The Lost Art of Customer Nurturing: How To Nurture Customers the Right Way, For Long-Term Profits

We live in a busy world. Unfortunately, that means brands have to compete now more than ever to catch the attention of potential customers. With eCommerce, this is even more challenging because you aren’t working face-to-face on an individual selling basis.

Instead, companies have to adopt what’s referred to as a nurture strategy. Here’s what you need to know about the approach and why it is so important.

What is a Customer Nurturing Strategy?

A customer nurturing strategy is exactly what it sounds like: it is continuously making an effort to reach out and virtually touch a client through informative and engaging marketing material.

Whew. That’s a mouthful, right? What nurturing really comes down to is the lost art of building a relationship between your brand and the mind of your customer. It means taking that extra time to acknowledge their wants, needs, and desires in a way that makes your brand the top one they think of next time they are in the market for the type of products you offer.

Furthermore, it also means understanding the various points of a customer’s journey with your brand and tailoring content according to their needs. For example, you might send out an email to those who were once active on your site or clicked through on a message but never purchased. Likewise, you might have a separate email for those who purchase in the past and haven’t bought anything in the last six months.

The main point to remember here is that you want to re-engage the customer at whatever step in the process they’re at and try to get them to convert for the first time or as a repeat buyer.

How to Nurture Your Customers the Right Way

Unlike some marketing efforts, there really is a right way to handle nurturing communication. First, you want to make sure you aren’t bombarding them with pressure to buy. Instead, share content and ask for opinions. Create campaigns that engage them in the process of your company. Or simply share advice or information for your general industry without expecting them to purchase. As an example, a clothing company might offer seasonal fashion tips to customers via an email list.

Next, try to anticipate your customer’s needs and tailor your content to those needs—not just their purchasing habits. This act of being helpful nurtures customers into long-term buyers, strengthening your overall brand, and increasing loyalty. It also positions you as an industry expert, which is helpful the next time you want to launch a new line or expand your product offerings. As an example, a skincare brand may send information on moisturizing products during the dry winter season.

Utilizing Email Segmentation for Best Engagement

However, one more thing you need to remember when planning a nurture campaign is email segmentation. In a perfect world, you should be able to segment your list into groups that consist of:

Those who last visited the website within ninety days but abandoned their cart.
Those who made a purchase in the last ninety days.
Customers who only placed one order.
Customers who engage with your brand frequently and make a purchase.
Customers who haven’t engaged at all since making a single purchase.

These are just examples, but they give you a good idea of the different types of people you want to target. It is also important to make sure your email marketing software is set up correctly to keep duplicates from going out and that once a customer falls into a new category that their segmentation is updated.

From there, you want to tailor content around how they’ve interacted with the company to date. For example, if they haven’t opened an email in a period of time, it might be a good idea to craft a special offer with a super eye-catching subject line.

How to Determine If Your Nurture Campaign is Successful

There are numerous ways to determine if your nurture efforts are successful. The first is to look at open rates over the period in which you’ve attempted the campaign. Are more people noticing your headlines and reading those messages? If not, it might be time to go back to the drawing board and figure out why the steps you are taking aren’t working.

Another aspect to look at is the number of sales. Are you seeing a spike after a nurture email has gone out? Remember, a nurture campaign centers around engaging content and not just special offers or a product push. Make sure to keep that in mind when analyzing your sales data.

What’s the Best That Could Happen?

Here at CAKE, we like to keep things positive. Instead of thinking about the worst that could happen if you engage in a nurture campaign, we want to think about the best thing that could happen. Here are a few potential examples:

You could increase your brand recognition by growing the number of loyal followers via email marketing and social media.
Your brand could become synonymous with the type of item you sell and not just individual product offerings.
Overall sales could increase with larger overall revenues.
You could retain customers who purchased in the past but forgot about your website due to lack of touch.
Nurturing campaigns can get people to return back to your site, thus fueling your remarketing efforts.

And that’s just the frosting on top when it comes to starting a customer nurture campaign. Our team at CAKE firmly believes these benefits are the foundation of a strong multi-tiered marketing experience.

Mixing Up the Ingredients for a Great Nurture Campaign

Now that you know the recipe for a great nurture campaign, it is time to start putting it all together. You can either spend the time doing this in-house or you can trust an expert to get the job done. (Hint: Our CAKE team has boatloads of experience with nurturing customers. Just look at how often you receive information from us!)

Are you ready to learn more? Please get in touch with our CAKE team today to discuss the needs of your eCommerce brand.