Lead Nurturing for Internet Leads

Lead Nurturing is the process of developing leads and converting them to customers using long term marketing, engagement and follow-up strategies. With the wide use of Internet by the consumers and businesses to locate, research and purchase goods and services, Lead Nurturing has gained a much wider and critical importance among marketing professionals.

While most of the time the prospects need immediate response from the sellers, it is also true that many prospective buyers look for information right at the early stages of buying process. Hence keeping those future customers engaged, educated, gaining their confidence and finally converting the leads to customers is a key part of today’s marketing process. Lead Nurturing Software helps to nurture the internet leads using automated software systems and processes.

Lead Nurturing Software Tools

Leads generated from Internet and online media such as social networking sites and web 2.0 tools, who are not looking for immediate purchase, can be nurtured using lead nurturing software programs with built-in Autoresponder Services, event triggered sequential drip email marketing automation programs, and lead tracking systems.

The nurturing process takes various cues depending on your nature of business. For example, if the telephone contact information of the prospect is available, it can also be put through a contact center (not focused on sales but nurturing). If the physical address is available, even a traditional snail mail can be sent in a suitable time interval. However, these traditional nurturing methods are loosing relevance, as there is remote possibility of having contact information other then email addresses. Over 80% of leads generated on the internet, especially using social networking media sites, will have only email address as the contact information.

Many integrated Lead Management Software solutions such as LeadPro247 marketing automation suite, come with relevant lead nurturing tools. These are generally web based systems and easy to use. Typically the following components can be used to develop and nurture the leads:

• Auto Responder Service: This tool is nothing but Email Marketing Automation service with built-in drip email marketing broadcast feature. Drip email messages are automatically triggered by the system by predefined events such as times lines, bahavioral actions, and online activities.
• News Letters: Electronic newsletters are great nurturing tools for educating and engaging the prospective customers. Email marketing service will be used to design, deliver and track email newsletters with marketing information.
• Online Surveys: The biggest benefit of using online survey software is that you can read the prospects’ minds. This will provide an insight into the thoughts of the prospect and your services can be tuned accordingly.
• Lead Tracking: When you are nurturing a lead online, tracking the behavior is the most important aspect. Unless you know how they are behaving and what they are responding to your marketing communications, you can not deliver meaningful messages or take corrective actions. Again, the integrated Lead Tracking software such as LeadPro247 could be leveraged to track the email message opens, clicks, site visits, survey responses, and whitepaper / document downloads.

Usage, Relevancy and Frequency

While there are several tools and systems available for internet generated leads, it is the the user who decides when and how to use the features available. As an online marketing professional, you must choose the right business rules, timing and frequency for delivering nurturing messages. Using a lead nurturing software tool itself is a not a panacea for all ills! It depends on how you use it.

For example, sending too many email messages might trigger the prospect to unsubscribe from your email list. Similarly, if you do not mail frequently enough, they prospect might forget about their research and your relevany product / service and might report your email message as a SPAM or Unsubscribe from the list.

The messages have to be relevant to the prospect’s needs and requirements. Use the segmentation features available in your email marketing or autoresponder service to deliver right messages to the right target audience.

Review the nurturing programs and business rules settings on a regular basis and tweak and improve the same on a continuous basis. What is right and relevant today may not be relevant tomorrow, especially in the online world. If you are dealing with B2B sales leads, you may also employ lead ranking or scoring techniques to improve the lead nurturing and follow-up process.