How to nurture website visits to increase sales conversions

So often individuals engage with your website by downloading a guide, or a brochure - and then you don’t hear from them again.

This happens all the time.

As buyers, we buy in our own time. We do our research and educate ourselves first - often without ever contacting a salesperson.

At any given time, there’s only roughly 3% of your market ready to buy - and these contacts are driven by price and therefore you miss an opportunity to build trust, a connection and encourage them to buy from you.

The 3% rule

It’s the remaining 97% that aren't ready to buy where the opportunity lies. But how can you keep that contact interested and engaged and drive them down the sales funnel towards a purchase?

One of the simplest, quickest to nurture these marketing leads is through email.

A simple four-step email process you can implement today

Let’s use an example. Say an individual has filled in a form to download a guide from your website. 

This engagement suggests the individual is doing research and is at the start of a sales journey. With this in mind, in your email follow-up, we recommended providing additional thought leadership and subtly including sales messages - just in case they are ready to buy but without scaring them off.

Let’s say the starting point is filling out a form to download a guide from your website - here’s what a nurture journey could look like:

At each stage, the individual is encouraged to speak to the salesperson - either for guidance or to book a demo. And we recommend including a link to the previously shared piece of content to increase readership (in case they missed it the first time).

We would recommend sending the entire sequence, even if they don’t open a previous email and therefore the copy should be worded to cover so that it's relevant, regardless of whether they open.

💡Top tip: Start by mapping out your sequence and the content you need in it. You want your best content to be used in this email series and this may mean you need to write some new quality content. It’s better to ensure these emails (and most importantly the content in them) add value and are engaging for your audience, or it can really turn them off from buying from you.

KPIs/success measures

To ensure every marketing campaign is effective, it's important to track KPIs. Here, you can measure these key outcomes:

• Engagements: Email clicks (you want to aim or at least 10% click-throughs)

• Sales action: Demos/consultations booked

• Closed won opportunities: Revenue

These KPIs can help you to refine your communications so that they do increase engagements and purchases. We always recommend testing everything and tracking performance for this very reason.

Good examples of content to include

To appeal to all stages of the sales funnel, we recommend including pieces that cover each of these levels:

• The top of the funnel (ToF) - those at the beginning of the sales journey, they are researching and benefit from guidance

  • Blogs/checklists/infographics

  • Additional guides

  • Educational videos

• The middle of the funnel (MoF) - those that have an awareness of your business, likely read your other guidance and may be on the fence about purchasing so need convincing with additional guidance

  • Additional guides/blogs

  • Case studies

• The bottom of the funnel (BoF) - those that are primed for purchase and need that extra nudge/reminder to tip them towards sales conversion

  • Product Q&A

  • Fact sheets

  • Brochure

  • Demo recording

👉For more guidance on Why you should adopt a "full-funnel"​ marketing approach - read this blog.

Best practice tips: Email design

Whilst it needs to be mobile optimised, here are two other key things to look out for:

• Branded but simple - Ensuring the design keeps the bulk of the main message/copy above the fold

• Text-based works best - Having tested this with multiple clients, text-based emails gain greater engagements than with images (but it’s also worth testing for Mintsoft)

Best practice tips: Messaging

A lot of companies run these email sequences but those that do it right really stand out amongst the masses of emails in peoples’ inboxes.

Here are a few best practice tips for your communications:

• Minimal copy - We keep emails concise for ease of scanning and to encourage clicks

• Multiple CTAs for the different stages of the sales funnel - although this was a thought leadership download initially (ToF), we have incorporated a few other CTAs capturing those with intent to buy.

• Tone/style - friendly, simple language - introducing the salesperson for a human connection (key for software). Clear CTAs, create fear of missing out (FOMO), urgency, show that you are experts in the field.

• Content types - Video works really well but a mix of content types, blogs, guides etc. helps to increase engagements.

💡Top tip: Timings - keep it fresh but not too much. We recommend sending one email per week following a download - this is when the first engagement is still fresh so interest in the topic is higher, as is brand recognition.

👉For more tips, read this short blog: 5 lessons to keep you top of mind when your audience is ready to buy...

Super best practice: Boosting conversions with multiple touchpoints

Where possible, we suggest connecting with individuals on LinkedIn (allowing them to see content shared on a different platform, more regularly) - this is less appropriate for the engagement campaign for a whitepaper download but it’s imperative for lower-level sales funnel campaigns like for a demo email lead nurturing sequence.

👉 Here are a few quick tips for LinkedIn messages: Tried and tested tips for converting sales and shortening sales cycles.

When else should an email lead nurturing series be implemented?

There are several other key engagements that would benefit from an email sequence mentioned above:

1. A guide download - explored above

2. A webinar registration

3. An event sign-up

4. A trial set-up

5. A sales enquiry

6. Customer onboarding - don’t neglect them once they’ve purchased! Recommendations, word of mouth, repeat custom are all through great customer experience.

Final word

With all communications, we recommend putting yourselves in the prospect or customer’s shoes: Would I want to read this? Does this make me happy? Would this help me decide whether to buy?

This is so easy to overlook when we are focused on the sales revenue and pipeline build.

Best of luck!

If you need a hand developing your email series, drop us a note: becca@rooandeve.com.