On Thursday, I visited a webinar from Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft provides great marketing automation software. On average, I visit 3-5 webinars every week to educate myself about what’s new and the latest trends in marketing, so that I can pass that valuable information on to our clients, because as some of you probably know, at proimpact7.com we specialize in increasing conversion rates. For that reason we need to stay at the top of the game if we want to provide a valuable service.

Anyway, in that webinar one very interesting point came out. 77% of leads buy after 7 contacts! This was said by a company which sent more than 1 million follow up e-mails to their leads using their marketing automation software.  Do you send less than 7 e-mails to your leads? Then find out how others do it.

Almost every company selling their software offers a FREE trail, whether it’s 7 days, 14 or 30 days. Almost every software vendor has at least 2 or 3 competitors selling similar software. Almost every single one of your competitors offers a free trial.

What does it mean? It means that your potential buyers are test trying at last 2 or 3 similar applications before they decide to purchase. I for example do it too.

The problem: The problem is if you are sending less than 7  follow up e-mails to your leads, then you are in danger of loosing them to your competitor.

Why do you need to send so many e-mails? The reasons could vary.

• Sometimes people came across your software accidentally by reading about it in a blog, for example. Although they knew there is something they could improve in their sales strategy, but they didn’t know what exactly. After they discovered and tried your software they like it, but have no budget for it.
• Test trailing several other similar applications before they can make an executive decision. This means, that in the process they forgot about you if you didn’t follow up with e-mails, even though the application they are trying is has almost exactly the same features and isn’t significantly better than yours.
• They are actively seeking for a solution like yours, but the one they liked (yours) was a bit out of budget for them, but still they are interested.

Below I will show you 7 follow up e-mails from several software vendors just to get an idea of what your competition is doing, if you are not already.

Example: if you offer 30 day Free trial. Here is the follow up sequence.

E-mail 1 – 4: Start with welcome trial e-mail and then each week send 1 “tips and trick” follow up e-mail to show your clients ideas how to use it and to encourage them to try it, as sometimes people download your software, then open it play with for a while and forget about it. Also including a survey/feedback in each e-mail isn’t isn’t a bad idea either.

E-mail 5: End of trial e-mail. It’s good practice to send an end of trial e-mail on the day the trail has finished. Some companies also send end of trial reminders 3 days before it ends and then each following day.

E-mail 6: 7 days after the free trial has ended, send an e-mail to ask them to purchase/unlock your product. Don’t forget to add a survey to find out why they still haven’t purchased it. You can add a small discount to test the impact.

E-mail 7+: 14 days after the free trial has ended send an e-mail with a small discount. After that, each month you can keep sending an e-mail with a discount for couple of months.

The above shown e-mail automatic follow up sequence will work for companies selling more affordable solutions and should give you an idea how you can improve your marketing efforts. For example, in some industries selling high ticket products and services, it takes between 3 to 18 months to close a lead because of the cost involved. More expensive purchases tend to have longer closing cycle and for that reason proper nurturing of your leads should be in place and automated.