BlackHat Money

Most of us have heard the old saying “It’s better to give than to receive.”

This is both an admirable and virtuous notion often associated with sharing on a personal level between partners, family and friends. But the concept also extends to the world of business where a clear and sustained focus on ‘giving’ can serve as a highly potent catalyst for successful sales lead generation strategies.

However, the meaning behind the word ‘giving’ is actually a fairly loose one. For example, one dictionary definition of ‘giving’ describes it as, “to present voluntarily and without expecting compensation.”

Well, that may be fine for birthdays and Christmas, but in business, commercial reality determines that a slightly less altruistic approach needs to be adopted to deliver a worthwhile return on any investment made in an effort to find new customers.

So, instead, let’s call it ‘nurturing’.

In terms of business lead generation, nurturing is the process of developing interest and encouraging engagement with your prospects, with an ultimate aim of delivering sales to your business.

Nurturing has a pivotal role to play in terms of sales lead generation and kicks in once good prospects have been identified – from a mailing list for example. It’s the single most important process in turning browsers into buyers and prospects into customers

Getting through loud and clear

There are a number of ways you can reach your intended audience but few are as flexible, influential and cost-effective as those delivery mechanisms which exist in the on-line space.

Email is a particularly good example of how to nurture prospects. Email delivers significantly more than just words and pictures on a screen, it provides the ability for highly tailored, personalised messages to be delivered quickly and at a time that can be precisely controlled. Additionally, due to its electronic format, email is the perfect medium for acting as a ‘carrier’ for web-based campaigns, where a call-to-action is a click away.

Additionally, a wide range of metrics can be harvested during the lifespan of an email campaign and carefully scrutinised to provide valuable insight into your customers’ behaviour.

And it gets even better. More value can be extracted by using forward-thinking email marketing agencies that offer value-add services such as ‘follow-up messaging’. This activity involves sending ‘reminder’ e-mails to respondents and forms a crucial piece of the lead-generation process for businesses that are serious about increasing sales.

Nurturing is an ‘ART’

Nurturing is most definitely an art, where art stands for authority, relevance and trust. Let’s look at each one more closely.

Authority  

This is a demonstration of your know-how and expertise within your business area or sector. Use your e-mails to inform and educate your audience. Make it clear to them that you really know your stuff by conveying the extent of your knowledge and experience.

Relevance

This is a critical aspect when nurturing. Segmenting your e-mails to better suit your prospects can be a highly effective strategy. Making your messaging more personal, such as addressing your prospects by their names for example, will have a much greater impact than by simply sending ‘blanket’ e-mails.

Trust

You can neither buy nor legislate trust. Trust is the belief or confidence that a person’s expectation of an experience will be met. Trust, therefore, needs to be earned.

Prospects will gain trust in your business via your messaging providing it fulfils certain criteria. For example, if it’s received at regular intervals and on time, it’s of a high standard both visually and content-wise and, crucially, if it comes across as genuine and sincere with no sign of any ‘traps’ or ‘gimmicks’.

It’s worth noting that trust can also be gained by reassuring your prospects that you are an ethical company who is fully compliant with on-line legislation as well diligent about security and privacy issues.

All the Aces

When it comes to email marketing, you needn’t keep your cards close to your chest. Instead, show your hand. Demonstrate that you have something of real value to offer. This simple strategy is just a way of saying, “This is what we’re about and we’d relish the opportunity to establish and maintain a business relationship with you.”

Examples of value-content delivery mechanisms include links to:

• Useful, informative articles, whitepapers or guides
• News updates of your products, services or industry
• Newsletters or e-zines
• Discount vouchers, special offers or promotions
• Exclusive invites to previews, demos or showcases
• Third party referrals
• ‘Viral’ content.

Maximising your approach to nurturing

At this point, a few assumptions need to be made about the recipients of any emails you intend to send.

Before you start out, it’s important to gain an understanding of where you generate your revenue to identify your existing customers’ wants and needs – why do they use you?

You also need to take into account that over time, the needs of your customers will change, so you may have to adapt accordingly. Talking to your customers will help you assess exactly which ones need more attention as well as where you can improve your products, services or processes to meet their expectations.

By recognizing the significance of who your prospects are along with a solid understanding of their wants and needs, you’ll be going a long way to putting smiles on the faces of your newly acquired customers as well bolstering your balance sheet.

Leveraging content for sales lead generation

If you find your marketing team creating quality content that you are using to nurture sales leads, such as white papers and opinion pieces, you can also leverage these for a more diverse approach. This has the benefit of extending your potential reach to new markets without re-inventing the wheel.

You could, for instance, use your content on PR websites and trade content websites, even adapting the content for specific vertical markets. Alternatively, you could use your value content in lead generation publications, such as the wide range of emedia titles.

Tell the tale, don’t sell the sale

Email marketing is without doubt an extremely powerful and effective marketing tool but its purpose isn’t necessarily simply to sell overtly.

Expertly done, often with the help of expert assistance, email can engender strong levels of authority, relevance and trust with well-planned, impactive and highly targeted messaging. This is all part of the nurturing process.

There’s also another old saying, “Share and share alike.” Admittedly, while the root of this maxim originates from within a legal context, its meaning remains a case in point.

Take an equitable view of any information you are prepared to share with others so that they can benefit from your ‘gift’. The whole idea is that you also get to share – not in the information itself but in the rewards that nurturing your prospects brings.

Pioneers in business to business email marketing since 1999, emedia publish free opt-in email bulletins covering a range of markets: From Technology to general business management areas covering Small Business, Finance, HR and Marketing as well as more specialist areas such as Education, Public Sector, Construction and Healthcare.

Our email bulletins enable organisations to communicate information, privilege content and exclusive offers to the business community to help them keep ahead of the competition.

It is emedia’s policy to only launch a new bulletin when it is 100% confident that the title will continually provide subscribers and marketers alike with real value. This approach has seen emedia successfully expand its reader base to over one million subscriptions.

emedia is an active member of Return Path’s Sender Score Certified program, the leading third party email certification program.

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