Lead Nurturing Best Practices to Connect You With Clients and Win Business

Lead nurturing doesn’t have to be tedious or time consuming to be effective. And you don’t have to break the bank to make meaningful connections that lead to life-long customers who love your business. You can maintain current client relationships, build new ones and ensure that you remain fully engaged and aware of client needs when you introduce just a few of these lead nurturing examples into your everyday business practices.

Traditional lead nurturing practices left a lot to chance when it came to client insights and relationships. While options like advertising on bus benches, in newspapers and cold calling were leading strategies fifty years ago, technology now offers so much more when it comes to interacting and building client relationships. Plus, the opportunity to gain customer insights, rather than simply blanket potential customers with one-size-fits-all advertisements, is game changing.

The New Lead Nurturing Landscape

Today’s customers want to know that businesses have taken the time to get to know them rather than simply give them a one-size-fits-all solution. Modern and effective lead nurturing tools will help you deliver personalized, planned and timely interactions that are intentional and focused on specific customer needs and preferences. By strengthening customer relationships and building relationships with effective business-to-business lead nurturing, you’ll make your outreach easier and more streamlined—and you’ll have more impactful, meaningful customer interactions.

When customers see that you are in the habit of sending them only valuable information and correspondence they look forward to, they’ll go out of their way to open your mail (snail and electronic) first every single time.

Customer Outreach That Works

Hallmark Business Connections is committed to helping businesses build and strengthen client relationships and connect in more personal ways. By adding emotion to your business interactions, you’ll engage more clients, improve retention and boost overall business results. Ready for some of our favorite ways to connect with clients?

Plan a few of these powerful ways to connect, and you’ll see relationships solidify and sales soar:

Share your expertise and thought leadership. If you publish a regular blog, industry articles or guest publications, be sure to share the links with your business connections. You can either share a link in your next correspondence for a subject-specific article that certain clients may find of interest or share a page link that will connect leads to your continuously updated site. Thought leadership articles are a great way to share your expertise in a specific area, and they can be reassuring to potential clients that are considering your business.

Stay in touch … on big days, small days, all their important days. Hallmark Business Connections has you covered with greeting cards for just about every occasion that customers might be celebrating or observing. From Birthday Cards to Wedding and Anniversary Cards to Encouragement Card Packs that let customers know you’re thinking about them during difficult times, when you stock up, you’ll always have the right greeting card on hand to drop in the mail. And a Hallmark card is always the first thing that gets noticed—and opened—in everyone’s stack of mail!

Differentiate yourself with automation. Many businesses haven’t figured out that there’s a strong personal connection between customers and the businesses they select. Making a personal connection with clients is invaluable, and sending greeting cards on special days throughout the year is one of the easiest, most earnest ways to do it. Plus, Hallmark Business Connections has automated lead nurturing options, like Automated Mailings that allows you to personalize a card every month and automatically have it printed and mailed. It’s a stress-free way to ensure you connect with customers on recurring occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, and you’ll stand apart from the competition by sending personalized Hallmark cards to your individual clients. And for those occasions when you need to reach out to a single contact with a unique message, our Mail to One service allows you to personalize a single card; then, we’ll stamp, address and mail it for you.

Make it easy to find you. Nobody wants to dig and scrape just to find a way to make a business call. Make yourself and your business irreplaceable to clients by being easy to find and easy to connect with. In addition to staying up to date with your online social media accounts and interacting with client feedback and comments, be sure to post and share things like helpful tips, frequently asked questions and links to important posts that might be of interest to them. Another way to ensure your information is always at clients’ fingertips is to kick off the new year by sending them a magnetic calendar. Not only are Hallmark calendars pretty and convenient to display with magnetic backing, but you can also customize them with your contact information so that you’re never out of sight or out of mind.

Go above and beyond. For those occasions when you need to give customers a little extra attention and care, upgrade your outreach by selecting a box of decadent artisanal chocolates by Christopher Elbow or select a fresh cut Hallmark floral bouquet for delivery to brighten their office space and remind them that they are important to you. Thoughtful client gifts are a great way to show the human side of your business and make sure your brand stands out above the rest. Consider impactful gifts like flowers or chocolates when new clients sign on, when clients give you a referral, when services are upgraded, for milestone work anniversaries and other major moments.

With instant access to online information via online resources like social media, feedback forums, search engines and more, lead nurturing has evolved to include more personalization and individualized consumer care. Clients now expect businesses to know them—and know what they need—before they connect, so it’s essential for businesses to do their homework, nurture leads and add a personal touch to their outreach. The one-size-fits-all approach simply won’t work in today’s modern landscape of personalization and relationship building.

Want to learn even more about Mail to One from Hallmark Business Connections and how you can leverage it for on-demand card-sending opportunities? Read Mail to One: Personalized Greeting Cards Mailed for You.