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SHOW NOTES
When it comes to making sales, generating leads is only half the battle.
And yet, I see way too many people stop altogether after this point.
But the truth is, the vast majority of your leads aren’t going to buy from you after their initial contact with your offer.
So how do you get them to convert into sales?
Nurture, nurture, and then nurture them some more.
Not quite sure when you need to be nurturing your leads, or how to even do it strategically?
I’ve got you covered.
In today’s episode, I’m sharing 9 Strategies To Nurture Your Leads So You Get More Sales, and I’m diving in to examples of how I’ve implemented each of these strategies in my own marketing so that you can too.
If you implement any of these after tuning in, send me a DM on Instagram (@emilyhirsh) and tell me all about it!
Want to make it that much easier to set up strategic nurture sequences that will skyrocket your sales? Grab our FREE email nurture sequence swipe file here!
If you need additional support building out these nurture sequences in your funnels so that your ads can dominate, visit helpmystrategy.com to see if you qualify to work with Team Hirsh.
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Emily Hirsh:
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are all having fun, fabulous week. I am having a very busy week. just recently shared on the podcast it’s been a little bit of a rough last month. Not from anything bad, like businesses really good. It’s like a good, bad, it’s like overwhelmed a little bit and I’m not used to being in overwhelm. So I was kind of reflecting on this cause I was like, man, I’m so sensitive to this now. I used to do everything in my business and feel this every day became like normal. So when I get to a place where I’m behind or, you know, stressed and, and I feel that I really feel it cause it’s not normal for me.
And I think like part of it too is just three kids is hitting me a lot right now. It’s a lot because the baby’s seven months old and requires a lot of my attention still. So it takes out at least an hour and a half probably of my workday just to kind of like helping with him and feeding him and helping him down for his nap sometimes. And my nanny’s here, but she has all three kids and it’s hard. You can’t really do everything with the baby. And so I think I’m just feeling the weight a little bit lately of like business and three kids, and then trying to also cross off all the boxes of getting my workout and my walk in every day, and my meditation, which actually I really have. I’ve kept it all up Is great. I can’t encourage you enough when you’re going through a stressful time or you’re feeling overwhelmed or behind, like I said to Dan, like I need to triple myself, like not double myself triple myself is how I feel right now.
When you’re feeling that make sure you’re still taking care of yourself because it’s just like, it’s not worth it. And there’s always going to be something. So there’s always a reason to be like, “oh, once I finish that, then I’ll start my workouts,” or “once I finish that, then I’ll go for my walks.” You know, or “then I’ll start eating healthy”. There’s always going to be it if that, then I’ll do it, you know? So you just have to make it a priority. So I have, so it’s good, busy, but I am feeling like I need to not even double myself, but triple myself, I just see like a whole day to catch up. We also have a massive launch coming up in October, which I’m so excited about. And so I have so much prep for that, which is adding to just everything I have to do, upleveling and all that anyways.
So today I’m so excited about today’s episode. I think you guys are going to get so much value out of this. I put a lot of time and effort into actually pre-planning for this episode. And I also created an opt-in, which we will be linking to in this episode in a little bit, but it will give you so much value inside of it. And what we’re talking about is nurturing strategies. And I love this because I think so many people drop the ball here when it comes to like once we get the leads into our world and into our sphere of our funnel and then what happens to them after that? And how are you nurturing those leads? Because such a large percentage of them, 90%+ right, are not going to buy from you upon the initial contact with your offer.
And so what are you doing to bring in those people over time in the next two, three, four, even 12 months from now? How are you nurturing those leads? And I think a lot of people actually leave money on the table here when it comes time to doing this well and creating nurture sequences, because it’s so much work getting the strategy in place just to get the lead in the door and then get them to a webinar, or whatever it is, that then like, we kind of let the other piece drop off because we’ve worked so hard just to get that first part done. But you’ve already done all that hard work to get that lead there. So let’s make sure that we squeeze out all the value from that lead and finish it right and get them to buy your offer again, whether it’s now or in months from now.
So I have nine different kinds of nurture strategies and then the resource I created that goes with this episode is probably one of the most valuable ones I’ve created because it lists out literally all the different funnels, and nurture sequences, and how many you should have and how they should be timed, and gives you a swipe file of emails for your nurture sequences. So it’s so good and so much value, and I’m gonna walk you through these nine different nurture strategies to nurture your leads.
Before I do that, I wanna just start with making sure you understand each nurture strategy that you create should have an end goal to improve something that you can measure. This is really important. Don’t just plug nurture emails in, or emails like that you’re sending your list, or retargeting ads, or content on social media that you’re like, “oh, I’m nurturing.” Okay? They needed to have an end goal. What are we nurturing these people to go and do? Why are we nurturing them? What’s our end goal for them? What do we want them to buy? And then how are we going to measure that? So for example, if you improve your nurturing after a webinar, before the webinar happens, that would actually impact your webinar show up rate, right? So if we say I have a webinar sign up, people sign up for my webinar and then after that, like what are the emails that they’re getting in between? When they signed up for your webinar and your webinar’s happening and those emails, if done right and well, will impact your conversion, your show up rate on your webinar, right?
So now we’ve got this new nurture sequence we’re going to create. We have a purpose behind creating it, and then we have a metric to actually measure once we create, or update, or improve what we have, we can see if it impacted the metric. Okay. So some of these, sometimes we also, I think people think of nurture sequences only after somebody opts-in to like a lead magnet, or signs up for something, and it’s just that one initial nurture sequence, but you’re going to see, and the things I share with you here, that some of these nurture sequences are happening before the offer even happens, the pitch, or the end goal of your funnel to actually improve the experience of the customer journey and improving engagement throughout the customer journey, and that’s really important.
So every nurture strategy you create, make sure you’re not just doing it because you think you need to do it. And somebody said you have to do it, but because it has a metric attached to it that you’re trying to improve a conversion, whether it’s a sales conversion webinar, show up, rate a sales call, show up rate, whatever it is, you’ve got a metric attached to it.
All right, let’s dive into the nine ways that you can nurture your leads. So here’s number one: indoctrination series before a live experience, such as a webinar. This is the one I just talked about. So we won’t spend too much time here. The goal with this is get them to show up live. And so this sequence would be, again, I sign up for a webinar and then the webinar’s not happening for maybe five or four days since I signed up. It’s going to be different for the leads depending on when they signed up, but you have emails in there so you’re staying top of mind, so the webinar date and time stays top of mind. And then the most important piece is so that you create kind of that FOMO around actually showing up at your webinar. You give them a reason why the content and the things in the strategies or the tips you’re going to share on the webinar are so good that they cannot miss out on it, before they can’t miss out on it, on your webinar. And so they come live right?
And so you’re, you’re building authority in that because they need to trust you and think that you’re awesome to show up, live for a webinar. And then you’re all also building excitement and authority around the topic and the content in your actual webinar. And then staying top of mind with the date and the time and marketing it on their calendars and getting them excited. So that is one kind of indoctrination nurture sequence that you can have to improve your webinar live show up, right? And if you don’t have it, you should definitely implement it. And you can do this too with an automated webinar, you’d probably just have a few less emails, but you would have a couple of emails making sure they went and watched the webinar, and again, creating that FOMO that they need to watch the training it’s going to expire. Here’s why if you watch it, here’s the results, and the promise that you’re going to get from attending that webinar and coming to that webinar. Okay.
The next nurture sequence. This is one that a lot of people already do, but it’s just a reminder because of course it’s so important, but a nurture sequence after somebody joins their list. So whatever format in whatever way they end up joining your list, whether it’s from a webinar, an opt in video series, a challenge, various ways that they join your list. I think personally that each way you have someone join your list, you should almost have a separate nurture sequence.
So let me give you an example. We have The Hirsh Marketing Report and our Case Studies. Those are like our two core opt-ins that we have on our website that we push in social. We run ads to them occasionally when we want to grow our list, and those are my core opt-ins. So I have two different nurture sequences that are relevant to those leads and what those leads are interested in that also lead to my next step. So both nurture sequences nurture people and then push them to our application because that’s the goal, but they also are different because The Hirsh Marketing Report one is actually highlighting Hirsh Marketing Reports, cause I know that they’re interested in that.
So because it’s so much content when they sign up, we actually have like, I don’t even know, I think it’s two years of Hirsh Marketing Reports that you can get access to. Which is crazy cool, but we have that. And so it’s like, you sign up for that, and I know they’re not going to go consume all that content. So, I pull out really great reports and tips from reports, and we put that in the nurture sequence cause we know that lead is interested in that and then we are sending them in a few subtle ways to the application.
With case studies, same thing, you sign up for the case studies, you get 20 plus case studies on a dashboard. It’s a little overwhelming. And so we don’t just assume you’re going to go consume all that. Great if you do, but we actually pull out some top case studies and I wrote emails. I didn’t write them. My team wrote emails on those case studies and pulling them out. I also thought through like, what are the different clients that we potentially serve, and let’s make sure I have a case study that speaks to all of them. Somebody who has never run ads before, has run ads before then is scaling. So I’m very intentional with that content.
And so any entrance you have to join your list, you should have a nurture sequence attach four or five emails, and then somewhere that those nurture sequences are also sending somebody. So maybe they’re then going from, you know, a PDF opt-in to a webinar, or maybe they’re going to an application like in my case, or maybe they are going into a Facebook group. Different ways, but there should be another avenue that you’re sending them and make sure you create the nurture sequence so that it’s actually relevant and enticing to the leads that are signing up for the initial touch point. Okay. Alright.
The next nurture sequence is a post webinar or live experience such as a video series, live challenge, any of those emails that nurture people to buy. So I put this under nurturing even though it could be considered a sales secret because I think it’s a little bit of both. So if you have, let’s say, a live webinar, or you do a live video series, then after that you’re obviously pushing somebody to your offer, whether that’s a direct product offer, it’s a service, it’s an application. You have a call to action where you want somebody to take action. So you are pushing people to that and there’s going to be a massive percentage of people who don’t take action. And so you should have a window, usually four to seven days, where you’re pushing that action to all the people who haven’t taken action, obviously through retargeting ads, but also to support that you should have solid emails.
And I put it under nurturing because they shouldn’t just be direct, boring sales emails. People will tune that out. Our brains and people’s brains are really trained to tune out sales, material and ads. So you just like with your ads where you have to make it connective and people have to be able to stop scrolling and it can’t feel like this in your face sales ad. Same with your sales emails and this sequence after somebody signs up for a live experience. And you kind of have your promo window where you’re pushing your offer, it really needs to nurture people through storytelling, testimonials, why they should buy your offer, but connecting to the problems they’re currently experiencing and writing so that it’s like, you’re probably here and you want to be here and here’s my offer that does that for you. And so it’s not just straight sales emails. Yes, they can be direct. Yes, they should have urgency and they’re pushing a call to action, but they also still need to connect. They still needed to build trust with that buyer because why have they not bought yet? Because they don’t trust you enough yet? The trust is not all the way there. So they have to get there in order to create that decision to then go buy. Okay, all right.
The next one. Which one are we on? We’re on number one, two, three, four. This is four out of nine: regular and consistent email newsletter nurturing. So this is for, okay, you get people on your list and then they sign up for a webinar, or however they enter your list. And then maybe they go through a nurture sequence that’s four or five emails like we talked about, then what’s happening with them then? How are you staying in touch with them? And we call this like our newsletter list, even though newsletters are like so old, we don’t send newsletters, but it’s still like our regular list of people who get our regular emails if that makes sense. So for us, we’re sending out our podcasts and our Hirsh Marketing Report, but that’s a planned out calendar every month of what we’re sending our email list.
I know a lot of people out there have said like email lists are dead, like you don’t need to grow your email list anymore, it doesn’t do anything. It does. It really does pay to grow your email list, to nurture your email list, and to continually send them nurturing content. And then occasionally of course, offers and calls to action. Here’s what not to do and what too many people do just probably because of lack of time and resources in their marketing. But they create a webinar, people sign up for that webinar. They maybe have a nurture sequence attached to that webinar that’s nurturing and selling their offer and pitching their offer. And then they go silent and they don’t email their list regularly. Maybe they email them once or twice a month, or less. And then they’re like, “oh, it’s time for me to launch and I want to promote things.” And then they hit their list hard with a ton of emails. The list is not going to pay attention to those emails. You’ve got to be consistent with your valuable content for the list to ever pay attention to what you’re selling when it comes time to promote something, okay?
So make sure that you have ideally like at the beginning of every month or the end of every month for the following month, you plan out what are the emails I’m going to send my whole list that are valuable, not just what sales emails am I going to send my list or call to action emails. What valuable content am I going to send my list? And make it easy. Like if you do podcasts, that can be your emails. If you put something out into the world, if you do a blog, if you do a video, or repurpose that and use that for your emails, but be strategic that these people get your emails regularly so that when it comes time to sell to your list and actually pitch something to your list, they’re receptive to it. Okay. All right.
This next one, the sixth one is, I don’t even know, fifth one, is my favorite. This is the 90 day nurture sequence with flash sales. So I implement this in pretty much all of my evergreen funnels that we have, which would be evergreen, like automated. So if we had an automated webinar where somebody was signing up, they were getting a sequence of emails that was pitching the offer within, you know, four to five days after the webinar. And then where do they go? They go to my regular list, but also I want to make sure I have an automated way to re-pitch them and to re-sell to them. So we build a 90 days of automated nurturing that typically looks like one email a week with two flash sales happening at week four and week six, flash sales back for the original offer that was in whatever they signed up for, so like the webinar.
So let’s just say I had a webinar. I pitched a course for $997. This is hypothetical. I don’t have a $997 course, but I’m just saying. Okay, I had a webinar. I pitched a course. They don’t buy. They’re going to get put into this nurture sequence where for 90 days they get weekly emails and then a flash sale at four and six weeks. And so people will be coming in at all different times, but what this does is create a snowball where people are getting re-pitched your offer automated because flash sales are so great. Like you’re building this list of people you’re creating this awareness and recognition of your offer. And you should do regular flash sales because people maybe today aren’t ready to buy your offer, but are in three months. And you don’t know when, but having flash sales automatically packed in is so awesome for conversions, because then you’re just getting these extra automated sales. So with this nurture sequence, you’re nurturing and then you’re also reselling your offer. Okay.
So the important piece with this is that in the nurture content, in that weekly nurture content, making sure that you are strategic with it. So if you know the objections that the lead might have to buying because they haven’t bought yet, and you’re going to pitch them a flash sale in a few weeks, what is the content that they need to hear in order to buy and in order to make that decision and pull that trigger? So you can still hint at your product by saying a casual, I was talking to my student, blah, blah, blah, the other day and here is, you know, what happened in the story. And so you’re still seeding the offer that you’re going to pitch again in your flash sales, but you you’re doing it very strategically and llightly so it’s staying top of mind, but you’re commencing them with every email. So be super intentional with those emails. Okay.
The next one is the abandoned application or call nurture sequence. So this is if you sell high ticket. And this is for, I have two for high ticket sales, this one, and the next one are going to be for high ticket. So if somebody goes to your application or your call and they start the process of booking it. So for us, what happens for us is they give us their name and their email address, and then they get pushed to the application. And so if they don’t finish that application and submit it and get a tag, they’re put in our abandoned application sequence. And instead of just having a basic email, that’s like, Hey, you forgot to fill out your application, go finish. I actually put strategic, I think we did about four emails in there, around content that would convince them because what are the reasons?
This is again, put yourself in the position of your ideal customer. What are the reasons they might abandon their application? Time. Obviously it takes time to fill it out. Maybe they lost confidence going through it thinking, “I don’t know if they could really help me, or I don’t know if I really qualify, or I don’t know if this is really worth it.” Money could be one of them, of course. So think through the objections that that person might have, and then create a nurture sequence that’s going to knock down those objections so that they go back and finish their application.
And here’s an example of there’s a metric, right? So if I implemented an abandoned application nurture sequence, then I will be able to see, oh, is this improving my application completion rate and amount. So make sure again, be strategic with the content and ask yourself, what does that person need to hear and read? Maybe you send them to content like a podcast or a video and you’re explaining your process, or you’re explaining your results, or your viewpoint. And you’re just differentiating your brand a little bit, but that’s what’s going to convince them like, oh yeah, I do have that 10 minutes to go finish that application, or this is worth it let me at least try this, let me see what happens if I finished this application. That’s where you want to get them to the people. Okay.
The next one is also for high ticket sales and is a non-sales nurture sequence after having a call. So if somebody goes to your sales team, they have a call with them and then they don’t convert to the sale of your product, but maybe the sales team thinks they’re still a good fit and is like, I don’t know, they’re not ready yet. They’re not ready to make a decision, but I still think that they could buy in the next three, to six, to 12 months. You should create an automated nurture sequence that is going to continue to nurture those leads strategically. So what do they need to hear, uthority building testimonials, case study examples of your students or your clients, to be able to pull that trigger. And you’re trying to stay top of mind.
So what we do is our sales client success specialist, Aandra, if she has a call with someone and they say, no, I’m not ready to move forward with this, but she’s like, they’re still a great fit and maybe in the future it would make sense for them to come join the agency, their business is the right fit, that’s the key. If their business is not the right fit, we do not put them in the sequence, but if they are the right fit and we think in the future they could become a client or a student of ours, Aandra will tag them and put them into our non sales and our nurture sequence. This is a very light nurture sequence because you do not want to bombard these people. I think we do like one email every other week or something for like six months. It’s a long time and not a lot of emails because they’re also going to be getting our regular emails that we send to our list, but these are just some extra bonus ones talking about results we’ve had with clients and case study examples and breaking down objections and most common issues that people might have. We wrote all of these based on literally sales call conversations.
And so again, this is an example where you could have a sales call, deem somebody as not a sale and then just let them kind of sit there and fall away or fall off your list. And it’s like why they could become a customer or client later on. So let’s be strategic with how we’re communicating to them so that we’re able to close them, even if it’s in six months from now, that’s fine. You know, some people it just isn’t the right time, but in six months it is the right time for them. Okay. All right.
The next one is a similar type of sequence, but this is for products. So this is the abandoned cart nurture sequence. So sometimes people in this case will focus directly on just like one email, just like I said, with the abandoned application of like, hey you forgot to finish your order, go back and finish it. Well, why not have a nurture sequence to that if they still don’t buy after that one email of, “hey, you forgot to finish your order,” where you are nurturing them with three or four emails saying casually and not as directly, but in the back end saying, “hey, go and make sure that you finish your order and here’s some success stories, and here’s me breaking down your objections I know you have with this valuable content.”
And so I think we kind of sometimes mistake direct selling and getting them back to close the sale with opportunities where we could nurture and just strengthen the relationship, or answer questions they might have because we know our audience so well. We know those questions through a strategic nurture sequence. So just like if they abandoned the application, instead of just having one email that’s like, “hey, go back and finish it,” I’m nurturing them strategically without them even realizing it, but with case study examples, success stories backing our process. So same thing with abandoned cart. If they do abandon the cart.
Now, the only way to do this obviously is if you capture their email in the cart process. So this is where sometimes people put name and email and then they move to the checkout page. or there are, I believe some softwares where it can do that because you can definitely create an ad. So you have to get their name and email obviously for this to work, but it usually, if you start the checkout process and then you abandon it, you’re able to capture that in some way. They have to obviously start filling out your order form in some capacity, but instead of just sending them back to the order form, why not make sure that you are sending them nurture content that you know will convince at least some people? At least 5%, maybe, probably not even that high, but it’s at such a low percentage, but even if it is a low percentage, it’s the people that work weren’t going to buy and now they are.
And so it’s just extra money for the leads you’ve already worked so hard to get to your cart page, nurturing them with either case studies, testimonials, backing your process or your product in some way, maybe it’s storytelling of why it was created and what kind of problems it’s going to solve. Of course, focusing on that person and what the problem they have is and what they want, but nurturing them and strengthening that relationship and trust in your brand just a little bit more. Okay. Alright.
And the last nurture sequence I have listed here is for self liquidating offer funnels. After someone buys that first product, making sure you have a nurture sequence attached to that, that connects to the next step you want them to do. Take and say, Then back to any upsells that you may be had if they didn’t buy them. So for example, in our slow funnel, I want people to get to the application. So they buy my first product, get put into a nurture sequence, I think it’s four to five emails, and then in those I’m nurturing them with case studies with client examples and testimonials with top content that I’ve honestly probably pulled from the podcast. That’s where I get most of our content for emails. And then I’m sending them to the application. For you, it might be sending them to a webinar. It might be sending them to a video series. It might be sending them to an application, a call, whatever that next step is, connect it to something like your self liquidating offer funnel.
And then also we have an email for people who bought only the first product, but not the second product that sends them back to go buy it within a couple of days because a lot of times people are like, oh, I actually do want that. So we give them one more chance with a limited time offer to go back and buy that.
So those are the nine strategies. That was a lot. I hope you took notes. Those are the nine strategies to nurture your leads. Make sure you get our content PDF on this because it is killer, I’m telling you, with value. And I think you guys will get a lot out of implementing this. If you do end up implementing any of these in your business, I want to hear about how it impacted conversions.
Thank you so much for tuning in today guys. If you want support with your strategy, this is an example, actually, in our onboarding strategy and strategy call we have with clients. We have a slide that’s all about email nurture sequences because it’s not just about the ads. These are the type of things in your funnel that support the success of your ads, and you need to have the whole ecosystem working for your whole strategy to work. So if you would like support with that in your own business, you can go to helpmystrategy.com to see if you qualify to work with Team Hirsh and I’ll see you all on the next episode.