8 super easy lead conversion ideas you need to implement
KDM (Kinetic Digital Marketing)
How many of you have hundreds, or maybe thousands of contacts in your database just sitting there doing nothing?
According to a recent report by Smart Insights (2018), the average email open rate for UK SME’s across all industries is just under 25%.
This means you could be losing over 75% of your leads!
Leads that you worked hard to get, spent hours and tons of money finding.
We all know that generating leads is one thing, but actually converting them into buying customers is a whole new ball game.
Here are our 8 super easy lead conversions ideas that you need to implement to get those leads converting!
1. Re-evaluate your current copy
If your marketing is failing to convert leads. The first place to look is at the words you are using in your emails, website and anything else you are sending out to your leads.
Your copy should not only be clear but should also contain your potential customer’s pain points.
This may require some psychology to understand your customer’s needs, but it’s not rocket science!
A simple technique we like to use at KDM is the A to Z technique. Your customer wants to get from point A (where they are now) to point Z (where they want to be).
To achieve this, your goal is to educate your leads on how to move them as close as possible to point Z before taking their money.
The closer they get to point Z the more likely they are to making a purchase. One way to move them quickly to point Z is by highlighting their pains and how you or your product can help them to avoid these pains.
2. Stick to a schedule
Sending a few emails irregularly is a recipe for high unsubscribes. Irregular emailing could mean you are either sending too little emails, so your leads are forgetting about you.
Or too many emails, so it looks like you are spamming your prospects with irrelevant messages. Either way, both methods are a disaster.
The best way to send out emails is by planning in advance what emails you will send out and when, and looking at any past data you have on best email times for your contacts to make sure you are sending your emails out at an optimal time for engagement. This is where marketing automation comes in handy.
3. Segment your contact list
To make sure you have a better chance of converting your leads, targeted content is a must.
To create targeted content you will have to segment your contact list into several different smaller groups of contacts based on their interests, location, behaviour and anything else you can think of.
Once segmented, creating targeted content for each group should be really easy.
A bonus tip is to segment your contact list based on engagement. For example, contacts who haven't opened your email in over 90 days could be separated into a new list, for which you could create a re-engagement campaign to try and win them back (discussed in detail below).
4. Send out hyper-personalised emails
With the recent development in marketing technology, such as marketing automation tools, the ability to hyper-personalise an email has become quick and easy.
Most marketing automation tools will allow you to personalise a whole email and not just it’s subject line.
For example, you can personalise each email you send out with product recommendations or blog articles that only a segment of your contact list would be interested in based on the data you collected on them.
You could even personalise the timing of your emails, so they are sent out based on the contacts location time and not your time to increase engagement further.
With a marketing automation tool, you could even send out emails based on a contact’s website behaviour.
For example, if a contact was just looking at your support page, you could automatically send them an email to see if everything is okay or if they have any questions about your services.
This is a brilliant way of capturing your leads at the right time and place. Increasing the chances of them converting.
5. Score your leads effectively
Keeping a tab on your leads is a brilliant way to determine whether they are ready or not to make a purchase.
A good way to do this is through lead scoring, where you give each of your contacts a score based on their engagement with your content.
With some traditional email marketing platforms, you may have to do this manually, whereas a sophisticated marketing automation tool could automate the whole process of lead scoring.
And some marketing automation platforms can even monitor a contacts stage in the customer lifecycle, such as whether they need more information or are ready to buy from you.
Being able to score your leads is a good indicator of what to do next with your leads.
For example, you might want to continue nurturing them or completely remove them from your database if they are not relevant to your business.
6. Qualify your leads better up front
So many hours can be wasted nurturing the wrong leads.
Therefore it is very important that the leads you are adding to your database have been qualified in some way or another.
A good way to do this is to make sure that your offering is very specific to a particular type of business or person.
For example, if you are offering a free eBook to collect email addresses of prospects, make sure your eBook relates directly to your products or services.
This way you can make sure that the people who download your eBook already have the desire or motivation to make a purchase of your offering. Here’s a bonus tip, you could also qualify your leads by simply asking them questions or asking them to complete a survey.
Not only is this good market research, but it also helps populate your database with useful information on your leads and their interests, helping you create better-personalised content for them.
7. Instant follow-up
In today’s digital-driven world, timing is everything. According to Hubspot, those who attempt to reach leads within an hour, are 7 times more likely to result in a conversion compared to those who waited longer than an hour.
It is essential to get the timing right in your communication with your leads. The best way to do this is through marketing automation.
With most marketing automation tools you can set up follow-up sequences for different events, such as blog subscribers, cart abandonment, website behaviour and so on.
For example, if you attended a networking event you could create a follow-up sequence where the first email would say “it was nice to meet you...”, followed by a request for another meeting or a phone call to discuss your business in more detail.
Follow-up emails are a great way to keep leads warm and keeping you on top of their minds.
8. Re-engage cold leads
I bet you have so many cold leads in your database now.
Leads that haven’t even opened up an email from you in 6 months or more. If you do, here’s a brilliant idea, start a re-engagement campaign.
A re-engagement campaign is your final chance to get those cold leads to turn warm.
The best re-engagement campaign contains an irresistible offer, urgency and is across different platforms.
To win those cold leads, back you could offer them a discount on your offering, freebies or you even warn them that they will be removed from your list if they don’t take action.
Marketing automation tools are brilliant for re-engagement campaigns, as not only can they target your contacts via email, but they can also target your contacts through Facebook retargeting and even through SMS.
A cross-platform campaign can help to target your contacts at all touchpoints so they are always reminded of you.
Want to learn more?
Register here for our webinar series “What is marketing automation and why is it so important?” to get in-depth information on automating your marketing to get better conversion rates.