For this episode we will answer the following question:
How can my financial service firm use email marketing to nurture the relationship with our leads?
First things first, why is it so important to nurture the relationship with your leads? After leads have made that initial interaction with your firm -whether it was by filling out a Contact form through your website or downloading a free offer, they are now at the point where they are interested but are not yet ready to purchase.
Your job here is to use this point as a foundation to build a relationship with your leads. What we mean by a “relationship” is NOT a one-sided process where you try to push sales onto them. Instead, you want to cultivate trust and be helpful to them in any way possible so that they can organically move forward into sales.
Now how can you use email, out of all things, to nurture your leads?
Emails are often associated as being the opposite of building a relationship, with many businesses sending excessive mass emails to the point that recipients find them impersonal and even an annoyance. However, if used correctly, emails can be one of the most effective ways to interact with your leads as you get to learn more about them, figure out if they’re a good fit with your firm, and help them to continue engaging with you.
Are you writing it for the sake of sending emails, maybe because it’s just been a part of your marketing campaign for so long? Or will this email clearly help your lead in some way?
For example, let’s say a lead has recently browsed through your firm’s website and shown an interest in alternative investments by downloading an eBook on this topic. Would it be helpful to your lead if you sent them a monthly newsletter about your firm’s activities and general financial trends? Probably not. A great email to send would include targeted content that actually provides value and addresses their challenges, and then clearly stating the next steps the reader should take after reading through the email. An example of this could include writing an email with the goal of wanting the reader to sign up for a webinar that further details how alternative investments work. This is a clear, actionable goal that makes sense because after initially browsing through content on alternative investments, a webinar on this same topic would be something your lead could naturally be interested in and would be very helpful to them.
To make sure your email is beneficial, necessary and purposeful, ask yourself who exactly this email is for, why you are sending it in the first place, and what you want them to do with it after reading.
The easiest way to maximize contact with your leads would be to try and send as many emails as possible to them, but that would be a waste of both your firm’s and your leads’ time. If you send too many emails, they start coming across as spam and you run the risk of your leads unsubscribing. But if you send too little, your leads may start to forget your firm and why you would be beneficial to them. A good rule to follow would be sending 3-4 emails per lead to achieve whichever goal your firm has set.
If emails are sent solely based out of your own agenda, you can quickly lose focus of what your leads really need and start sending emails with irrelevant content and at the wrong times.
Instead, use your leads’ own actions and behaviour across your firm’s marketing channels, like your website or social media, as a trigger for when to start sending out emails to them. Using the same example above, let’s say you have this great webinar on alternative investments that you want all your leads to sign up for through email. If you start sending this email around to all of your leads –even to those who are at the very beginning of their buyer’s journey and haven’t defined what their challenges are yet –chances are that a good fraction of those leads won’t find your webinar email helpful or relevant at all. By keeping track of your leads’ interactions with your firm, your emails won’t appear out of nowhere and will provide help and support to the leads naturally after they’ve already shown interest in your firm.
As you continue engaging with your leads through email, use this time to learn more about them, such as where they’re at in the buyer’s journey and what kind of resources they’re finding useful, so that you can further customize the emails they receive and continue building your relationship with them.
That is all for this episode. If you have any questions about marketing that you would like us to answer related to the financial service world, please email us at podcast@bethinkmarketing.com