Once a prospect enters your digital ecosystem and gives you their email address, what's next?
Do you have a plan to build a relationship with them? Many businesses, when they first start out, don't have an email plan to nurture prospects through the buying process and beyond. The first step is to segment your buyers into personas and have different email lists.
An email address is a sign of trust and should be treated with respect and consideration. What did you promise the prospect to get the email address with your call to actions (CTA)? If it was advice on a specific topic, ensure you provide that value to them. The fastest way to get them to move along the buying journey is to give them useful information to solve their problem. Not easy when you don't know them yet, so here are some tips to get you started.
Email segmentation process
The first step is to create buyer personas for each of the groups you are targeting. These personas are attributes that make these prospects different from other people but similar enough to be grouped together. It could be demographic (age, income, location etc), or psychographic (beliefs and behaviours) depending on your business. Once you have these attributes, think of your perfect client in this group. Give them a name and specifically define what their problem is, what solutions they are looking for and what would make them buy from you. Then when writing and planning your marketing content, visualise this person in your mind and ensure it would be useful and motivational for them.
Next, we create the content to catch their attention and drive them to our website to progress their buyer's journey with our effective CTAs. Once they have submitted their email address on our website, where does it take them? You will need an email program to capture the content and send out your communications from.
Email groups
Segment your email list into groups will increase your open and conversion rates. The goal is to send the right, related and useful information to the right person at the right time. Easier said than done!
Start with a list for prospects for each product you are selling. This list you will digitally nurture them with useful information about their problem to help them take the next step in the buying process. If your products all relate to the one client problem this can be one list.
The second list is for clients that are in the consideration phase of the buying cycle. These clients have opted into your sales process and want to know more, so give it to them! Invite them to your events, offer them a free phone consultation, invite them to get a copy of your book etc
The next list is the client list. These are active clients that you are working with and want to keep up to date with your business developments. New products, functions, changes of staff and useful updates to their products etc
The final list is the completed clients. They have finished the buying process and can be great referrals for new business. Depending on your situation, you might want to keep them up to date with your business and product offerings or delight them with surprises and special offers from time to time.
By segmenting your database into different groups, you will be closer to making your mass communications more personal and relevant to your prospects.
Cheers Andrew
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