Have you ever felt like leads just slip through your fingers? You capture their information, but then… nothing happens.
A staggering 80% of leads never convert. This is why lead nurturing is so important, no matter the industry you’re in.
Chances are, you know this too and are already engaging in some form of lead nurturing. However, the manual effort involved in nurturing leads, particularly with a high volume, is often overwhelming.
Automation is a life-saver as it practically gets rid of manual lead nurturing, saving you both time and money.
But before we get into the specifics of automating your lead nurturing strategy, let’s first revisit what lead nurturing is and why it’s so important.
What is Lead Nurturing?
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with potential customers over time by providing them with valuable information and personalized communication. The goal is to keep these leads engaged and interested in your products or services until they are ready to purchase.
Why Do You Need to Nurture Leads?
Builds Trust and Credibility
Providing consistent and valuable communication to leads positions you as an expert. Leads grow to trust your business, making them more likely to choose you when they’re ready to buy.
Increases Conversion Rates
Lead nurturing significantly impacts conversion rates. Consistently nurturing leads with targeted content keeps them engaged and moves them through the sales funnel.
Nurtured leads result in 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost, according to HubSpot. Why? Because they’re already interested in your products/services and primed to convert.
Shortens Sales Cycles
Effective lead nurturing speeds up the sales process by accelerating the buyer’s journey. By addressing pain points and guiding leads through the buyer’s journey, you remove roadblocks and close deals faster.
This shortened sales cycle not only benefits your business by closing deals faster but also improves lead’s perception of your business.
Boosts Customer Retention
Nurturing doesn’t stop after a sale. Continued value through post-purchase communication (like product tips and relevant offers) keeps you top-of-mind and increases customer satisfaction. Happy customers are more likely to be loyal, purchase again, and recommend your business to others.
Why Should You Automate Your Lead Nurturing?
Automation simplifies the lead nurturing process and makes it more effective in several ways:
Consistent Engagement
Automated workflows make sure leads receive the right messages at the right time. For example, you can set up automated workflows to send a welcome text immediately after someone opts in via a form on your site or to send a follow-up message after someone contacts your business with a question.
Follow-up sequences can be automated based on triggers like a lead’s interaction with your content or their progress through the sales funnel. This consistent engagement keeps your business top-of-mind and leads moving towards conversion.
Personalization at Scale
Seventy-two percent of consumers will only engage with personalized messaging. People want personalization, but applying that to messages for all leads is daunting.
Automation tools help you personalize messaging to leads (and customers) on a large scale. With features like merge tags/fields and contact groups/segments, you can easily send messages that are personalized based on name, company, interests, previous interactions with your business, and more. Personalization in ways like this makes your communication more effective and builds stronger relationships with leads.
Time and Cost Savings
Automation significantly reduces the time and resources spent on manual lead nurturing tasks. Instead of manually sending follow-up messages to each lead, automation triggers messages to send based on predefined actions or time intervals.
No more manually sending follow-up messaging – let automation handle it while you focus on closing deals.
How to Automate Your Lead Nurturing Strategy
Now that we’ve mentioned the benefits of automation, let’s outline a step-by-step guide to automating your lead nurturing strategy effectively:
1. Define Your Goals
Begin by clearly defining your lead nurturing goals and understanding your target audience’s needs. What outcomes do you want to achieve through automating your lead nurturing?
Common lead nurturing automation goals for businesses include:
- Increasing follow-up consistency
- Improving lead engagement and responsiveness
- Reducing the time spent manually reaching out to leads
- Losing fewer leads by automatically following up
2. Choose the Right Lead Nurturing Automation Tool
Choose a lead nurturing solution that allows you to automate communication and that easily integrates with your existing CRM system. Popular tools to automate your lead outreach are HubSpot, Skipio, and PipeDrive.
Related: A Small Business’ Guide to Choosing The Best Lead Nurturing Software
3. Set Up Automated Workflows
Create automated workflows that trigger personalized messages to send based on lead behavior and segmentation.
Here are some common workflows to consider:
- Welcome sequence: Introduce new leads to your business and establish trust.
- Campaign-specific workflows: Tailor messaging to specific marketing campaigns.
- Re-engagement campaigns: Win back inactive leads with valuable content and offers.
Of course, the workflows you create depend on the type of business and goals you have.
4. Monitor and Optimize
Regularly monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Analyze which messages perform best and use those insights to optimize your nurturing campaigns for even better results.
Take Control of Your Lead Nurturing Strategy
By automating your lead nurturing, you nurture relationships at scale, keep consistent engagement, and convert more leads into customers—all while saving valuable time and resources.
The ROI is undeniable: happier customers, shorter sales cycles, and a boost to your revenue.
Take control of your lead nurturing strategy with Skipio. Skipio automates how your business reaches out to new leads and does the necessary follow-up that turns customers into fans — all from business phone numbers you choose.
Skipio integrates seamlessly with the tools and systems you already use, so you can easily sync your form fills and favorite apps to automatically reach out to every lead. You follow-up with people and get them scheduled without constant monitoring and chasing.
The best part of Skipio is that you’re not left on your own to figure automation out. Follow our guides, templates, and tours, or schedule 1-on-1 consulting to learn the best ways to set up sales automation and messaging. We’ll never leave you to stumble your way through important business communication.
Sign up or schedule a demo today!
