On a past thread, we discussed some of the ways that workflows can trigger your team internally. You can use them to automate data clean up or to trigger notifications to your sales team.
Now, let’s discuss ways you can use workflows to engage your leads and customers.
For example, one of my all-time favorite ways to use workflows is to re-engage leads that have abandoned their shopping cart.
The concept here is simple: When someone adds an item to their online shopping cart but leaves your site without completing the purchase, you can trigger an email workflow that reminds them of their forgotten purchase and motivates them to Live the transaction by offering a special discount code or some other incentive to buy.
That’s my favorite use workflows! How are you currently using yours? Sound off in the comments below.
Do you also contact 'no shows'? Maybe to ask if there was a problem accessing the event? Anything we can do to make joining easier? Would they like to be kept informed about similar events in future?
My favorite type of lead nurturing workflow is personalized birthday emails. These emails provide discounts or free items to people as a "gift" that entices them to buy the product or redeem that product for being a part of the company's loyalty program.
One example of a lead nurtuing workflow is event follow-ups. After attending a live webinar, conference or any event hosted by a brand, leads recieves emails thanking the for attending and in these emails, there are additional information/resources related to the topics.
Feb 26, 20249:11 AM - edited Feb 26, 20249:19 AM
Contributor
Examples of Lead Nurturing Workflows
My favorite workflow is targeted content. Because it shows which are the most effective channels for reaching customers and approaching them according to the approach appropriate to their profile.
Sometimes users sign up for a free trial of a product & drop off without actually using it or using it only once. Such users can nurtured through automated workflows to initiate product usage & in turn product adoption. this is a constructive way ot moving the audience/user through the funnel towards a buying decision.
One example of a lead nurturing workflow is a welcome series for new subscribers. This automated email sequence introduces your brand, provides valuable content, and offers exclusive deals over time to build a relationship with subscribers and encourage further engagement.
This recommendation may appear seemingly complex, but is a good example of setting up workflow for an automated lead routing/nurture based on a specific set of actions (think of engaged, opens, clicks, conversions).
Each action will have a score assigned to a contact. 5 pts for any opens, visits, 10 pts for clicks, 15 pts for form fills. These can be adjusted based on interaction by content type. For instance, visit to a blog post can be 5 pts where as a solution or a case study page can score 10 pts. Similarly downloading a TOFU whitepaper assigns 15 pts and a solution webinar at 25 pts.
Each automated email setup in your Marketing Automation will have certain properties tied to it. If you’re planning to send a link to a recorded thought leadership webinar invite, the property can be tied to contact type = lead, score = 15 pts, country = United States, title = (contains) Finance, Chief, President, etc.
Ensure each email or interaction you’re automating whether its an email or a retargeting banner ad or a paid social post has all the properties correctly identified. This will help in routing accuracy and a streamlined automation process.
Since the lead score is dynamic and a key field to automate the routing, ensure this is tracked on a daily basis on new contacts that meet a certain threshold and have received an automated communication.
Automating follow-ups and engagement with the leads can be done initially with three touch points and later on expanded to five touch points. This will ensure that your not introducing communication fatigue to your audience which can lead to irritation or unsubscribes.
Also, while automation is great, any new announcement, or time sensitive critical message that is part of a new marketing campaign should allow removing contacts from the automated stream. Remember the right contact, to the right message at the right time? Sometimes automation can result excluding the contacts, since they are already included in some nurture blocking them as potential leads for a new campaign.
Lead nurturing for users abandoning forms after the 1st level of Sign-ups for Free Trials. This one is for lil complex products where a basis contact form is not enough to get the user started. They often drop off with out filling in details like address / tax id number etc. This was a life saver for me.
I think a lot of workflows function really well as prompts to a customer - sending a birthday email with an offer (which places like Starbucks are really good at doing!), a welcome email if someone has subscribed to a newsletter/loyalty program etc, a reminder email if someone added something to their cart but didn't check out, etc. It's personalized and it also either drives the lead back to the website or back into the physical location to make a purchase.
targeted content to users after having completed a special nurturing (customer journey)
Workflows are a great tool for steamlining marketing activities and to personalize actions for dedicated customer lists. They may benefit each company to reach marketing and sales goals.
The classic workflow is a welcome email. Contacts either a)subscribe or b) make a purchase, you automate an email to establish brand loyalty and set expectations for the value your brand/product offers.
An example: whitepaper download triggers topic-specific content from the company, like news, blogs, webinars. After two-three with good engagement, we send the Schedule a demo/call with our experts.
If your company has online content for each stage of the buyer's journey, it's interesting to create workflows based on this information and to trigger an email offer (e.g. a free and specialised meeting with a product expert) when the lead's behaviour shows real interest in a product/service by consuming 2 or 3 related pieces of content, especially those from the last stages of the buyer's journey (consideration, decision).
It is very helpful to create automation sequence to get reminded of all prospects who have responded to intro call requests and can select the best time through calendars.