How to Nurture Email List- A Complete Guide [Interactive Ways]

Research reveals that one of the highly used forms of content marketing for marketers is email newsletters. So if you are in this game, you must already have an email list set up. But most marketers forget that having this list is just the first step. Most don’t know how to nurture an email list. Why? Let’s try to understand!

Brands and marketers focus a lot on new prospects and subscribers. But keeping your old subscribers engaged is equally crucial, if not more.

Lead generation to final conversion is a journey and hence, your existing leads are more likely to be closer to the bottom of the sales funnel. You simply need to keep providing value to them. And this is where email nurturing comes in.

So, if you want to know more about email list nurturing, its benefits, and ways to nurture email lists, continue reading.

What Is Email Nurturing?

Email nurturing is defined as the process of fostering long-lasting relationships with your subscribers. The beauty of it is that it communicates trust by showing your customers that you value them.

As we’ve already discussed, the key is to not have the most number of subscribers, it is about having genuine and engaged subscribers. You need to show them what they are in for once they sign up with you. For this to happen, you have to nurture your email list and let them know about your business’s value offerings.

“How to nurture email list” is basically the part where you focus on the “after”. Once a user subscribes, you send them a welcome email. But what they receive after the introductory session is what is important. The email sequence you plan to send them to provide continuous value becomes the email nurturing process.

Consequently, email nurturing is a practice that helps you in turning subscribers into full-time paying customers. It also helps in building customer loyalty by assisting them to keep in touch.

Now that the concept of email nurturing is clear, let’s look into its benefits.

Want tips on creating a solid email list meanwhile? Here are 10 powerful list-building tools to help you out!

Benefits of Email Nurturing

A well-nurtured email list creates a stronger bond with your subscribers, increases brand awareness, and educates your leads about your product. Here are a few benefits of email list nurturing-

1. Improves Sales Cycles

Nurturing an email list improves sales cycles by pushing every subscriber through their buyer’s journey to become a permanent customer. Email nurturing engages, assists,  and supports its subscribers at every stage of a buyer’s journey which leads them to become paying customers. Thus, this helps improve the sales cycle.

2. Build a Connection With Your Customers

Email nurturing enforces constant communication and engagement with your customers. This helps in building a connection between you and your subscribers. The aim of email nurturing is to create a subscriber base that resonates with your company’s content and its values.

And when your customers resonate with you, a lasting relationship and connection get nurtured automatically.

3. Increases Cost Effectiveness

The greatest thing about sending out emails is that it’s extremely cost-effective. A little effort and a lot of thought that goes behind nurturing emails can pay off well in the long run. Moreover, research has shown that email marketing gives a far better ROI compared to other forms of marketing.

So, when done right, email marketing and then further nurturing your emails produce the best results at the most minimal cost.

4. Increases Chances of Conversions

Nurturing your email list involves constant engaging and re-engaging from time to time which entices the subscribers. The consistent emails act as a reminder to the subscribers about the value your company offers.

This reminder is a breaking point that increases the chances of a subscriber being converted into a customer.

In addition to this, email nurturing also ensures that all the content in your emails is relevant. This ultimately makes sure that your emails don’t end up in the spam folder.

Since the benefits of email nurturing are clear, let’s finally learn how to nurture an email list.

9 Ways of Nurturing Your Email List

Here are a few effective ways to nurture your email list.

1. Send Warm Welcome Emails

As the saying goes, the first impression is your last impression. The welcome email your subscriber receives just after signing up matters a lot. You need to make sure that you write a short, sweet email with content that’s relevant and valuable.

Welcome emails should be able to introduce you and your brand in the best way possible. Along with valuable content, consider adding a well-crafted interactive email signature to introduce yourself and grab their attention. You can generate an automated email that gives all the necessary information to every new subscriber. Also, don’t forget to give them the incentive (if any) that you promised before signing up.

Furthermore, you can add catchy phrases to introduce yourself and grab their attention. If you don’t want them to lose interest, you should set up automated emails at regular intervals that deliver unique and valuable content.

NOTE- The first few emails should always be informative, supportive, and incentivizing. Remember not to make these emails sales-pushy. Just showcase your best content, offer advice, and add as much value as possible.

Here is an example of a warm welcome email. This is a perfect blend of short, sweet, and crisp at the same time. It delivers the message without being too long or boring. It also has an interesting gameplay that makes the email out of the box, which is always appreciated in welcome emails.

Source

2. Segment Out Your Email List

Segmenting your email lists is the best way of creating a list of engaged and loyal subscribers. You can segment your subscribers based on various criteria and send them tailored emails. This ensures that they are receiving relevant content that adds value.

In other words, instead of cluttering all subscribers in one email list, prepare lists according to the different preferences and demographics, and other factors. This gives you the opportunity of sending focused messages to specified groups of people.

Segmented emails ensure that your readers are getting what they actually want. They can consume the content that they are looking for and that adds real value. The more you segment the more personalized content your subscribers will receive.

3. Personalize Your Email Content

Segmentation and personalization go hand-in-hand. Personalizing your content means delivering content that is specifically made for an individual. It eliminates the ‘spam’ factor from emails. And for this very reason, personalized emails have better open rates.

You can personalize your emails in a bunch of different ways. It can be as basic as adding a name to the greeting line, or it can be of a higher level like mentioning their purchase history. 

Including interactive content in your emails is one way of making your emails more personalized.

Moreover, personalization makes communication through emails a one-on-one thing. Since the information that goes out in a personalized email is more relevant, it generates more interest. In addition to personalizing your email content, it’s essential to consider user preferences, including how to unsubscribe from emails on Gmail. Providing clear and accessible unsubscribe options ensures that recipients have control over their email subscriptions, fostering a positive user experience and maintaining trust with your audience. By incorporating these features, personalized emails not only engage recipients but also demonstrate respect for their preferences and privacy.

Here is an example- The following example shows how you can personalize your email in a very simple way, that is, by addressing the reader by their first name. This shows that you have paid attention to detail and did not just copy-paste all your email content.

Source: Yesware

4. Engage With Interactive Content

Interactive content attracts readers to engage with your content. And since such content when embedded in your emails, makes for an added element as compared to a normal boring email, it helps in attracting and engaging a much wider audience. This further makes your nurturing process easier.

There are various interactive tools that you can use in your emails. Some of them are quizzes, calculators, giveaways, and product recommendations. These fun pieces of content will help increase the interactivity quotient of your emails and boost your conversion rates.

To make things easier for you, Outgrow has it all in one place. That’s right! With Outgrow, you can create a variety of tools that will skyrocket your marketing efforts and make your emails stand out. Apart from the above mentioned, you can also create forms, polls, assessments, and surveys for your emails.

Want to give it a shot? Learn how to create interactive content within minutes. No coding is required. Here’s a free trial sign-up for you to explore!

Let’s take the example of a calculator that you can easily embed in your email. Calculators ask a set of questions and give a logically-computed response. Using a calculator makes it easier for a prospect to weigh their options and choose accordingly.

Have a look at this calculator that helps users calculate the cost of their dream pearl necklace. As a result, they will be able to decide if it is worth buying or whether it fits their budget. A quantified result will make the decision process easier for them. This reduces efforts and hence adds value to your subscribers.

NOTE: To learn how to launch your Outgrow content in emails. Check out this blog.

Another example is from the GoDaddy newsletter. GoDaddy emails embed a quiz that allows the reader to find the ideal site builder for them. Such emails with quizzes work well in the b2b sector.

Source

Check Out: How to use interactive content

5. Make Use of Email Automation

Email automation is yet another effective strategy for nurturing your email list. It ensures timely emails are being sent to your subscribers. Moreover, email automation reduces efforts and energy by making the process of sending emails less tiresome.

One also needs to make sure that automating your emails should never mean de-personalizing them. Automation doesn’t always have to be robotic. It simply means that your message will get delivered to the right people at the right time without delays.

Automation is a smart way of nurturing your emails because it lessens your workload while you still don’t lose control over the content that gets delivered.

6. Give Special Offers and Early Access to Everything

No one likes to receive a sales pitch every time they open an email. What your subscribers want is an incentive. Rewards and special offers are the way to go about it. The more they get out of subscribing to your email, the higher their chances of converting into a customer.

The best way of nurturing your email list is by making your subscribers feel special. They should feel that they have an upper hand over the non-subscribers. This also means creating a FOMO (fear of missing out) situation for non-subscribers that can attract more people.

One way to entice your readers is by giving them early access to new product launches. Another way can be rewarding your customers for being loyal. This goes a long way in maintaining a healthy, long-lasting relationship with them.

Here is an example- The following email shows how your subscribers have ‘member-only’ benefits, which get them early access as well as special discounts and offers.

Source: Ignite Visibility

7. Don’t Just Sell, Educate Your Prospects

It is crucial for your emails to not become heavily sales-driven. Your ultimate goal is to convert subscribers into customers, but it shouldn’t seem like there is nothing in store for those who just wish to subscribe. They will unsubscribe quickly if they feel that your content is specifically tailored for those who want to buy. 

To avoid this, you should instead focus on educating your prospects and making your emails as informative as possible. They should clearly be able to understand you and your product and how the product can be useful for them.

It should further be noted that education should not just revolve around your product. Your emails should be well-rounded and give out all the necessary information that a reader would want to know before making a decision.

Furthermore, your emails should have a conversational tone and must be easy to read. Instead of focusing on sales tactics, focus on adding value to your audience with authentic content.

8. Stay Consistent With Your Email

There are no two doubts about how consistency is always the key. You need to pick the right frequency with which you are sending out your emails. Your email frequency should be somewhere around twice or thrice a week.

You don’t want to spam them with everyday emails, nor do you want to be forgotten. Besides, staying consistent with your emails also ensures that your readers look forward to them. It then becomes a habit.

Additionally, you need to be regular with your follow-up emails as well. Follow-ups act as a reminder call that could really make a difference.

9. Share Your Best Content and Success Stories

Reusing your old content that has worked well in the past is an efficient way of nurturing your email list. There is always some evergreen content that never grows old. And your new subscribers deserve to read that.

Some of your new subscribers probably signed up because of one of your recent blog posts, so make sure that they get a chance to read some of your most credited work.

Similarly, success stories work really well too. People are more likely to trust you if they see what results have other users gotten by using your products. So filter out your best clients, note the quantifiable results have they achieved, seek their approval for sharing this data, and flaunt your product!

Here is an example- The following email describes the success story of a client who used HubSpot and how it helped in the company’s growth.

Source: HubSpot Blog

Conclusion

And that’s a wrap! In this blog, we read about email nurturing and how to nurture your email lists. Of all the ways mentioned in this blog, try and test out as many as you can and see how your email marketing game improves tenfolds. See what works out best for you. You can also combine two methods to get the desired result.

One of the most popular ways of nurturing email lists is utilizing interactive content in promotional emails. So, Sign up with Outgrow’s 7-day free trial and see the magic of interactivity yourself.

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