The Insiders Guide To Lead Nurturing

Last updated on October 18th, 2025 at 07:17 am

Do you want to maximize on a number of leads you currently receive to increase ROI?

Do you want to know everything there is to know about lead nurturing to achieve this?

This is the complete insider’s guide to lead nurturing.

Aka. “warming” your list.

Strangers to your website and brand don’t become paying customers straight away.

With the amount of information available on the internet now, people can do a lot of research themselves and don’t have to rely so much on the information you give them.

Because of this, you need to have a well-researched lead nurturing strategy in place to remain in constant communication with leads and reassure them that you have the solution to their problem and can help them achieve their goals.

What is Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is all about building relationships with leads even if they aren’t ready to buy just yet.

Businesses do this to build trust and reassurance with leads so that when they do decide it is time to buy, the first brand they will think of is the brand that has been in continuous communication with them.

Lead nurturing is just one part of the online marketing sphere but will help to increase ROI by maximizing on a number of leads you currently receive.

Why You Need to Warm Your Leads

Here are a few main points as to why your business needs a lead nurturing strategy in place:

1. Immediate Contact – A study done by InsideSales found that 35% to 50% of sales go to the business that responds first after the lead submitted an inquiry form.
2. Building Trust – People only do business with those they feel they can trust and are the best at what they do. With lead nurturing, you can show them that you are truly an expert in your field.
3. Continuous Communication – The longer leads remain in the funnel; the less likely they will convert. A study done by Genius found that 66% of buyers said that consistent and relevant communication was a key influence in their buying decision.
4. Identify Pain Points – By being in continuous communication with leads, you will get to learn a lot about them including their pain points. This information can be provided to your sales team to they know how to trigger emotion and offer a personalized solution.
5. Maintain Interest – You will know if leads have stopped visiting your website and if they have, you can contact them to remind them about your business.

The Lead Nurturing Strategy

Now that you know what lead nurturing is and why it is relevant to your company, you need to create a lead nurturing strategy.

Keep in mind when planning the strategy, what lead nurturing is for; to keep prospects engaged and interested and to hold their hand while they travel down the sales funnel and become a paying customer.

What are Your Goals?

Every business is different and so think about it is you want to achieve through lead nurturing.

To set a benchmark to use later to calculate performance, take note of your current lead management process, lead to conversion rates and how long it takes for leads to becoming paying customers.

You will also need to plan your lead nurturing strategy around the following:

1. Where your leads originated from and how many leads you generate per month. This will help you decide the scale of the process.
2. How many different services and products you have will determine how you segment your lead nurturing strategy.
3. Knowing the differences between leads such as job role and company size, will help you determine the different messaging needed.

So this is important.

It’s not just technobabble.

Every time a new lead enters your world, whether you’re selling a membership site, driving traffic to a CPA offer or your next webinar you should know exactly where they came from.

Which landing page.

Which traffic source.

Everything.

What Leads to Nurture

The leads you want to nurture are those that have showed buying behavior even if they aren’t ready to buy.

The best thing to do is sit with you marketing team and sales team and talk about who would be the perfect lead.

Write down the definition that both teams have agreed on which you can then add to or take away from as time goes on.

Use Lead Scoring to Differentiate Leads

Once you have decided with the marketing team and sales team what the definition of a good lead is, you can then set rules for a marketing automation system.

The marketing automation system will then use these rules to score leads out of 5.

You can score leads based on demographics, behaviors and buying stages.

You can use this scoring system to identify which leads will stay with the marketing team to nurture and which leads will be passed to the sales team to close the deal.

Lead Nurturing Across Multiple Channels

Think about how you use different channels in one single objective.

For example, I may see an ad on social media which will take me to the website where I complete a form to download the guide that I will then receive by email.

In one movement I have gone through 3 different channels all in a short space.

People nowadays bounce from offline and online channels when something piques their interest, or they’re hunting for information.

Using Multiple Channels to Nurture Leads

There are some different online and offline channels you to think about communicating through when building your lead nurturing strategy.

Here are some of those channels:

1. Website – Your website is where your leads became leads and so it makes a great choice to continue the conversation through. You can do this by providing personalized content on your website based on lead’s attributes.
2. Retargeting – You can continue to nurture leads as they browse the web by using retargeting pixels to display ads to them.
3. Social – Respond to tweets, messages on Facebook and comments on Instagram to carry on building a relationship with your audience and leads.
4. Direct Mail – While the majority of your lead nurturing will be done through emails, people receive a ton of emails but not that much post so consider adding a personable touch by sending direct mail.
5. Phone Call – Never underestimate the power of a simple phone call. Your sales team can speak directly to leads, offering solutions and giving the advice to continue building the relationship and trust.

Using Content to Nurture Leads

To nurture leads, you need content to direct them down a path you want them to take.

It is important when creating content that you make it personable so prospects can connect with it.

You can make content personable by adding a bit of humor, dropping the corporate speak, use real-life references and don’t take yourself too seriously.

The aim of the game with content is to carry on building relationships with prospects by telling stories of experiences, telling them of struggles and how you overcame them and gave advice and tips to help them.

What Types of Content to Use

There are some different types of content you can use for lead nurturing which are:

1. Unique Content – This is content you create that you can put your stamp on. It will have unique data or advice and will influence prospects and visitors to keep coming back to you for advice.
2. Curation – Lead nurturing is all about building relationships with prospect and to do this, you will need to be in constant communication. You don’t always have to send content that you have done; you can also send curated content that has been collected from other sources.
3. User Generated – A good form of content is user generated content. I spoke about making content personable, and this will do just that. You can send them a Twitter poll you ran, testimonials and reviews.

Continually Test and Optimize

One of the main factors in making any lead strategy work is to test continually and optimize it.

You want to set benchmarks and monitor how messages work, what type of content works, what time of day emails are best being sent and whether the nurturing time shortens with time.

Using a marketing automation system like Actionetics will give you all the insights you need to do just that with very friendly and visual reporting.

Why Testing is Important

There is always room for improvement which is why you should never stop testing and optimizing your lead nurturing strategy.

Here are few things you should be testing:

1. How often you communicate with prospects (follow up within the hour they fill in a form vs. the next day).
2. The conversion path that leads to higher conversion rates (traffic source and funnel)
3. What content types lead to more conversions (traffic source 1 vs. traffic source 2)
4. What method of communication works best in building relationships?
5. Which email designs and structure such as subject lines, wording, and visuals

When testing, make sure that you test each version at the same time, for the same period and to the same target audience.

You want to make sure your split tests are proven with data at scale (or with as much time allowed as possible to get a fair and accurate result).

The Main Reason for Lead Nurturing…

Lead nurturing is all about building relationships with your prospects through personalized communication and not about sending the same email to all your contacts with no real focus or personalization.

Use the tools available to you regarding automation to give a tailored and personal experience to each lead that enters your funnel.

 Is something stopping you from building a lead nurturing strategy? Where do you struggle with lead nurturing the most?

Share your stories, thoughts and ideas by leaving your comments below.

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