Are you nurturing lasting relationships with your clients?

There’s no such thing as love at first sight. That transcendent bolt from the blue which upends your world around one person quickly fizzles and reveals itself to be mere infatuation. Lasting relationships need to be carefully nurtured over time, allowing the development of trust and abiding affection. This is as true for marketing as it is for romance.

When you’re developing a relationship with a prospective client, sending them emails which build their trust of your brand and understanding of your product is an essential step towards securing a sale.

Lead nurturing emails allow you to remain at the front of your prospect’s mind without pressuring them into making an immediate decision - which may alienate them from your brand completely. There are a number of different things lead nurturing emails can do.

Educate Helping your prospects realise how your product can address their needs is a great way to move them closer to making a purchase. Try designing a campaign of brief educational emails, each of which addresses a way in which their lives can be improved by your product. Sending these emails out over a relatively short period of time to a list of subscribers who have not made purchases can maintain interest and help your prospects make more informed decisions about your offering. Avoid being too salesy in educational emails - rather talk about problems your leads have in terms of solutions you offer.

Connect Inviting your prospects to connect with you on social media will allow you more avenues into their day-to-day routine, offering more opportunities to demonstrate how your brand or product can benefit them. Send lead nurturing emails with links to your Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, or WeChat. You need not directly engage them on those platforms; rather use social media to create an aura of expertise.

Improve Offer your leads ways in which they can improve their lives, whether personally or professionally. Whether it’s a nifty shortcut around roadworks or advice on persuading their boss to change the air conditioning settings, making your leads lives better will help them to consider you to be trustworthy and on their side, which will in turn make them more likely to make a purchase from you.

Get Personal Sometimes you may find that leads stall out at the final hurdle. For some reason they’re almost but not quite ready to make a purchase. If you can identify why they’re balking, see if putting them in touch with a member of staff outside the sales team can help persuade them. For instance, if they’re not convinced that your product meets their use case, have a product designer email them to address their concerns. (Obviously, pick one that combines technical insight with a good email manner.)