You’ve done the heavy lifting to establish a lead generation website, developed the marketing assets, and hired the right team members…now what?! A nurture campaign, also called a lead nurturing campaign, delivers targeted and relevant, personalized brand messaging to your prospects and current members to move leads through the pipeline toward a buying decision.
Whether you’re restructuring an existing lead nurture campaign or developing one from scratch, it is important to know that nurturing is not only for your marketing and sales teams but also your member services team. A powerful and effective nurture campaign extends through the entire length of the member journey – from the initial introduction and brand awareness to repeat members. While the sales team will more often engage with new prospects to nurture them through the sales process resulting in a purchase or decision, the member services team repeatedly engages current members to explore other products and services and reinforce the overall brand.
Once that mindset is in place, the next step would be to establish a campaign strategy and define goals. Depending on your trade association, common goal(s) include:
- Welcome Message – when prospects and current members engage with your brand, a welcome email is anticipated and frequently opened. This is an opportunity to directly answer their immediate inquiry but also offer a wider introduction to the company and products and services through light educational content.
- Stay Top of Mind – designed especially for products and services that aren’t instantly sales-ready, sending marketing assets and communications in regular intervals prevents members from forgetting about your company and getting lured by your competitors.
- Become an Educational Resource – acknowledge your prospects’ pain points and detail how your industry experience and your products and services can address them. This also holds true for current members to deepen relationships and retain them as ongoing members. Content might include case studies/customer testimonials, blogs, webinar series, podcasts, etc.
- Upsell – an upsell or cross-sell is designed to capitalize on your current member base with little effort from your sales team. Because the member services team will likely have a deeper relationship with members, they can focus the message on the benefits without sounding like a sales pitch.
In all these goals, your brand and voice should be consistent from the established marketing assets to team communication. Team members should walk, talk, and look like the same company.
- Tone – understand who your audience is and speak to them in their tone. Members like to be left with a feeling that there are real people on the other side ready to chat with them. Companies invest a lot of time and money into ensuring their brand tone and voice are reflected through their marketing assets but often doesn’t follow through into team members’ letters and emails.
- Email Signatures – this may sound like a small detail, but it counts! Email signatures not only make your brand look professional but are also one click away from members exploring your website, visiting your social channels, or listening to your podcast. By subtly including these links in your email signature, your email can be direct with your personalized message about the specific product or service.
- Formatting – again a small thing but members notice. Be sure to communicate your branded, approved fonts and font sizes to your team.
Whether you are just starting or have been working to tailor your nurturing campaign for years now, keep in mind the goal isn’t to send the email or letter, but to provide value. Be relevant and strive for conversation.
If you would like help with marketing for your trade association, feel free to contact us. We offer a variety of services like social media marketing, digital marketing & analytics, marketing & brand strategy, and more to small and large companies.
