A quick question for you: Are you still sending one-off email campaigns with no clear intentions or progression? Do you feel that your contacts are stuck with no opportunities to convert?

Introducing automated email nurture programs, which are designed to build and maintain relationships with leads, helping you drive conversion and engagement over time.

These programs involve sending a series of targeted and relevant emails to guide recipients through the buyer’s journey. The key is to slowly lead them to conversion while feeding information to build trust.

So today, let’s dive into six powerful email nurture strategies, the objectives, target audience, the buyer’s stage, ideal strategies and outcomes.

(Psst! To learn more about each buyer’s stage in the customer journey, read up before you proceed!)

1. Welcome Series

A welcome nurture is typically the first series of emails a subscriber receives after signing up for your email list. This new subscriber would have signed up through a website form fill and is ready to be nurtured. It welcomes the lead and introduces your brand, sets expectations, and provides valuable information to engage and build trust for a lasting relationship.

Objective

You guessed it, we’re here to welcome new leads who’ve shown an interest in what you have to offer! You can kill two birds with one stone here by setting a secondary goal — like booking an appointment with a sales agent to enquire further.

Target audience

New subscribers/leads who have recently shown an interest in your service or offer.

Buyer’s stage

Awareness or interest

Ideal strategy

Send a sequence of engaging emails introducing your brand, sharing valuable insights, and guiding them towards taking the desired action (like booking an appointment). This is especially important for the property sector, where hot leads should be captured for conversion right away.

Outcome

Establish trust, increase brand familiarity, and give a slight nudge for the recipients to convert.

2. Awareness to Consideration Nurture

Now, think of yourself as a teacher providing educational content to your leads. You might use things like whitepapers, how-to guides, tutorials, or e-books to educate prospects through to the consideration stage. The aim here is to offer valuable information that will help your leads understand the problem they’re facing, and how your business can help solve it.

Objective

Educate and inform leads to showcase your expertise and the value you offer. This could be through whitepapers, e-books, webinars or guides. The secondary goal could be to book an appointment or sign up for a demo once they’re convinced.

Target audience

Leads seeking information about your industry and services who have the potential to make a decision. aim to bridge the gap between their problem and your solution.

Buyer’s stage

Awareness/Consideration

Ideal strategy

Send a series of emails containing progressive informative content — like articles, guides, and case studies — that demonstrate your industry knowledge and address pain points.

Outcome

Position your brand as a thought leader, allow your leads to engage with valuable content, and move them closer to conversion by addressing their problems and offering solutions.

3. Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are a series of scheduled emails to leads over a specific period of time. Each email in the series provides incremental information or value, gradually guiding leads towards a conversion. Its concept is similar to the other nurtures we’ve mentioned so far, but the focus here is incremental value offered towards conversion. Think of it as a drop of vital info in each email.

Objective

Gradually guide leads through the buyer’s journey, from interest to action.

Target audience

Lead who are evaluating options and getting ready to make a choice.

Buyer’s stage

Consideration or Decision

Ideal strategy

Create a sequence of well-timed emails, each providing incremental value and driving leads towards booking appointments (property sector) or admissions (education sector).

Outcome

Keep leads engaged, nurture relationships, build trust and boost conversion rates.

4. Re-engagement Campaigns

These are targeted towards inactive subscribers. The duration of inactivity can range from a month to several years, depending on your sales cycle. The goal is to re-engage them by reminding them of the value your brand offers, providing incentives, or addressing any concerns they might have.

Objective

Rekindle the interest of dormant contacts in your CRM to convert and/or cross-sell.

Target audience

Previously engaged leads who are currently inactive.

Buyer’s stage

Inactive

Ideal strategy

Craft compelling emails that remind recipients of your value proposition, offer incentives, or seek feedback to re-ignite their engagement. You would ideally want to warm them up again and not press towards conversion too soon.

Outcome

Re-engage disinterested leads, to either convert them or gain valuable insights to enrich your CRM database with enriched data.

5. Behaviour-based Triggers

This kind of nurture involves sending emails based on actions a prospect has taken, rather than who they are. For instance, as a prospect engages with your website or completes a number of actions (e.g. clicking on a number of different emails but not filling out the form), you can trigger different emails based on their previous interaction.

It’s important to remember that this nurture speaks to the prospects’ former actions, and then addresses that action to take them to the next step. Think of it as yet another layer of personalisation!

Objective

Remain top-of-mind for each prospect by providing timely, relevant value in the emails they receive.

Target audience

Leads at various stages of consideration, from awareness to decision-making.

Buyer’s stage

Any stage, but particularly closer to the bottom of the funnel.

Ideal strategy

Pique the prospect’s interest by showing them things you know, based on their previous actions, that they’re already interested in. While this might be known as an ‘abandoned cart’ approach to marketing, it can be applied outside of e-commerce: if a prospect has viewed a particular course page or home design several times, why not follow up with an email asking if they’d like to book an appointment to find out more information about it?

Outcome

Personalised approach toward conversion. If you get this kind of nurture right, conversion rate can be really high, because you’re basing your activity on the prospect’s own actions.

6. Cross-sell & Upsell

Once a customer has made a purchase, you can use a cross-sell or upsell style of email nurture to promote complementary or upgraded products and services.

Remember that the effectiveness of these email nurture programs depends on careful segmentation, personalisation, and providing value to your recipients. Relevancy is key!

It’s important to continuously analyse and optimise your email campaigns based on engagement and conversion metrics.

Objective

Continue the momentum post-sale by promoting additional products or services to existing customers.

Target audience

Existing customers who have already made a purchase.

Buyer’s stage

Retention and Advocacy

Ideal strategy

Craft emails showcasing the benefits of complementary or upgraded services, with enticing offers for existing customers. Don’t forget to personalise the offers provided to ensure the relevancy of the upgrade!

Outcome

Drive additional revenue from your existing customer base while enhancing their overall experience.

We’re your partner in nurturing success

We specialise in crafting tailored marketing automation strategies for businesses in the property, education, NFP and various other sectors. From designing engaging email content to building seamless automation workflows, testing for optimal performance, and continuous optimisation, we’ve got every step of the nurturing process covered.

Our team of experts will collaborate closely with you to understand your goals, creating nurture programs that align with your unique business needs. Whether you’re aiming to drive conversions, enrich your lead database, or cross-sell other services, we have the tools and expertise to support you.

Ready to elevate your marketing efforts and achieve your business goals? Contact us today to start your journey towards a successful email nurture strategy that drives meaningful results.