The Complete Nitty-Gritty of Email Workflows to Escape Marketer’s Block

Let’s admit it. Even the best marketers have to face this trauma most of the times in various campaigns. It is called “marketer’s block” wherein you have successfully built leads, but the leads become stagnant as they cease to respond. Is it because of some loopholes in the communication system?

Your challenge is probably not lead generation, but the conversion of leads as they are stuck in the funnel. Your leads simply are not willing to utilize the products or services you are offering.

The main challenge in these speed-breakers is to get the leads interested with targeted messages that should be sent at the right time so that they are propelled to close the deal. So, who will make sure that you hit the bull’s eye with these leads?

Source: dma.org.uk

Email Workflow – The Holy Grail Of Lead Nurturing

If your contacts are not going with the marketing tide, the reason to a larger extent is that you haven’t set up an email workflow. An email workflow is an online marketing intelligence that sends automated emails based on a few pre-defined triggered events. Email workflows ensure that you are sending the right message at the right time. If your audience is what matters to you, email workflow is inevitable in your online marketing initiatives.

When Is The Right Time To Start Email Workflow?

It all depends on what your analytics has to say. Below are some of the most common indications why marketers give a thumbs-up to workflows:

1. Leads are generated. However, your marketing communication is not designed on the basis of their life-cycle stage.
2. The sales team feels that the leads are not qualified for closing.
3. All the leads in your list are getting the same emails, irrespective of their behaviour or the information that they already have.
4. You are not segmenting the leads based on the information that they have given.

New Customer/Subscriber Workflow

A series of welcome emails could be generated for a lead or a subscriber who have made their first purchase with you or are interested in getting more information from you. This is one of the best ways to build a relationship, as with this kind of an email workflow you are able to give valuable information at the right moment. This increases customer engagement with your business.

Customer Retention Workflow

Undoubtedly, the “Welcome” workflow forms the initial stage of this category. However, your business needs to ensure that customer relationship is retained and in order to do this, you will need to keep them updated with all the events inside your company. They should know how best they could benefit from the products that they have purchased, upcoming or new-releases, and more.

Event Workflow To Trigger Registration Or Attendance To The Event

You could be hosting seminars, running live webinars, or exhibiting trade shows. All these events could be promoted with the help of an email workflow to communicate with prospects and generate brand awareness. Relevant content before and after the event will satisfy the craving of information-hungry prospects and will sustain engagement with your business.

Re-engagement Workflow Triggered By Inactivity Forms A Lead

Reconnect with the leads that haven’t engaged with you for a period of three months or more. The email workflow could be generated to send time-specific content, including offers, new market updates or something to provide value to lead and open the lines for future engagement. You could remind the leads why they engaged to avoid misunderstandings.

You guessed it right! You will need marketing software that helps in setting up a successful email workflow. So, which is the best email marketing software that helps you in building a robust workflow?

The Best Email Workflows To Chase Down New Business

Businesses could design the email workflows that are niche-specific and base them upon the above-mentioned categories. However, there are some workflows that are simply inevitable for all kinds of businesses, regardless of the model. So, let’s have a look at the major email workflows that have been successful in boosting engagement, retention, and most importantly, conversions.

Subscribers

Brand awareness is triggered when you have more people who subscribe to your blogs/newsletter or any other additional information. They should feel important and valued when they become your priced subscribers. Thus, you need to create an email workflow that at once sets up the expectations for the subscribers and proves to be the groundwork upon which all future communications will be built up. This includes a simple welcome email. As they have just subscribed, don’t be too promotional as it will create your impression of being very demanding.

Customers/Post-purchase follow-up

Don’t forget your customers once the deal has been closed. In fact, a new sale opens up the doors for building a robust relationship with your customers to generate brand awareness and trust. A customer workflow will increase your customer’s engagement with the brand that could trigger repeat customers and brand advocates. Marketers could capitalize on the trend by sending emails with product or service recommendations.

Lead Nurturing/Cart Abandoners

The main objective of the lead nurturing workflow is to convert leads into MQLs (marketing qualified leads) to slide down into the conversion funnel. This is the most important step in your marketing initiatives because your prospects want to make a wise decision before the purchase. This email workflow will ensure that they are educated at the right points to increase their awareness about the product or the service. The most common and efficient workflows at this stage, include promoting an offer or a blog post (beginning stage of the journey), more user-specific content like a whitepaper, case study, or eBook (related to what they know), or an offer for free consultation, quote, or review (towards the final stages of the funnel)

Cold Leads/Cart Abandonment

Are your leads sleeping? This is a block that most of the marketers have to go through a number of times, especially in the case of eCommerce businesses, where a majority of the leads are cart abandoners and as a result, there should be a dedicated workflow to wake them up and re-engage them with your brand. A customized workflow for those who had earlier engaged with your brand will regenerate their interest and increases the chances of conversion.

Feedback

Asking your customers for some feedback and suggestions is every effective to increase customer engagement. Your customers feel special when they know that their views and opinions are respected by your brand. Let them know that they have been selected to share their thoughts and experiences with your products or services. These feedbacks could help you in enhancing your business processes and perhaps you could get to resell a product or service based on their queries or suggestions.

Simply set up the workflow that shoots out emails based on the life-cycle stage of the prospects. Not only existing customers, but you could also create a workflow that specifically targets your leads and ask them for their feedback that could also set up the stage for promoting your products or services.

Relevant Content

Your prospects have subscribed to your blog because they are inclined towards the same industry as you are. Right content, when sent at the right time will help you in increasing blog engagement. The content could be in the form of blog post, white papers, videos, checklists, PDFs. When you have specific information about the lead you could create content on the basis of this information and create a workflow that only these leads would receive the content.

The Best Tool for Email Workflow

Let’s Start Nurturing

Workflows are the real power-boosters for your online marketing. They make your marketing smart and bring you out of the “Marketer’s Block” as you will gradually see your leads sliding down into the conversion funnel. Targeted messages are the most vital components in an online marketing campaign and workflows are the best tools that help you build and nurture relationships with customized messages.

About the Author:
Dev is the Head of Marketing at HubMonks, a HubSpot content optimization system (COS) partner for major inbound marketing agencies. Dev loves everything marketing automation and loves to share valuable tips with fellow marketers and businesses. He frequently shares the best inbound marketing practices through the HubMonks blog.