Updated April 23, 2024
Your text marketing program has been working, and you’ve generated a list of leads. The next step? Start following up with those potential consumers. This will be crucial in turning subscribers into customers.
Launching a lead nurturing campaign allows you to target people who have signed up for your text marketing list in a more personalized way. Your communication with leads should incorporate valuable information that you have about them, including their audience demographic, buyer persona, and place in the sales funnel.
Now that you have the attention of your leads, a lead nurturing campaign can help close the sale. Here’s everything you need to know about creating your own lead nurturing campaign using broadcast texts as part of your marketing stack.
What is lead nurturing?
Lead nurturing is a personalized way of securing business from interested consumers by building a relationship with potential clients who have expressed interest in your products or services. There are many strategies for lead nurturing in an impactful way. Often, companies will segment their leads using buyer personas that help marketing and sales professionals personalize their messages based on a lead’s needs and interests. Many sales teams will also use lead scoring to identify where leads are in a sales funnel.
Leads are contacts that show increased promise as consumers based on the amount of information they’ve offered. As opposed to an entry-level subscriber or contact, leads are closer to the closing sales stage and require specific marketing attention.
Elements of a successful lead nurturing campaign
Lead nurturing is a process that involves many different touchpoints and consistent communication. It’s important to utilize both marketing automation and manual communication to maximize your employee resources while maintaining a personal feel. Here’s what great lead nurturing campaigns entail.
Multi-channel communications
In 2024, most companies are focusing on lead nurturing campaigns that use a variety of communication methods to create a unique relationship with each potential customer. Most businesses lean heavily on SMS, email, and social media messaging to nurture leads.
What to remember:
- Personalize your messaging: Addressing your lead by name is just the start. You’ll want to reach out to leads with industry information, trend alerts, to congratulate them on achievements, or pretty much anything that feels helpful, positive, and authentic.
- Don’t rely on email: Including email as part of your strategy is smart, but it’s unwise to lean directly on email, especially as email open rates are declining into 2024. The average email open rate is now 18%, with the average click-through rate at just 2.6%. Don’t trust a digital channel that a majority of people don’t open when it comes to your lead nurturing strategy. If you haven’t expanded your approach to include text messaging, now is the time.
Thank leads for their interest
A simple but important start to your lead nurturing campaign is sending a thank you text. Just as it’s a good idea to thank a new boss for their time after a job interview, the same applies to your leads. Avoid a generic thank you, as leads will see through a text born from a template. You can use this opportunity to include more information and visuals about your company goals.
What to remember:
- Include in the call to action a link to an upcoming event or company website where the lead can find more information about your company. This is where your content strategy can be massively important.
- Keep the message short so that your leads won’t be overwhelmed. Try to keep it under 100 to 150 characters if possible.
Generate excitement by introducing new product features
You want to show off what’s special and exciting about your company, all while making leads feel highly valued. Sharing new company news can be a smart way to achieve this goal. Highlight the most attractive features that your company offers to avoid overwhelming the lead with fluff details. You can also briefly frame what sets you apart from your competition to give your message validity.
What to remember:
- Share clean and easily-to-understand statistics. For example, “our product can reduce your monthly energy bill by 40%” is a simple statement that proves your value. This statistic is significant and can pique the interest of potential customers.
- Text a bulleted list of important features to get the message across quickly.
- Lead the text with a question to hook the reader before offering product information.
- Include how leads can learn more about your product or service. This could be a link to your company website, or let them know they can reply to the text so you can engage in two-way texting with them.
Use testimonials to your advantage
It’s been proven that people are more likely to buy a product if a friend recommends it. According to recent research, 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. Consumers also rely on word-of-mouth referrals up to ten times more than paid media. Based on these stats, it’s smart to entice your leads with strong testimonials. In a text-based lead nurturing campaign, a single testimonial sent via MMS message along with a picture of the person who made the testimonial can be powerful. Including an image also helps to break through the noise of competing texts your lead might be receiving.
What to remember:
- Include a single testimonial in the body of the text and link to a site where leads can read through other positive testimonials.
- Keep the quote short for maximum effect.
- Choose a picture that features the professional and friendly nature of the person giving the testimonial. In general, a headshot is better than a full body picture for the purpose of a text.
Follow up if leads unsubscribe
Losing leads is disappointing, but their choice to unsubscribe from your text list isn’t necessarily a reflection on their interest in your company. It’s possible that the lead unsubscribed to texts that they consider spam in a sweep and included yours. They could be planning to follow up later but chose to opt out of the messaging service. Because you won’t know why a lead unsubscribed, don’t take it personally. Try following up with other contact information you might have on file such as an email address or a phone number to call.
What to remember:
- Show the lead that you’re committed to improving their experience by asking what you could change going forward. For example, “We value the feedback of our consumers. Let us know if you have ways we can improve our service!”
- Find out why they left by emailing a short survey. Offer a few reasons like “not interested,” “texts too often” and “didn’t mean to unsubscribe.” This will give you valuable feedback going forward and also encourage leads to rejoin the list.
- It’s OK to show a sense of humor. Showing leads that you don’t take yourself too seriously can show your personality and help you end the relationship on a good note so that you remain a possibility for their future needs.
- Offer a farewell discount. This is one last way to show leads that you care about their business and are willing to sweeten the deal. Make the discount significant enough to make them consider rejoining your text list.
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