ll share the process used by the top 1% of companies in your industry.
Here are some product-focused examples:
- Bonuses: order by [date], and you’ll receive [free product, discount, etc.]
- Takeaways: only [3] left in this year’s batch. Get [product] now before it’s gone
- Loss aversion timer: this bonus is free until [date]; the price increases in [2 days, 12 hrs, 41 min.]
- Contest: the first 50 customers to pass this test wins a [list prize here]
- Invite/VIP only: exclusive to trade show attendees receive these [products, bonuses, freebies] with their order
- Join the waitlist: purchase this [product] today, and you’ll be added to the waitlist for our [desirable bonus or incentive]
- Bundled opt-in: take our quiz, and you’ll receive this [product or bonus] free with your order.
Here’s how you use these items.
Start by using these in your welcome message, then sprinkle these in with your broadcast emails. Identify the approach that works best for your company. Once you’ve identified your top performers, add them to your autoresponder sequence.
Here’s a manufacturing example.
Subject: We cut [client’s] production costs by 57%!
Body:
Hi John,
Most of the retailers who stopped by our booth at the Midwest Manufacturing Expo mentioned that their production costs had tripled in the last year. Most of the people who contacted us were frank about their fears.
“I don’t think we can make it through another year like this one.”
Are you in the same boat?
If you are, we can help. Here’s a two-page, do-it-yourself guide you can use to decrease production costs by as much as 34%! If you’d prefer a done-for-you solution, we can do that too. [Company], a recent client, cut their production costs by 57% in the first 45 days!
Get the guide and case study here:
[Signature]
With this example, you can see that you’re directly talking to people/organizations you met at the trade show, and addressing their problems. The sooner, the better, as subscriber responsiveness decreases with time.
Tip 5: Use Quizzes and Surveys to Gain Insights
Asking subscribers, prospects, and customers to share their perspectives is a great way to improve lead nurturing. Here’s the catch; people are great at discussing and dissecting their problems but not so great at solving them. If they were, they wouldn’t need you. Quizzes and surveys are great ways to identify:
- Customer problems
- Why these problems are issues
- The consequences of ignoring the problem
- Primary, secondary, and tertiary problems
- Sources or causes of these problems
There’s a great rule of thumb to remember here.
It’s your customer’s job to tell you about their problem and how bad it is. It’s your job to figure out how to solve those problems, using your expertise to create the ideal solution.
The better you are at identifying your customer’s desires, goals, fears, and frustrations, the easier it will be for you to create a solution that completely satisfies their wants and needs.
Conclusion
Pipeline CRM enables you to nurture leads and close sales without leaving the app or subscribing to another service! Easily customize your engagement to trigger campaigns based on changes to your data in Pipeline.
Try it free and see what Pipeline can do for you.
