By: Kimberly Maceda
Strike while the iron is hot. It’s an idiom which email marketers take seriously. When leads are warm and ready to purchase, we never waste a single opportunity to convert them into customers. But, what if your leads are turning cold? What now?
Why Leads Are Turning Cold and What to Do
It’s not unusual for email marketers to encounter cold leads. The question is: Why are they ghosting you in the first place? Some may be checking their options. Others are probably waiting for the right time. Or, they are too busy that they have totally forgotten about you. It happens, and it’s normal. What shouldn’t happen is missing the chance to warm them up and draw them back to the conversion path.
Thanks to the advanced features of email marketing platforms today because it’s possible for email marketers to rekindle with cold leads.
Through re-engagement campaigns, you are giving lapsed prospects new reasons to be interested in your product or service with a series of targeted emails. According to statistics, 45% of recipients who receive re-engagement emails read them.
Do these win-back strategies right. Remember, these leads don’t share a strong bond with you anymore. They wouldn’t think twice about unsubscribing, which we all know means goodbye.
- Send Apology Emails
The trick is simple. Humanize your business by adding the element of emotion. You don’t have to be guilty of something to apologize. But when you say sorry, you are reaching out to cold leads on an emotional level.
A subject line that says “I’m sorry, Anne…” can create curiosity and catch attention, which can lead to opens. Use your creativity to think of any reason for the apology and then segue to an offer to make up for it.
For instance, you can say “We noticed that you haven’t been clicking our emails lately. Is it something that we did? We’re sorry if that’s the case. Let us make it up to you with a 30% discount on your next purchase!”
- Say You Miss Them
Just like your apology emails, expressing how much you miss your cold leads shows that you care about your relationship. It can make them realize the lost connection and feel the need to keep it alive again.
You can start with, “It’s been months since we’ve seen you in our site, and we miss you already!” From here, show them the things that they missed while they are away, or you can go straight to a great offer by saying “We have a feeling that you miss us, too. So, we are giving you free shipping on your next order!”
Showing your warmth and thoughtfulness as a business can reignite the fire in your cold relationship.
- Ask their Opinion
People, in general, like giving their two cents, and as email marketers, it’s important for us to hear what our customers think about us.
With a survey email, you are hitting two birds with one stone. You can get the opinion of cold leads about your new products, customer service, promos and more while re-engaging them with your business. It’s also a good thing that many sophisticated email marketing platforms today offer this feature.
Survey emails show that you recognize what cold leads have to say, and they will appreciate your effort to listen to them. You can even use the information from the survey to improve your product and service or guide your next marketing strategy.
Don’t forget to incentivize this with discounts or freebies to give them enough motivation to answer your questions.
- Hyper-Personalize your Marketing
It’s possible that leads have become disengaged because your emails are not targeted and personalized well. Today, addressing leads with their first name on the subject line and other basic personalization tactics are not enough. If you want to up your game, you need to hyper-personalize.
Using the personalization feature of our email marketing platform, use your customer data to create dynamic email content specifically tailored to cold leads. Here, you can increase the relevancy of your email with a single campaign that will show different images to recipients depending on their age or gender.
Segment your cold leads to hyper-personalize your emails. For instance, you can offer free shipping to cold leads based in New York or any city you prefer. This does not only make your offer relevant but special, too.
- Give Exclusive Offers and Big Discounts
In previous strategies, we mentioned about giving discounts and free shipping to make your re-engagement email more attractive. But sometimes, enticing discounts do not appeal to cold leads when you first send it to them. If this happens, try to get back to them with bigger discounts that are hard to refuse.
If you are offering a service instead of material things, you can offer free trials or consultations so that they could experience a glimpse of what you have for them. If it turns out well, then you can expect a conversion!
- Create a Disengagement Campaign
If all else fails, then a goodbye email is your last shot. Break up with your cold leads to make them stay. Sounds ironic? Try this.
Send them with a goodbye message that says “We noticed that you have been cold to us for the past months. In the next seven days, we will be cleaning up our database. Should we remove you from our email list? If not, click here to let us know that you still want to be in touch.”
If there’s no response, do what you promised. Delete them from your contact list in your email marketing platform. After all, you don’t want dead email subscribers to bring negative impact on your deliverability and bounce rates.
As an email marketer, keeping your leads engaged is your responsibility. Do not wait for them to go stale. Use your email marketing platform to nurture them with email campaigns that are targeted, personalized and relevant to their needs and interests. If, however, they disengage, do not let go immediately. Carry out your re-engagement email campaigns to ensure that they will keep in touch and interact with your business. Email marketers should not be quitters, and neither are you.
Author Bio:
Kimberly Maceda is a Content Writer for ActiveTrail. She comes up with brilliant content about email marketing and marketing automation to keep customers updated with the trends. For Kimmy, it’s Bring Your Dog to Work Day almost every day.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/activekimberly/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/activekimberly
