Why do people sign up for your email lists? Before you ever start writing a lead nurture campaign, you need to answer to this question.
Relevancy is one of the most important factors to consider when emailing your list. You need to consider why your subscribers signed up, and what kind of content they’re interested in whenever you craft a message. If you don’t do this, you’re buying a ticket to:
- Inactive subscribers who ignore everything else you send
- Unsubscribes
- Spam complaints
But it’s not enough to just start a lead nurture campaign with one unique email, then follow up with generic messaging from your copy deck or brand guide. Every email in your campaign needs to be crafted with a specific audience in mind.
Consistent messaging tailored to a specific audience helps your campaign become more effective—instead of more annoying—over time.
Over the days, weeks, or months that follow that first welcome email, the impact of consistent messaging builds. Instead of starting from scratch with every send, your emails work together and recall the previous ones. By the time that final email arrives in their inbox, your subscribers will feel the full momentum of all the ways your product or service addresses their unique needs.
Let’s unpack that a bit.
The problem or aspiration needs to be consistent
Suppose people signed up for your email list to download a free resource about how to engage millennials. “Engaging millennials” becomes the scaffolding for your lead nurture campaign.
Presumably, you took the time to write and produce this free resource because it:
- Addresses a need within your target audience.
- Overlaps with the products or services your organization provides.
You might also be able to help your audience engage other demographics–or do something totally different. But that’s irrelevant to the people who signed up to learn about engaging millennials. For your message to be most effective, everything you communicate about your organization should tie into this concept of engaging millennials.
That’s not to say you can’t ever tell your subscribers about the other problems you could help them solve. But that can wait until you’ve exhausted all your areas of overlap with the primary aspiration or problem that got them on your list in the first place.
In an ideal lead nurture campaign, your emails work together, like a choir. Every new email harmonizes with the ones that started before it, singing the same song—a song your subscribers requested when they came to your concert.
But if your messaging changes with every email, your campaign is just a series of solos, clambering for attention over the cacophony of their competing messages.
Your brand voice needs to be consistent
Imagine you just started dating someone, and on the first date they meet you at the restaurant in a tux or a cocktail dress. On the second date, they show up to dinner in dinosaur footie pajamas. Even without drastic changes in personality and context, you’re suddenly unsure if you’re dating the same person.
Your new leads are just getting to know your brand. They haven’t figured out what you sound like yet, or what the dress code is. But that first email they receive from you should bring to mind the voice, style, and design they experienced on your landing page, your blog, or wherever they first encountered your brand. And every email that comes after needs to fit within that voice.
Each lead nurture campaign should have original content that addresses the specific reasons people signed up for your list. But regardless of why, how, or where people sign up, your voice should remain the same, even when the messaging is unique.
So review your nurture campaigns. Are the offers in your campaign consistent with the reasons people signed up? Is your brand voice consistent from the first email to the last?
Consistent messaging and consistent voice ensure that every new subscriber ends your campaign with a clear understanding of who you are, what you do, and how their aspirations and challenges align with your solutions.
