Email has long been a cornerstone of campaigns for B2B veterinary marketers, and it still is. But today, we have the tools to do email better and can say goodbye to mass mailings (aka the spray and pray approach). So, let’s look at how you can use email automation to send targeted and personalized messages that nurture prospects at each stage of their buyer’s journey and beyond!
What Are Email Nurturing Sequences?
Whether called drip campaigns, email workflows, nurture campaigns, or email nurturing sequences, the meaning is the same: an automated series of emails sent from your marketing automation platform when prospects meet enrollment criteria.
Primarily used in 3 scenarios:
1. With Prospects
To progress potential customers through their current buying stage and prepare them for the next step in their purchase journey
2. With Customers
To help with post-sale onboarding, collecting feedback, upselling/cross-selling, or renewal/reorder campaigns
3. With Short-Term Campaigns
To support short-term campaigns such as educational courses, live events, or product launches
Tips for Crafting and Managing Automated Emails
We’ve got some must-have email nurture sequences below, but first, a few pointers for getting the message right and keeping your automated emails organized.
Document your automated emails.
Keeping a record of your emails will help you quickly and easily communicate with internal stakeholders, audit sequences, and get team members up to speed.
Suppression lists are as important as inclusion lists.
When implementing enrollment triggers for automation, protect prospects from being enrolled in multiple campaigns simultaneously. Also, consider your customer and whether educational content is preferable to a post-webinar nurture series. If so, suppress these customers as well.
Check in regularly.
You can’t “set it and forget it” with your automated sequences. You will still need to monitor performance continually to ensure no deliverability errors.
Use personalization tokens.
Include the recipient name, city, state, and clinic name in your automated email to stand out in inboxes. Just make sure the data you plan to use for personalization is clean.
Make emails short.
Nurturing emails should be simple, easy to read, and give readers one CTA.
Make sequences as long as they need to be.
Whether it’s 3 emails or 30, your sequence must answer all of the recipient’s questions to move them to the next stage of their journey. Aim for a comfortable cadence that feels natural and emails that don’t rely on prior emails to make sense.
Decide who the email is from.
Will your message come from the voice of a sales representative to give it a one-on-one feel? In this case, the tone and style will differ from your corporate marketing emails.
Include the CTA!
It seems obvious, but tell the recipient what you want them to do, so they’ll do it!
Add the personal touch.
Even leads nurtured via email need personal follow-up. Use your marketing automation system to assign your team follow-up tasks.
1. Welcome
Stage of Sales Funnel: Top
This sequence is best when short and of high value. The most common use case of his sequence is newsletter subscribers. After the subscriber fills out the form, tell them to check their inbox for their first email. The faster they mark you as a safe sender, the more likely your future emails will land in the proper inbox.
2. Website Engagement
Stage of Sales Funnel: Top
An engagement sequence can be set in motion by a trigger of your choosing, such as a visit to a web page, or an article page. For example, if a prospect visits a high-value product or education page, enroll them in a sequence with important product information and CTAs to schedule a meeting or a demonstration.
The catch? You can only email visitors with email addresses in your database. Use pop-ups to capture visitor email addresses before they leave to increase the number of known visitors you can nurture.
Set your pop-up forms for website exit intent and invite visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Don’t ask for too much on these forms. Typically they only require a name and email address. You can fill in the blanks later when you nurture these top-of-funnel subscribers.
A Note on 1-Email Sequences
An email sent in real time to visitors who leave your page before submitting a conversion form can have impressive results. These are commonly used for “demo request” or “contact us” pages.
For e-commerce, these principles should also be applied for abandoned cart email sequences to re-engage shoppers and encourage them to check out.
3. Education Follow-Up
Stage of Sales Funnel: Top
Many B2B veterinary marketers use education for lead generation. Whether you’ve deployed a webinar, e-book, or survey, follow up with an email nurturing sequence that includes additional, synergistic content. Share articles, videos, and case studies throughout 2 or 3 emails and include a CTA that drives them to the next stage of the buying journey.
4. Lead Nurturing by Lifecycle Stage
Stage of Sales Funnel: Various
Leads typically follow standard lifecycle stages that may include subscriber, lead, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, etc. Evergreen email nurturing sequences can be useful for supporting prospects with content as they progress along each stage of the lifecycle.
For example, we may seek to upgrade leads into marketing-qualified leads by getting them to download content or engage with a high-value article. Deploying a sequence to leads that invites them to consume this content can progress them through the pipeline.
Engagement Pro Tip
Include self-serve calendar booking links in your emails to streamline meeting or demonstration bookings. These links allow veterinarians to select the meeting time, eliminating the back-and-forth phone calls and emails with your team.
5. Event-Driven
Stage of Sales Funnel: Top/Middle
After a live event like VMX or WVC, use an email nurturing sequence to engage the leads you scanned at your booth. If you take good notes in the lead scanner at the event, you can easily hand off sales-ready leads.
6. Re-Engagement
Stage of Sales Funnel: Various
Reignite the interest of inactive prospects and customers with a re-engagement email sequence. Give them eye-catching subject lines and possibly an option to break up.
7. Open Opportunity Support
Stage of Sales Funnel: Bottom
These sequences support sales with bottom-of-funnel email nurturing content for open deals and can include testimonials, case studies, and success stories.
Pro Tip: These are most effective with good CRM data hygiene.
8. Customer Onboarding
Stage of Sales Funnel: Post-Sale
These sequences help new customers with product implementation and commonly run between 30-90 days post-sale.
9. Upsell/Cross-Sell
Stage of Sales Funnel: Bottom
Many product portfolios have opportunities for additional sales for current customers after a certain amount of time has passed since their initial purchase. Consider an email sequence offering customer-loyalty coupons or discounts to drive conversions.
10. Renewal or Reorder
Stage of Sales Funnel: Bottom
Renewal and reorder email automation ensures customers receive proactive outreach to continue using your product. These sequences are particularly important for consumable products.
11. Competitive Swap
Stage of Sales Funnel: Middle
A competitive trade-in sequence (ideally, with self-serve calendar booking links) can educate prospects on how your product is better than your competitor’s service or product.
12. Feedback
Stage of Sales Funnel: Various
A feedback sequence is perfect post-sale or after a live event or sales meeting. Then, add follow-up options based on the feedback you collect. For example, if someone is a big fan, ask them for a testimonial. If someone is unhappy, create a task for a customer service rep to reach out personally. This can be a powerful tool for spotting customer service issues in real time.
Start Generating and Nurturing Leads
The VetMedux team can help you generate and nurture leads from nose to tail! Add nurturing content to your next Clinician’s Brief campaign to warm leads and prepare them for a sales conversation. Contact us today to get started.