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6 Lead Nurturing Strategies to Maintain Leads & Decrease Lead Churn

Raja Antony
Written by Raja Antony
Published at Oct 27, 2023
6 Lead Nurturing Strategies to Maintain Leads & Decrease Lead Churn

Marketers are always on the hunt for leads. But the reality is, not every lead will convert or move straight to purchase.

Nurturing leads is what moves the needle for your business. It helps you build strong relationships and keeps prospects engaged until they are ready to buy.

Genuine connections cannot be forged using a one-size-fits-all approach. You need to deploy a number of proven techniques and strategies to win your prospects over.

Deploying these effective lead nurturing strategies generate positive ROI for businesses. They can help you convert more unqualified leads into sales opportunities and drive more revenue.

In fact, a Demand Gen Report revealed that nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities than non-nurtured leads. That’s why we've developed six lead nurturing strategies to help you keep your leads engaged and decrease lead churn.

 

Table of Contents

 

Quick Read

  • A lead nurturing strategy is a plan businesses use to keep potential customers interested and guide them toward purchasing.
  • The five most popular types of lead nurturing are welcome, re-engagement, product deep-dive, multi-channel and promotional.
  • The most effective lead nurturing channels are email marketing, social media, content marketing, webinars and events and re-targeting ads.
  • The six top lead nurturing strategies are targeted content creation, multi-channel nurturing, interactive content, sales-marketing alignment, lead scoring, and follow-up strategy.
  • Take advantage of Visme to create content for all your lead nurturing needs, from interactive ebooks and presentations to social media graphics and newsletters.

 

What is a Lead Nurturing Strategy?

A lead nurturing strategy is a process that businesses use to develop relationships with potential buyers at every stage of the sales funnel. It involves understanding and catering to the needs of the buyers to effectively guide them towards making a purchase.

The goal of lead nurturing is to create meaningful relationships with people throughout their journey, ultimately guiding them toward a purchase using valuable offers, resources and tailored information.

 

Lead Nurturing vs. Lead Generation

Lead generation and lead nurturing are both important strategies within sales and marketing, but each serves a distinct purpose.

Lead generation is the process of attracting and capturing interested customers for a product or service. It's about attracting and converting them into someone interested in your company's products and services.

On the other hand, lead nurturing is the process of creating relationships with those generated leads, even if they are not ready to purchase. It involves offering relevant content, information and offers through different lead nurturing channels such as emails, social media and blogs.

So, in simple words, lead generation is all about capturing potential customers' interest, while lead nurturing is about building relationships and providing value to convert those leads into paying customers.

Here’s an infographic to help you understand more about these two:

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

 

Types of Lead Nurturing

Here are the different types of lead nurturing campaigns in detail to help you understand how they work and when to use them.

 

1. Welcome Campaign

This is your first interaction with a new lead, where you introduce them to your brand, products or services and set the tone for future communications. For example, after signing up for a newsletter, a user receives an email highlighting the benefits of joining and thanking them for subscribing.

 

2. Re-engagement Campaign

Leads can lose interest over time and become cold. A re-engagement campaign targets inactive leads and tries to reconnect them with your brand. For example, an online store sends an email offering a special discount for customers who haven't shopped in a while.

 

3. Product Deep-Dive Campaign

When prospects express explicit interest in your product, this campaign focuses on sharing detailed information, addressing concerns and guiding them toward purchasing. For example, after downloading a free trial, a user receives a series of emails explaining useful features and how to utilize them.

 

Multichannel Campaign

Using a single lead nurturing channel may not be enough to reach your leads. Interact with them across various platforms, like email, social media or mobile apps, to provide a seamless and integrated experience.

For example, a fitness brand shares workout routines via email, posts motivational content on social media, and sends reminders through a mobile app.

 

Promotional Campaign

This type of lead nurturing campaign strategy focuses on offering enticing promotions or discounts to encourage action. For example, if you are a clothing store, you can email a 20% discount code to motivate shoppers to buy before the offer expires.

 

Best Lead Nurturing Channels

Before you begin customer nurturing, it's crucial to know the best lead nurturing channels for your specific audience and business.

Here are the five most effective options to consider:

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best lead nurturing channels, with an average return of $40 for every $1 you spend. You can use email marketing to nurture leads by informing them about your product and services, answering questions, getting feedback and many more.

Read our comprehensive guide to learn how to execute an email marketing campaign.

Social Media

Social media platforms allow for direct and personal interaction with your audience. You can share valuable content, answer questions and even sell on the platform. According to Forbes, 76% of social media users have purchased a product they saw on social media.

Content Marketing

According to a recent study, 60% of B2B marketers and 49% of B2C customers have achieved their lead nurturing goals through content marketing. Creating valuable content like blogs, ebooks and webinars can help nurture leads by providing them with information and establishing your brand as a thought leader.

The primary goal of content marketing is to engage your audience, answer their questions and show the value of your product or service.

Webinars and Online Events

Webinars and virtual events provide a platform for interacting with your leads in real time, sharing knowledge and building relationships. Attendees gain valuable insights while you showcase expertise–it's a win-win for both parties.

Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads can help you re-engage visitors who leave your website without converting. By showing specific ads across different platforms, you remind them of their interest and urge them to take action.

 

6 Best Lead Nurturing Strategies

Now, we'll discuss how to nurture leads using the top six strategies that, when properly applied, can dramatically improve your conversion rates and boost your business' growth.

 

1. Create Highly Targeted Content

Targeted content allows you to communicate with your leads more effectively because it feels personalized and relevant to them. When your leads feel that you understand their needs and are dedicated to providing solutions, they're far more likely to stay engaged with your brand.

First, you need to identify your leads' preferences and needs. Knowing your leads helps you segment them into different groups based on their interests, behaviors, demographics or position in the sales cycle.

For example, a new lead who has just discovered your business and a lead who has been considering your product for a while won't need the same information.

Creating a buyer persona is the best way to understand your target audience. It's a fictional representation of your ideal customers, including their interests, challenges, demographics, etc.

Use Visme's customer persona templates to represent your ideal customers accurately.

Video App Customer Persona
Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

Once you've segmented your leads, the next step involves delivering content tailored to each group. This could be blog posts, videos, webinars, infographics, emails or social media updates.

 

2. Use Multi-Channel Lead Nurturing

Gone are the days when businesses could rely solely on emails to nurture leads. In this digital era, your potential customers are everywhere, and you should focus on reaching them wherever they are.

That means reaching out to them across various channels, including email, social media, content marketing, search engine marketing (SEM) and even direct mail.

Here are some ways you can implement a multi-channel lead nurturing strategy:

Know Your Audience

Understand your leads' preferences and behaviors. Are they active on social media, or do they respond better to emails? Tailor your approach accordingly. You can conduct surveys, use your CRM data, track opens and clicks using marketing automation tools and many more to understand your audience.

Create a Content Plan

Develop valuable content relevant to your leads. This could be blog posts, informative videos or special offers. You can read this article to learn more about creating a content plan.

Also, you can use this content marketing plan template to create your own.

Content Marketing Plan
Content Marketing Plan
Content Marketing Plan
Content Marketing Plan
Content Marketing Plan
Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

Integrate Your Tools

Use customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage your leads and their interactions across different channels.

The good news is you can seamlessly integrate Visme with your favorite marketing tools like HubSpot, Zapier, Mailchimp and many others. This will help you automate many aspects of your content creation process for lead nurturing.

Segment Your Leads

Divide your leads into different groups based on their interests, demographic information, location, behavior and buying stage. This helps you deliver more personalized messages, improve customer engagement and focus on high-value leads.

Stay Consistent

Regularly reach out to your leads through their preferred channels. Be sure to coordinate your messaging to avoid overwhelming them.

You can use marketing automation to efficiently manage your lead nurturing across multiple channels. For example, you can set up automated welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, product recommendations and more.

Visme can help you create content for almost every lead-nurturing channel. Customize your favorite templates to create ebooks, social media graphics, emails, newsletters, blog headers and more.

With Visme, you can create the perfect lead-nurturing content in just a few minutes. And with our drag-and-drop editor, you don’t have to be an expert designer to create beautiful, compelling content that converts.

Visme's tools and templates have been helping businesses of all sizes globally with their design needs. Here's what one of those customers, Anne McCarthy, the Senior Director of Learning Experience at EmployBridge, has to say about Visme.

It’s easy to create something in Visme quickly that looks like we sent it out to an advertising firm to design. My whole team has been using Visme for several years, but now seeing the kind of work we’re producing, our marketing team wanted to start using Visme. If it’s something we need to turn around really quickly, we’re jumping into Visme. We either put together a one-page piece that’s easy to absorb, or we’ve started creating little animated pieces."
Anne McCarthy

Senior Director of Learning Experience at EmployBridge

. Read the full case study.

 

3. Create Interactive Content

Unlike traditional one-sided content such as blog posts or static images, interactive content actively engages your leads, giving them a more fascinating and involved experience.

This type of content includes quizzes, surveys, polls, interactive infographics and even games—all designed to keep your leads engaged while providing valuable information about your product or service.

Here are some ways you can use interactive content for lead nurturing

  • Quizzes and Surveys: Create fun quizzes or surveys to engage leads and gather insights about their preferences and needs.
  • Interactive eBooks: Make your eBooks interactive with clickable elements like videos, infographics, and links for a more engaging reading experience.
  • Calculators: Develop online calculators that help leads understand the value of your product or service, making it more tangible.
  • Interactive Infographics: Turn static infographics into interactive ones, allowing leads to explore data and information at their own pace.
  • Product Demos: Provide virtual product or service demonstrations, allowing leads to explore better and understand your offerings.
  • Interactive Landing Pages: Design landing pages with interactive elements that capture leads' attention and encourage them to take action.

Read our comprehensive article to learn about the 15+ types of interactive content you can create.

Visme's advanced interactive and animation features like buttons, hotspots and hover effects, you don't need any design experience to get started. Visme empowers anyone to create engaging interactive content that captivates their audience.

With Visme, you can craft various interactive materials, including quizzes, polls, interactive ebooks, presentations, infographics and more.

 

4. Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams

Sales and marketing teams often work independently, but effective lead nurturing requires these teams to collaborate closely. When your sales and marketing teams share insights, they more efficiently guide leads through their buying journey.

In fact, a study shows that the top complaint from sales about the marketing team is targeting the wrong leads. So, aligning both teams can help you prevent this and nurture the right leads to close more sales.

The marketing team should provide information about leads, including their interests and behaviors. On the other hand, sales teams can offer feedback about customer objections and additional information needed for decision-making.

Here are four ways to align marketing and sales teams for lead nurturing in simple language:

  • Regular Meetings: Schedule frequent meetings for both teams to discuss lead progress, share insights and set common goals.
  • Define Lead Criteria: Agree on what makes a lead "sales-ready" so that both teams understand when to pass leads between them.
  • Lead Scoring: Develop a lead scoring system that ranks leads based on quality and interest, ensuring both teams work on the most promising prospects.
  • Shared Content Creation: Collaborate on content creation to ensure marketing materials align with sales needs, making lead nurturing smoother.

And when it comes to creating content collaboratively, Visme is the best tool for the job. It has next-level collaborative design features like live editing, commenting, annotating and version control.

Invite any team member across the organization via email or a shareable link and collaborate on the same design in real-time.

Explore our guide on how to do collaborative design right with Visme or watch the video below to learn more.

 

5. Use Lead Scoring to Identify High-Quality Leads

If you are new to the concept of lead scoring, it's a method to assign numerical values to leads to identify their level of interest in your business. It's a way to segment leads based on their likelihood to convert so you can prioritize which ones require the most attention.

For example, you can assign 3 points for a newsletter sign-up, 5 for a whitepaper download, 10 for a product demo request and 15 for a sales call inquiry to consider it a sales-qualified lead.

Once you have scores for all your leads, you can prioritize your nurturing efforts on those with the highest scoring. As a result, using a lead scoring system helps you focus resources and efforts on the leads with the highest potential return.

 

6. Regularly Follow Up with the Leads

Following up with the leads might seem obvious, but most companies are still not doing it right. According to a study by Brevet, 80% of sales happen after five follow-ups, but 94% of salespeople give up after four.

Therefore, you must create a strategy for following up with leads. Here are some ways to do that:

  • Send Personalized Emails: Craft an email that addresses the lead's specific needs, referencing previous interactions or their business interests.
  • Pick Up the Phone: A personal phone call can show your lead that you're eager to meet their needs and can help deepen the business relationship.
  • Text Them: Consider sending a short, polite text message for more informal or immediate follow-ups.
  • Offer Helpful Content: Share useful articles, blog posts or resources related to their interest or industry to provide added value.
  • Leverage AI Chatbots: Use AI chatbots to engage with leads, answer their queries in real-time, and gather additional information for personalized follow-up.

For example, at Visme, we've deployed a chatbot called Viz to follow up with leads and provide customer support to our users.

Leverage AI Chatbots

 

7. Create a Customer Journey Map

Customer journey mapping refers to visualizing the process your leads go through from the first interaction with your brand until they convert into customers.

The map usually begins with the first encounter, such as a social media post or website visit, and tracks every interaction afterward - clicks, downloads, email inquiries and so on.

The aim is to understand how leads engage with your brand and identify potential strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities in your sales process. Then, you can use this information to create tailored content and targeted messages to solve their problems.

For example, if a lead downloads a guide from your site, they might be in the research phase. Therefore, sending them more educational content rather than a sales call would be a more suitable approach.

Read our comprehensive guide to creating a customer journey map and customize your favorite customer journey map template from Visme's library to create your own.

Offline Suite Customer Journey Map
Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

 

Best Practices & Mistakes to Avoid for Lead Nurturing

To help you provide a well-rounded and informative resource for nurturing leads, we'll now discuss three best practices and mistakes.

 

Lead Nurture Best Practices

Have one-on-one conversations

These one-on-one conversations can be through phone calls, emails and face-to-face meetings. They help you foster stronger relationships with your leads and understand individual lead preferences and pain points.

Use advanced tools like CRM (customer relationship management) software to collect and analyze data to understand each lead's unique journey. Then, you can provide value, address concerns proactively and build trust, increasing the chances of conversion.

Assess your sales cycle

Review and analyze the sales cycle within your organization to identify potential gaps or bottlenecks and optimize the lead nurturing process.

Determine the average length of your sales cycle, map out relevant touchpoints and understand the stages customers go through, from initial awareness to conversion. After assessing your sales cycle, you can tailor your lead nurturing strategy to each stage and improve your sales process.

Focus on multiple customer touchpoints

Engaging new and existing leads at multiple online and offline touchpoints is essential for effective lead nurturing. A good lead nurturing strategy includes email marketing, social media, personalized content, online events, retargeting ads and personalized and timely follow-ups via phone or in-person meetings.

Maintaining strategic and consistent communication across channels can reinforce your brand message and more effectively guide leads through the funnel.

Lead Nurturing Mistakes

Inconsistent Branding

Failing to maintain consistent branding across your visual content can lead to an incoherent and confusing experience for your audience. To avoid this mistake, create clear rules for your brand's appearance. Teach your team these rules, use tools to help and check your brand regularly to ensure consistency.

Visme can help you make all your lead nurturing content consistent in branding with its Brand Kit feature. The tool helps you create and save your brand fonts, brand colors, company logo and other visual elements to stay uniform across all touchpoints.

If you've already established your brand's colors, fonts, and logo, simply paste your company website URL. The tool will then automatically retrieve and save your branding kit in seconds.

Read this article to learn more about creating a branding kit in Visme or watch the video below.

 

Being Too Sales-Focused

Lead nurturing isn't just about selling. It's about building relationships and providing value. If all your communications with a lead are sales-oriented, constantly pushing for a purchase, they may feel pressured.

And this can lead to various negative outcomes, including losing trust in your business, unsubscribing from your communications and choosing a competitor's products or services.

Instead, strive for a mix of educational, informational and sales content to keep your audience engaged and nurtured effectively.

Ignoring Lead Feedback

Leads often provide valuable feedback and signals about their needs and preferences during the nurturing process. Ignoring or not acting on this feedback is a mistake, as you may lose an opportunity to improve your products and services to meet your customers’ needs.

Pay attention to the responses, behaviors and interactions of your leads. Use this information to refine your nurturing strategy, improve your product or service offerings, and adapt your approach to better meet their needs and expectations.

Create interactive and engaging feedback forms for your leads using Visme's online feedback form creator. The tool lets you quickly set up forms to collect valuable data, helping to optimize your nurturing strategy.

Visme form styles
Create beautiful lead forms that drive conversions in minutes!Sign up. It’s free

 

How to Measure Your Lead Nurturing Success

Once you’ve implemented these lead nurturing tactics, the most important task is to measure your success. It’s not just about watching how well you’re doing but identifying the areas for improvement and working on them.

So, let’s explore the seven key metrics to measure your lead nurturing success.

 

1. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of leads that perform a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter or downloading a piece of content.

You can calculate it by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of leads that entered your funnel and multiplying by 100.

You can collect the data in various ways. Use Google Analytics for website actions like newsletter signups, form submissions, and downloads. Or, you can use CRM platforms like HubSpot or Salesforce to track lead conversions in the sales process.

2. Email-related KPIs

Since email marketing is a highly effective lead-nurturing channel, it's crucial to track the performance of your email campaigns. The following are some valuable KPIs that will help you measure the success of your emails.

You can gather data from your email marketing tools to measure these KPIs.

Open Rate

This is the percentage of recipients who open your email. It signifies the effectiveness of your subject lines in grabbing users' attention. To calculate the open rate, divide the number of emails opened by the total number of emails sent (excluding the ones that bounced), and then multiply the result by 100.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

The click-through rate represents the ratio of users who click on a specific link in your email. It helps you understand how well your email content engages the readers and drives them to take action.

Calculate it by dividing the number of clicks received by the total number of emails delivered, then multiply this by 100.

Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of recipients who opt out from receiving further emails. A high unsubscribe rate might indicate dissatisfaction with your email content or frequency.

You can calculate it by taking the number of unsubscribes and dividing it by the total number of emails delivered and then multiplying by 100.

3. Customer Retention-Related KPIs

These KPIs will help you identify the areas your business needs to focus on to maximize customer value and foster long-term, loyal customer relationships.

Churn Rate

The churn rate is the measure of how many customers stop doing business with you over a given period. A high churn rate indicates that you are losing customers, so it’s something you want to keep as low as possible.

It’s calculated by dividing the number of customers lost in a given period by the number at the start of the period, then multiplying by 100.

Here are 10 strategies and tools to help you improve your customer retention and churn rate.

Cost per Customer

This is the total cost spent on acquiring new customers divided by the total number of new customers over a specific period. It helps you understand the financial efficiency of your lead nurturing strategy.

Gather this data from your company's marketing and sales expenditures and sum up the costs associated with lead generation and nurturing activities.

Then, you can combine this information with customer acquisition data from your CRM or sales tracking system to calculate the cost per customer.

Time to Customer Conversion

Also known as sales cycle length, it measures the average time for a lead to convert into a customer. The shorter the sales cycle, the faster the revenue you generate.

Measure it by calculating the average time from when a lead first interacts with your brand (fills out a form, clicks on a link, etc.) to when they make a purchase.

 

Attract, Manage & Nurture Leads with Visme

By implementing the six lead nurturing strategies outlined in our article, adhering to industry best practices, avoiding common mistakes and consistently tracking your progress, you'll notice a significant enhancement in your overall marketing efforts.

Throughout the process, from attracting leads to nurturing and converting them, you'll need to create a range of content to educate, inform and engage your leads.

Visme is an all-in-one design tool to help you create the kind of content your audience craves. Create various lead capture forms with Visme's no-code form builder, such as email sign-up forms, lead generation forms, and website pop-up forms.

With its drag-and-drop editor and a vast template library, you can create all your marketing materials, like presentations, infographics, social media graphics, ebooks, lead magnets and more.

Sign up for Visme to attract high-quality leads, optimize lead nurturing and boost conversions for your business.

Raja Antony
Written by Raja Antony

Raja Antony Mandal is a content writer at Visme with 5+ years of experience in the B2B SaaS space. With a background in English Literature, he is passionate about using storytelling techniques to inform and engage readers. Raja writes about visual content creation, design tips and marketing strategies, and his specialty is making complex topics easy to understand.

He also knows the fundamentals of on-page and off-page SEO, which helps him rank his articles high in search engine results. In his free time, he enjoys playing guitar and tabla. You can connect with Raja on LinkedIn.

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