Lead Nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with leads over time through a series of targeted, personalised communications. The goal of nurturing is to move leads further down the conversion funnel, and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
It typically involves a combination of automated and manual communication, such as email campaigns, personalised follow-up calls, and targeted content. The communication is designed to educate and engage leads and to provide them with information that will help them make a purchase decision.
Lead Nurturing in the Education Industry
Lead Nurturing is crucial for educational organisations as it helps them to keep their prospective learners and students engaged over time. It allows them to build trust and provides them with the information that bolsters their decision to pursue a course, a program or join the institution.
It also helps in identifying leads that may need additional nurturing before they are ready to get enrolled, and creates targeted, personalised follow-up campaigns that can help move leads further down the conversion funnel.
Here’s how it helps scale enrolments in a number of ways:
- Increased Conversion Rates: Increasing the likelihood of converting leads into learners and students by building trust and providing relevant information over time
- Improved Customer Relationships: Establish long-term relationships with leads, which can result in repeat business like it happens in the Ed-Tech industry
- Reduced Conversion Cycle: It can help to move leads further down the conversion funnel, reducing the time it takes to convert a lead
- Better Targeting: It allows educational organisations to segment and target specific groups of leads with personalised content, increasing the effectiveness of marketing efforts
- Cost-effective: Lead nurturing is a cost-effective way to generate new business and retain existing customers, as it often requires fewer resources than traditional sales methods.
- Qualification of Leads: Allowing one to qualify the leads based on their engagement, behaviour and demographics, leading to more qualified leads and better ROI.
Using a CRM for Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is a very crucial process for the educational educational institutions to boost their enrolment for an admission cycle. Owing to greater competition, institutes now have to inculcate ways that can help them ace the nurturing game smartly.
Here are some ways to efficiently nurture leads using a CRM:
- Segmentation: Segment leads based on demographics, behaviour, and engagement. This allows institutions to create targeted, personalised follow-up campaigns that are more likely to be successful.
- Lead Scoring: Assigning numerical values to leads based on factors such as demographics, behaviour, and engagement. This allows institutions to prioritise leads based on their likelihood of becoming paying students.
While most CRMs offer Lead Scoring, Meritto’ Education CRM also empowers educational organisations with Lead Strength, an industry-first feature that shares the relative intent of the prospect compared to the pool of enquiries so you know whom to reach out first.
- Automated Communications: Use the CRM system to automate communication with leads through email campaigns, personalised follow-up calls, and targeted content. This helps to keep leads engaged and interested over time.
- Personalised follow-up: Lead nurturing works wonders when done with personalisation. The CRM system adds relevant information to personalise follow-up with leads and provides them with information that will help them make a decision to enrol.
- Analytics and Reporting: Use the CRM system’s reporting and analytics capabilities to track lead engagement, conversion rates, and other key metrics. This can help institutions to identify areas where they can improve their nurturing efforts.
- Integrated Marketing Automation: Marketing Automation capabilities of the CRM enables you to nurture leads through targeted campaigns, automated workflows and lead scoring.
6 Effective Ways to Nurture Leads
There are several effective lead nurturing methods that can be used in the education industry, including:
- Personalized communication: Nurture leads by sending targeted and personalized communications that address their specific interests and needs. This can be done through email campaigns, text messages, or even direct mail.
- Webinars and events: Hosting webinars and events that provide valuable information and resources can help nurture leads and build trust with potential students and their families. This can be in form of online open houses, virtual tours and live Q&A sessions.
- Content marketing: Develop and share helpful content, such as whitepapers, eBooks, and blog posts, that address common questions and concerns of prospective students and their families. This can help establish your institution as a thought leader in the industry and build trust with leads.
- Lead scoring and segmentation: Use lead scoring and segmentation to identify the most promising leads and tailor your communications accordingly. This can help you prioritize your efforts and focus on the leads that are most likely to convert.
- Multi-channel approach: Use a variety of channels to reach leads, such as email, social media, SMS, and phone calls. This can help increase the chances of connecting with leads and increase the effectiveness of your lead nurturing efforts.
- Retargeting: Use retargeting to reach leads that have previously interacted with your institution’s website or social media pages, this will help to keep your institution at the forefront of their mind and increase the chances of conversion.
If you’re looking to begin, Meritto is the place for you to be! The reason? It offers a purpose-built solution for effective Lead Nurturing process and everything around it.
