Yesterday we talked about ways to follow up with your new subscribers. Today I’d like to take that one step further and talk about lead nurturing.

“Lead nurturing” is one of those email marketing buzzwords that you hear floating around, but no one really explains what they mean by it. To me, it’s another step in the relationship building process – taking care of your subscribers and customers because you want to give them reasons to stick around.

It’s usually used in terms of new subscribers, but the truth is lead nurturing is an ongoing process. There are so many newsletters out there and it’s so easy for people to hit the unsubscribe button, that you need to always be mindful of the relationship with your people and and nurture them with information and other content that will help them achieve their goals while you work on achieving yours.

Here are five different ways you can nurture your leads and subscribers…

Nurture Idea #1 – Educational Emails

Send one or two emails each week about how to use your products, services, or anything related to the industry or the problem you solve for your audience. This establishes your authority in the industry and shows your readers that your products or services are right for them. These emails are also a great way to follow-up with your readers to ensure they don’t go stale or get bored. Just because they already made a purchase doesn’t mean you can ignore them.  

Nurture Idea #2 – Invite Readers to Your Communities  

Let your readers know that they can find you on other platforms as well. Invite them into your Facebook community, forum, or any other platforms you are active on. This allows you to engage more with your audience and opens more doors to market to them better. It also provides you more information on your audience behaviors to further improve your content and communication methods. 

Nurture Idea #3 – Send Thank You and Welcome Emails

I mentioned this in yesterday’s post as the number one way to follow up with new readers, but it bears repeating here. Don’t forget to recognize their participation or purchase. Send a “thank you” message any time they join your campaign or purchase a product to establish a deeper connection.

Nurture Idea #4 – Ask for the Reply

Encouraging your readers to reply, ask questions or provide feedback to improve your process is another way to nurture the relationship between you and your audience. Not only does this provide you direct areas to improve upon, but it also shows your readers that you value their opinions and are willing to help them when you can.

Nurture Idea #5 – Segment Your List

We’ll talk more about this in future articles, but I wanted to plant the seed here because segmenting your list to be sure your readers get the information that’s most beneficial to them is a great way to nurture your leads.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it… a few ideas for nurturing your leads. Lead nurturing not only improves your relationships with your customers; it can also increase conversions and your bottom line. Use these easy ways to build a relationship with your customers and subscribers to keep your business growing.