What is Automated Lead Nurturing & How Can Marketers Use It?

May 12, 2023

Automated lead nurturing makes the tedious task of prospect segmentation, scoring, and profiling a lot easier. How? Let’s understand.

While lead nurturing comes with the benefits of higher conversion and loyal clientele, it also comes with a dire need to set up a system. Without a lead nurturing framework, all the user data captured might take months to analyse. And even if you could get it done, the arduous task of implementing it lies ahead.

The simple answer to all this overwhelming struggle is:
“Do not do lead nurturing at all.”

Instead.
“Do Automated Lead Nurturing.”

Automated lead nurturing is a system where all your lead nurturing efforts get implemented, analysed, and optimised. By understanding the many functions of lead nurturing automation, marketers can create an ecosystem where prospects enter, convert, and thrive. At the same time, you get an active community of like-minded people, referrals, and upselling opportunities.

Let’s start with the basics.

What is Automated Lead Nurturing?

Automated lead nurturing is the process of using marketing automation to automatically send targeted and personalised communications to leads at various stages of the sales funnel. The goal of automated lead nurturing is to move leads through the funnel by providing them with relevant and valuable information, ultimately resulting in a conversion.

The most significant thing automated lead nurturing helps you win is the game of securing amazing lead response time.

What is Lead Response Time?

Lead response time is the time that elapses between a prospect expressing interest in your company’s products or services and your company’s first contact with that prospect.

Lead response time is essential because the faster your company can respond to a lead, the more likely that lead is to convert into a customer. According to studies, conversions can jump to 8X if the first response to leads goes out in 5 minutes. It is because when a prospect expresses interest in your company, they are likely to consider purchasing your products or services actively.

If your company can respond to that lead quickly, you can nurture that interest and increase the chances of closing the sale.

Manually achieving such a feat is only possible with a massive investment in the workforce. Automated lead nurturing can help you execute the what and when to respond based on specific user behaviour acting as triggers.

There are a lot of other automated lead nurturing benefits, some of which we will discuss.

Automated Lead Nurturing Benefits

a. Captures Lost Leads

Reducing lead leakage from the sales funnel is a task that requires constant analysis and quick action. But you can’t keep up with every lead’s CTR, email open rate, and behaviour. Before you even suspect a potential customer got lost, the lead will be far away in the competitor’s sales funnel.

Here, an efficient automated lead nurturing system comes into action. Marketers can set a minimum threshold for email open rate, CTR, and other lead nurturing metrics to determine which lead is wavering away.

Once the threshold is reached, the lead gets marked as lost and sent to a re-engagement lead nurturing campaign. Such an arrangement saves time and pushes for minimum lead leakage.

b. Takes Care of Non-linear Buyer Journeys

Automated lead nurturing allows businesses to create multiple customer journeys based on user behaviour, such as viewing a page or downloading a guide. The approach allows brands to personalise their communication with leads based on their interests and actions rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach.

Additionally, it eliminates the need for manual lead nurturing efforts, such as moving users to different paths or sending emails. Instead, the marketing automation software takes care of these tasks, enabling businesses to scale their lead nurturing efforts more effectively.

c. Reduces Churn Rate

Once the lead converts into a customer and arrives at the retention stage, it can become challenging to maintain an effective communication balance between them and new leads. But if a business starts losing its past customers, its revenues could be affected.

According to studies, acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Maintaining a consistent line of conversation with clients is highly crucial.

For this, marketers can build automated lead nurturing campaigns that update clients through email about tips, trends, and everything new about a product or service.

d. Easier to Analyse

Automated lead nurturing allows for easier analysis by providing access to detailed data and metrics on leads’ interactions with your website, landing pages, and lead magnet offer.

It includes information such as which emails were opened, links clicked, and website page visits. Such data can be used to gain a deeper understanding of leads’ interests and needs and can help to inform future communication strategies.

Efficient reports help to identify areas of improvement and optimise the lead nurturing process over time. Automating the lead nurturing process can also allow businesses to set up A/B testing for emails and see which message, subject line, or call to action works the best.

Automated lead nurturing allows for more efficient and accurate tracking of leads’ interactions and engagement, which can be used to improve the overall performance of the lead nurturing process.

e. Executes Multiple Campaigns

A single lead nurturing campaign will not secure your sales funnel. Marketers must populate their pipeline with relevant lead nurturing workflows that cater to various buyers’ journeys.

With an automated lead nurturing system, it becomes easier to execute various campaigns simultaneously. Whether it is welcome, re-engagement, educational, or any other type of nurturing series, automated lead nurturing executes effectively when triggered.

How to Utilise Automated Lead Nurturing?

There are three main aspects of lead nurturing that should be automated:

1. Lead Segmentation

Lead segmentation is the process of dividing leads into groups based on certain criteria, such as demographics or behaviour. It can easily be automated through marketing automation software, which can analyse user data and automatically assign leads to different segments based on pre-determined rules.

For example, a company might use automation to segment leads based on the pages they’ve visited on their website, the forms they’ve filled out, or the products they’ve shown interest in. It allows companies to target their marketing efforts better and improve their conversion rates.

2. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is the process of rewarding a score to each lead based on their likelihood of becoming a paying customer based on their user behaviour. This score is used to prioritise leads, with the highest-scoring leads being considered the most promising. Upon its automation, the user data get analysed, and automatically, scores get assigned to leads based on rules set by a company.

For example, a company might use automation software to assign points to leads based on their demographics, their behaviour on the company’s website, or their engagement with the company’s email campaigns.

The score-rewarding rules can be created based on the company’s historical user data, such as which leads converted in the past and which activities they took before converting. Such automation allows companies to more efficiently and effectively prioritise leads, focusing their efforts on the most promising prospects.

Suggested Read: How to Create a Lead Scoring Model

3. Email Nurturing Sequences

Email nurturing is a crucial part of every lead nurturing system. It helps establish a personalised communication channel between a lead and a brand. Through automated lead nurturing, such email series can get triggered without any manual interference. Automation SaaS like Hubspot and ActiveCampaign, can study user behaviour and automatically assign them the right email nurturing series, which is most likely to convert them.

Lead segmentation and scoring help make the email nurturing sequences more efficient and tailored according to leads’ characteristics. Such a lead nurturing framework will allow automatic sending out of emails based on specific actions or behaviours. For example, a follow-up email to leads who have opened a previous email but haven’t clicked through.

Automate Your Lead Nurturing Today!

Automated lead nurturing is a powerful tool for marketers to efficiently and effectively nurture leads through the sales funnel, resulting in more conversions and better ROI. Through its many benefits, lead nurturing automation helps create a better buyer journey and user experience. It makes it easier for brands to analyse their target audience and adapt it effortlessly to their marketing efforts.

All automated lead nurturing efforts, such as moving users to different paths or sending emails, enable businesses to scale their lead nurturing efforts more effectively.

Learn about various lead nurturing automation tools here:
5 Lead Nurturing Software Tools for B2B Businesses

Want to learn in-depth about lead nurturing? Check out my ultimate guide:
B2B Lead Nurturing: The Ultimate Guide