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While looking for the best lead nurturing email examples, marketers can often feel lost. For efficient lead nurturing, the starting point is always to select an appropriate email sequence, but what happens after that?
Brands must understand that creating one impactful email nurturing sequence is not enough. It takes three too many email nurturing campaigns to make a sales funnel free of lead leakage. The right tone, fonts, images, etc., to be used in a nurturing email series all depends on your email content and target audience.
To shine in a cramped up inbox, your email series must catch attention through consistency and a good subject line. To secure the conversion rate, your email nurture series must pivot towards a CTA.
Strategizing and implementing such email nurturing can only come by analyzing real examples. So in this blog, I have gathered some lead nurturing email examples from my inbox to share and discuss with you.
Inspiring Lead Nurturing Email Examples
The way email nurturing sequences are implemented differs from industry to industry. The tone, triggers, and content vary for B2B and B2C brands. Understanding how email sequences are executed through lead nurturing email examples is essential. Below I have taken examples from three different industries and tried to explain their patterns.
1. SaaS: ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a SaaS company that helps small-to-mid-sized companies automate their customer experience. The SaaS offers a complete package of automation features for email, marketing, CRM, sales, etc. To make things easier for prospects, they offer a 14-day free trial.
Prospects signing up for the free trial trigger a welcome campaign by ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign’s Welcome Campaign
Trigger: Signing up for a free trial
The campaign has three emails sent on the same day.
The first email includes a quickstart guide and offers to help prospects get familiar with the tool. The second email contains info about how the prospect has been automatically enrolled for an onboarding course about how businesses can utilize ActiveCampaign for higher ROI. The third email is a registration confirmation for the onboarding course.
In observation, the primary goal of ActiveCampaign’s welcome email sequence is to showcase the SaaS’s value and how a prospect can utilize it.
The follow-up emails revolve around reminders to join the course and confirm our registration email. As I never attended the LIVE course, ActiveCampaign shared a recorded session, which is great for connecting with prospects who could not make it, thus continuing to provide value and nurturing prospects in the awareness stage.
After 14 days, my trial period ended, and so did the welcome campaign.
Does that mean ActiveCampaign stopped sending me emails altogether?
The answer is no.
After 10-12 days, a new email nurturing series begins, which is a re-engagement workflow. Due to my inactivity to the many welcome campaign emails, I became a cold lead. ActiveCampaign initiated a re-engagement workflow to avoid once-interested prospects becoming lost leads.
ActiveCampaign’s Re-Engagement Campaign
Trigger: No response to the welcome campaign
The re-engagement email nurturing sequence is focused on educating the prospect about the features and benefits of the product. With the help of short case studies, educational content, and emails about the latest SaaS updates, ActiveCampaign keeps the leads in a loop.
And when does this email campaign end? Probably when the prospect finally shows activity on their CTAs. But if the prospect's response is still low, the re-engagement campaign might continue for a long time.
2. Marketing Agency: Orbit Media
Orbit Media is a web design and development company spearheaded by Andy Crestodina, an expert creative content marketer. The company has an active blogging page on their website, sharing amazing research and personal expertise on various web topics. To engage interested prospects and clients, they also have newsletters, for which one can sign up by visiting their website.
This is where their educational lead nurturing campaign starts. Let’s take a look at it:
Orbit Media’s Newsletter/ Educational Campaign
Trigger: Signing up for the newsletter
In the newsletter signing-up section, there is a clear mention of what the newsletter will be about: web marketing tips. It is crucial to briefly point out such information as it showcases transparency and attracts potential leads.
The art of newsletter campaigning is not to rush in. As it is an educational email nurturing sequence, it should be limited in words but contain effective information. The rule is well-followed by Orbit media.
After signing up, a welcome email is received. It suggests a blog post for a quick read and encourages one to reply if they have any queries. The welcome email makes the reader feel comfortable and showcases the brand as open to suggestions and queries.
The follow-up emails include a sneak peek into Orbit Media’s latest blog posts, which contain some highlights of the post and encourage readers to read the full article. Another thing to notice is the plug-in of a webinar at the end of the email. It is a great way to spread the word about the latest offers, announcements, and anything new a brand wants to share with its prospects.
Orbit Media's newsletter email frequency, on average, is three emails a month. It is good as it allows the agency to create good-quality email newsletters, and the readers get the time to absorb the info without feeling overwhelmed. Such educational campaigns go on for a long time and do not have a fixed end period, with the goal being spreading brand awareness.
Surveys are a powerful tool for understanding user behavior in real time. Orbit Media utilizes its newsletter email list by organizing surveys. It helps generate research-based content quickly with inputs from an active audience.
Informational Email
Providing relevant and valuable information to your target audience through informative emails is essential to email marketing strategies. These emails provide educational content, engage your subscribers, and encourage conversions. Take a look at the email below –
3. Ecommerce: Grind
Grind s a coffee company based in the UK with a chain of cafes that offers coffee pods for Nespresso machines. Most e-commerce stores use a lead nurturing email series when a prospect signs up on their app or purchases something. But Grind breaks the norm by having its own newsletter.
Tigger: Signing up for the newsletter
On signing up, a welcome email was shared by Grind. Notice the difference between Orbit Media’s newsletter welcome email and Grind’s welcome email.
Orbit Media encourages prospects to read more blog posts by them to establish themselves as experts. Whereas Grind’s welcome email encourages leads to shop directly from them and focuses on selling. This is how the lead nurturing email sequences differ in the B2B and B2C sectors.
But, we can notice, there is no clear mention of what the newsletter will be about anywhere on Grind’s official website or in the welcome email, which is not a good practice. Here, a prospect might get confused and unsubscribe.
The follow-up emails by Grind include info about the latest offers and what’s new in their products.
4. Social Proof Email
Authority Perception Campaigns
It is possible that prospects might wander off to competitor sites for comparisons. To avoid such cases, an authority perception campaign shares prominent social proof about a company to raise brand credibility. These campaigns must also include what differentiates a brand from its competitors with the help of comparison tables.
This example from Drift makes a full comparison with their competitors. Intercom vs Drift leveraged the power of social proof and relatable customer stories as the face of their competitive nurture campaign. It leverages social proof, copy, and design to make its case and very well succeeds in it.
5. Offer email
Offer/ Discount Campaigns
Some prospects might budge from making the final decision because of the price. By identifying and offering discounts to such prospects, brands can capture their attention and motivate leads to become a paying-client. Such campaigns work wonders when timed correctly.
To get the prospects on board, a business can offer free trials, special discounts, etc.. It is also crucial to keep a close eye on the online behavior of the targeted prospects and not lose them to competitors.
This discount campaign example is from Canva.
By offering a 30-day free trial, they encourage free users to dive deep into their full-featured product. The campaign further goes on to demonstrate the benefits of upgrading.
Important Suggestion: Download the PDF resource from the webpage, it has a lot of helpful lead nurturing ideas. These ideas can help marketers and entrepreneurs understand and create their first lead nurturing campaigns with clear goals.
Lead Nurturing Email Examples For Better Campaigning
Lead nurturing is a topic many marketers still struggle with. By researching and reading through lead nurturing email examples, brands can understand how to get started with their email nurturing program. Whether you have a B2B brand like ActiveCampaign or a B2C brand like Grind, by studying their email nurturing series, it becomes easier to make one of your own.
The writing style, fonts, messaging, etc., are crucial to getting high email CTR. Marketers can use real-time lead nurturing email examples to determine what type of email to add to their future campaigns.
I will keep updating this blog post with more examples I discover in my email, so be sure to bookmark this page.
If you ever feel doubtful about your email nurturing series, you can also always A/B test it. Here’s a blog post about how to do it effectively:
A/B Testing Emails: Best Practices to Follow
If you want to know more about lead nurturing, then check out this guide:
B2B Lead Nurturing: The Ultimate Guide
Related posts:
7 Lead Nurturing Email Mistakes Every Marketer Must Avoid
Drip Campaign vs Nurture Campaign: Which One to Choose
Optimizing Lead Nurturing for Higher Qualified Leads
What are Unqualified Leads: Identification and Management
SaaS Website Best Practices to Optimize User Experience
