Is it the role of your company’s salespeople to convert fresh leads into customers?

If that’s the case, it’s an unpleasant reality that more than half of all leads produced by firms are qualified but not yet ready to purchase.

So, what should you do with those leads? You’ve spent important time and money acquiring them, so you must act. Email marketing is the best option.

Using the fake carpet cleaning firm as an example, let’s take a look at how each email may appear.

The educational email

The first email in the series should only provide helpful information to your leads.

Because they’ve indicated an interest in carpet cleaning services, it’s reasonable to presume they’d want to have their carpets looking like new again.

Sending them an email with a link to a blog article on six methods to make their carpet appear brand new is the ideal approach to engage them.

By giving them with useful information about your company’s area of expertise, you create a feeling of authority around your brand, demonstrating to prospective clients that you know a lot about making carpets look amazing.

The faulty email

The second email in the series should continue to provide helpful information, but this time your objective should be to educate leads on why the issue they came to you about is worthwhile to solve.

A link to an article on the hazards of not routinely cleaning your carpet and the risks this presents to your family’s health would be a suitable example for our imaginary carpet cleaning firm.

This email, although still instructive, shows your leads why their issue is essential and creates a feeling of urgency that motivates them to seek a solution.

The email solution

Now that you’ve persuaded your leads that their issue is significant and worth addressing, it’s time to persuade them that your product or service is the solution.

It would be a fantastic moment for our fake carpet cleaning company to send leads a link to an article about the benefits of employing professional carpet cleaning services versus doing it yourself.

Although still instructive, this email persuades your leads that they need a professional service like yours and prompts them to consider who the best source would be.

The case study email

Now that you’ve shown to leads that their issue is significant and that they need a good solution, it’s time to demonstrate that you’re the perfect supplier for them.

This email, together with the feeling of expertise you’ve developed around your business by delivering instructional information on a regular basis, should give your leads trust in your company and push them to reply to your quotation and acquire your services.

The Hail Mary email

If you haven’t persuaded your leads to buy at this point in the series, your odds of converting them are looking bleak. It’s possible that the Hail Mary pass is in order. This involves giving a last-ditch inducement like 20% off the advertised price to push them over the line.

Although this may cut your margins somewhat, this is the last email in the series and, most likely, your final opportunity to convert them into a client, so it’s usually better to get them at a little reduced rate than not get them at all.

Conclusion

If your company gains new clients by generating leads and having salespeople give quotations and close them, it’s a sad reality of life that half of those leads will not be ready to buy right now.

However, by establishing an automatic sequence of emails that educates leads on the relevance of their issue and why your company is best positioned to address it, you may be able to convert some of those leads into customers over time.

So, today, build up an interface between your email marketing software and your CRM or website, and begin sending this automatic email series to increase your company.