10+ Lead Nurturing Strategy Ideas + Examples to Increase E-commerce Sales 

10+ Lead Nurturing Strategy Ideas + Examples to Increase E-commerce Sales 

Did you know? – Most online visitors don’t make a purchase on their first visit to a website. In other words, most of your leads float at the top or middle of your sales funnel for quite some time. So how do you make them trust your brand and come back to complete their purchase? Well, that usually needs educating, engaging, and sometimes pampering your prospects. In short, you’d need a lead nurturing strategy!

What is lead nurturing and what are some tried and tested ideas that would work for you – this is what we are going to cover in this blog. We’ve put together some of the most effective lead-nurturing strategies and brand examples that will surely help you increase conversions. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

What Is Lead Nurturing?

It is not necessary that all the leads generated by the marketing and sales teams are ready for purchase. In order to convert a lead into a customer, you should try to develop their interest in your products and services. Your leads might also have some pain points and concerns that they’re looking to discuss with you. This is where lead nurturing comes into the picture to answer their queries or objections.

Lead Nurturing is the process businesses use to reinforce the relationship with their prospective customers. It helps in engaging, supporting, and building meaningful relationships by providing them with relevant and personalized solutions based on their needs.

11 Effective Lead Nurturing Strategies That You Should Implement

1. Create Targeted Content

One type of content doesn’t fit all!

The most effective lead nurturing strategy is to deliver engaging and custom content to the target audiences. Your leads are different people having different needs. So sending them content relevant to their current needs and pain points will add value and eventually lead to better conversion rates.

But how to find out customers’ pain points, interests, and needs? This is where interactive content comes into play.

Interactive content like quizzes, calculators, surveys, polls, chatbots, etc. asks users questions about their preferences and needs. It then provides personalized answers to the users and qualified data to us marketers. A win-win for both parties, isn’t it?

Here’s a blog that will help you create interactive content like quizzes, surveys, polls, and much more in minutes.

2. Optimize Your Marketing Funnel

You will find your leads at every stage of the marketing funnel, and nurturing them according to their position is important, especially with the best lead management software.

When your prospects are at the top of the funnel (TOFU), you need to create content to make them aware of your products and services. You’d need to grab their attention and offer relevant information based on their interests. Some content types that work the best are blogs, ebooks, quizzes, giveaways, polls, etc.

They enter the middle of the funnel (MOFU) once they have engaged with your brand and become prospects. Here, you’d need content types that build trust in your brand by providing real-time value and precise solutions to their queries. Some content types that work the best here are calculators, assessments, product recommendations, etc.

Once they are ready to convert, they will enter the bottom of the funnel stage (BOFU). Here, you need content that handles all their objections and convinces them to choose your brand over competitors. Some content types that work the best are industry reports, calculators, live chats, case studies, etc.

For example, HubSpot’s CRM tool helps businesses to deepen relationships with their prospects and provides a quick and personalized customer experience. In order to nurture your prospects and establish lasting experiences with your customers, so that they choose you over competitors, you can use a HubSpot ROI calculator to calculate your return on investment and boost your inbound marketing game.

To have a deep understanding of how a marketing funnel works, we have curated a blog for you.

3. Use Personalized Email Marketing Campaigns

Everyone sends welcome and transaction success emails. But to up your marketing game, you should go beyond it. Besides your usual transaction and offer emails, you can nurture your prospects through interactive product recommendation quizzes. They not only offer a more personalized experience but also enable you to gather customer intel and open up your inventory.

For example, you can embed a shoe finder quiz on the email after your prospect has added a few items to the cart and left. This will increase the chances of them taking the quiz. Once they take the quiz, they would definitely love to see personalized results and get motivated to buy.

shoe finder quiz example

You can take EdApp’s Email Campaigns and Strategies course to master the basics of personalized email marketing campaigns, giving you an edge in your next email campaign.

4. Leverage the Power of Interactive Content

Have you ever considered a Buzzfeed-style quiz to collect qualified leads? Or a giveaway to encourage people to check out your products? If not, then now is the time to start using interactive content pieces in your marketing strategies. This way you can have more information about your leads and utilize them for better engagement and lead nurturing.

Moreover, interactive content pieces will help you segment your audience into different groups based on demographics, similar interests, preferences, and buying behavior. Having a segmented audience will help you deliver a more personalized experience and make your marketing efforts easier.

With interactive content, you can create a variety of content types like quizzes, surveys, polls, calculators, surveys, forms, chatbots,assessments, product recommendations, and giveaways. For example, you can create an interesting travel quiz that can help users find the best hotel for their next vacation. The quiz will act as a primary means of generating leads. And using the lead data you’ve gathered you can create personalized giveaways that provide travel offers to your audience.

hotel finder quiz example

This way of providing value and assistance at every step of the buyer’s journey is a vital lead nurturing strategy.

5. Engage With Your Leads Using Conversational Chatbots

According to Kayako, 52% of customers are more likely to purchase from a site that offers live chat. Also, about 79% of businesses believe that offering a live chat option has a positive effect on sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.

These stats clearly reveal that live chat is a must-have feature for businesses. They help companies have direct conversations with customers which leads to higher satisfaction and conversion rates.

For example, Luxy Hair’s website offers a conversational chatbot. They use the chat software to serve three purposes: direct chat, search answers, and ‘check order’ status.

Luxy Hair conversational chatbot example

Source

You can also use chatbots to collect and track feedback so that you can nurture future leads better. Identify what frustrates, confuses, and delights your visitors. Are there other FAQs that are directed at you? Do your visitors use different terminologies than you use on your website?

We are sure that these small conversations will result in a substantial amount of conversions. The only thing it takes is some planning and strategy.

Want to create a Survey Chatbot? Check out this tutorial!

6. Retargeting via Social Media

Social media is an effective way to market your products and gives you a chance to build relationships with your prospects. 

Moreover, when potential customers leave your site after viewing your products and services, they might forget about it. And social retargeting might help remind them about their interaction and complete their purchase.

You can target your potential customers through social media ads. Take a look at this brilliant example from Cole Haan. This footwear brand used Facebook marketing to remind users of the products they checked out on their website.

shopping cart abandonment remarketing

Source

7. Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams

Lead nurturing is a team effort. Let’s see how.

Aligning sales and marketing teams together can give you exceptional insights about your prospective customers. It will also help you identify which demographics and behaviors will qualify as a lead and which will not.

Moreover, by analyzing the type of interaction your customers had on your website and where they are in the buyer’s journey, the sales team will be able to focus on the right set of customers.

8. Use Lead Scoring

If you are consistently generating leads, but your sales team is not able to convert them into potential customers, then there might be a possibility that they are not getting enough qualified leads.

So, what to do now? In such a case, lead scoring can help you solve your problem.

In lead scoring, the marketing team scores the leads based on demographics, interests, preferences, needs, and behaviors. Then, based on these parameters, your leads will be assigned a numerical value. The higher the lead score, the more likely they are to become your customers. 

This strategy of scoring leads is crucial for lead nurturing strategy because not all your leads will be at the same stage of the buyer’s journey and require the same amount of energy and time. So once you’ve divided prospects into different buckets, you can accordingly put varied efforts into nurturing them.

9. Send Wishlist Reminders

Since it’s a “wish” list, it means that they haven’t purchased from you yet but their purchase intent is high. However, they can easily forget about it (like an abandoned cart) which is why it’s important for you to send them timely reminders.

guess wishlist example

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Tell them if the product is back in stock or if there’s a sale or price drop on any of the items in their wishlist. Try to create a sense of urgency and scarcity by informing them about products on their wishlist that are quickly selling out. This will encourage them to complete their purchase ASAP!

10. Send Web Browser Push notifications

Straight off the bat, we want to say that browser push notifications are a powerful lead nurturing tool for eCommerce players. Once the user opts in, the alerts are delivered to their devices, even when they aren’t browsing your website. This strategy is effective not only for users on Google Chrome but also for those using browsers other than Google, broadening the reach of your lead nurturing efforts across various platforms.

Let us now discuss some ways you can use browser push notifications.

  • Announce upcoming sale price drops and discount offers: Buyers love sale seasons and flash sales. To make these sales announcements more enticing you can add a time ticker or remind them about the soon-to-expire coupon. Both work excellently to create a sense of urgency.
  • Notify about new products and back-in-stock items: You can retarget and send alerts to those who have items saved in their wishlists. It will close the gap between their desire to buy and your goal to close a sale!
  • Send personalized offers: Segment your subscribers on the basis of their on-page behavior and past purchases. For instance, people who have been looking for horror fiction can be sent notifications of bestselling books in the horror genre.
  • Recover abandoned carts and complete transactions: Anytime a user is about to exit without purchasing items they added to the cart, you can push notify them and motivate them to buy before leaving. You can even lure them with special discount offers or give them free shipping.
  • Cross-sell complementary items: Cross-selling encourages customers to buy products and services that complement their needs. For example, if a customer has added a lamp to their cart then you could recommend an LED bulb!

11. Timely Follow-ups

And we are on to the last but definitely not the least lead nurturing strategy. According to the report by Yotpo, a recurring customer is likely to spend 2.92 times as much as a first-time buyer. So, lead nurturing does not stop once a purchase is made.

After a customer has bought a product or service from you, you will surely want them to keep coming back. So, it is better for businesses to invest more in improving customer retention because returning customers really pays off. Ultimately, customer retention has a major effect on overall sales and drives conversion rates.

Best Lead Nurturing Examples

1. SimilarWeb

A welcome email is usually the first impression a brand has on the lead. As soon as the user subscribes to your email, newsletter, or blog post, the welcome email should follow shortly after. At this stage, your lead is at the top of the sales funnel and wants to know more about your products and services. And a welcome email will let you engage with your leads in a concise and friendly way.

SimilarWeb shares a welcome mail after the user has joined their free trial. The brand delivers a to-the-point email showcasing the features of SimilarWeb and what benefits it offers to the user. In order to encourage the user to become a potential customer, the brand gives an option to ‘Book a Custom Demo’ where the user gets to know more about the product and services they are offering.

2. Apple

As we move to the next stages of the funnel, the leads will get to the point where they need information on your product and services more than anything else. And all the information that you provide here should focus on the pain points that your product resolves. This will help ensure that your lead nurturing campaign is successful.

Here’s one of the best examples of a product-focused campaign is Apple.

Apple Mackbook Pro product focused example

3. Angara

You have to consider the fact that not all your leads will make it to the end of the funnel. In order to convert your leads into successful customers, you need to share some personalized and relevant offers based on their buying journey.

You can run re-engagement or retargeting campaigns that can solve the purpose. Let’s consider an example to understand this.

angara email marketing example

Angara, an eCommerce jewelry brand is a great example of re-engagement campaigns. As you can see above, they offered a flat 12% discount code, unique to their users.

Along with that, they also offered a surprise gift with every purchase the user will make. Angara knows its customers and realizes that to nurture them, they need to provide options. There’s potential to cross-sell as they mentioned the giftable styles that their customers will surely like.

Summing Up!

So there you go. Now you have an eCommerce lead nurturing strategy to nurture your leads. With consistent efforts, we are sure, you will not only achieve but also exceed your sales target!

If you want to learn more ways to boost your marketing metrics, check out our eCommerce marketing guide! Also, Outgrow lets you create your own interactive content pieces that you can share with your potential customers in order to generate a sale.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for Outgrow’s 7-day FREE trial and start creating your interactive content now.

FAQs

A lead nurturing email is a personalized message sent to potential customers as they move along the sales funnel. After knowing about your prospect’s buyer journey, preferences, needs, and behavior, you can share interactive and personalized offers that will encourage the prospect to purchase.

There are abundant tools available online that help you generate and nurture leads. But if you are looking for a no-code tool that provides interactive and personalized content in just a few minutes for FREE, then you can try Outgrow’s no-code content tools.

Outgrow lets you create engaging content in the form of quizzes, polls, product recommendations, calculators, assessments, giveaways, forms, and surveys in a jiff. And to help you save time, they also provide premade trending templates based on your requirements. You can also customize your content piece according to your needs. All you need to do is simply drag and drop the elements, and your content piece is ready.

Lead nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing your relationship with your buyers at every stage of their buying journey. An effective lead nurturing strategy will help you generate more sales and improve conversion rates.

In order to convert a lead into a potential customer, you need to run lead nurturing campaigns. These are in the form of engaging and personalized emails that you send to your prospects based on their buyer journey and buying behavior. You can provide them with personalized offers, inform them about your upcoming sale, and create giveaways to make them aware of your products and services. These practices can be done effectively to encourage them to buy your product and service and convert them into buying customers.

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