Remember those endless summer days as kids? Hiding and waiting, hoping not to be discovered? Or feeling confident that your playmates had disappeared into thin air, never to be found?

When it comes to the endless quest for leads and conversions, marketing automation can often feel like seeking the best hiders in the entire neighbourhood. Sometimes, you may even feel ready to quit and walk away. Don't do that.

Like Hansel and Gretel, your leads have left you a trail of breadcrumbs. Fortunately, birds don't favour digital breadcrumbs, and we haven't seen any witches in the woods lately!

Have you ever shopped with your favourite online retailer, put something in your basket and never completed the purchase?

If yes, you're not alone. Research shows that although abandoned carts lose almost 4 trillion, 63% of that total may be recoverable via savvy email marketing.

Why do shoppers abandon purchases? According to Moz, an authority on inbound marketing and SEO, the top reasons include:

1. Unexpectedly high shipping costs
2. Not yet ready to make the purchase
3. Comparing prices between competitors
4. The price was too high

It costs far less to retain a customer than to attract a new one, and it is easier to convince a previous purchaser to press "buy now" again than to convert someone who has never bought from you before. Your past purchasers are already familiar with you, your products, and your services, and they were receptive to your messaging in the past. This means the most challenging part of your job—earning someone's trust—is already done.

Encouraging a past customer to buy again, often called remarketing, has impressive success rates. According to the Sales cycle, remarketing email open rates average 57% and a 30% conversion rate (versus a typical 21% open rate and 3% conversion rate).

All you need to do now is experiment to find the best incentive to entice customers to purchase again.

12 proven methods to encourage past purchasers to buy again

1. Ask them to join your list
Whether you add a checkbox to the order button that says, "Yes! Send me current coupons and special offers" or add a subscription offer to your confirmation email, extend an invite to help your purchaser remain connected.

2. Maximise the potential of your post-purchase emails
Don't waste an opportunity. Open rates on post-purchase transactional emails (such as the order or shipping confirmation email) are very high; people want to ensure their purchase went through correctly. After you've provided the necessary order information, you can drive more engagement. Consider including:
 

1. 1. Related products/best sellers: Do not underestimate the power of letting customers know that others who purchased their products often purchase other specific and complementary products.
   2. Upsells: Do you offer products that improve or build on the one your customer purchased? Don't forget to let them know. • Related content: Do you have a related blog article, instructional YouTube video, or FAQ page for the purchased product or service? Could you send it to your customer?
   3. Discounts: Post-purchase emails are a terrific place to offer discounts, mainly if they apply to related products or upsells you are offering. • Helpful information: Make sure your customer feels confident in their purchase by providing them with information on product care, returns, exchanges, shipping details and links, and contact information for customer service or technical support.

3. Institute a dedicated follow-up campaign
Send targeted, regular engagement emails to all past customers. It's important to stay top-of-mind so that when customers are ready to buy again, they think of you first. And by regularly emailing them (with their permission), you keep the lead warmer. If the contact goes cold, you must work harder to re-engage them later.

4. Create a loyalty club
People like to know they are special, and becoming VIP customers creates a sense of loyalty to your brand by allowing them to earn points or rewards for their purchases.

5. Reward customers for their purchase
Offer a surprise discount or credit to returning customers as a way of saying thank you.

6. Remind past customers of any coupons or points they have earned
If you use an automated email marketing service, you can set up an auto-reminder email sent just before an offer expires. This is not only thoughtful but also creates a sense of urgency and can give an extra boost to sales.

7. Create a series of time-sensitive early offers or elite deals only available to VIP customers
This cultivates a sense of exclusivity and speaks to a universal fear of missing out—both strong purchase motivators. Consider a discount, a product upgrade, or a special edition.

8. Don't forget the power of a sincere thank you
A personalised thank-you campaign for purchasing, subscribing or writing a review lets your customers know you appreciate them.

9. Delight them—just for the heck of it
You don't need a reason to do something unique for a great customer. Consider ways to offer your best customers a wonderful surprise or extra delightful experience. There is a good chance they will reward you with future purchases.

10. Let them know you miss them
Has it been a while since your customer has visited your site to make a purchase? Creating a simple "We miss you!" campaign can help you re-engage these customers by informing them about new products or services. Consider making a "discount ladder" where you offer progressively higher discounts at sixty, ninety, and 120 days and keep the products or services mentioned relevant to their past purchases.

11. Send reminders
Does your product or service have a finite shelf life? Whether you are selling a product that will run out or expire. A service or membership program that only lasts for a specific amount will remind customers when to re-order or renew. It is an easy thing to set up if you have marketing automation. Your customers will appreciate that you took the time to ensure they were not left in the lurch.

12. Ask for feedback
Asking your customers to rate their purchase experience or the product they received is effective on multiple levels. Not only does it give you another chance to interact with your customers, but it also lets your customers know that you value their feedback. Positive reviews help future sales, reassuring buyers that they are making a good purchase decision. Finally, you can thank a customer with a special offer for a review. Even a negative reviewer can be transformed into a repeat customer if you respond with care and concern.

Abandoned Shopping Carts

Wouldn't it be great if you could increase your revenue without having to find completely new leads? Good news, my friend: One of the best places to find new revenue is in the people who almost bought but didn't.

If you sell online, abandoned shopping carts are not an issue you can afford to ignore. Whether a customer was distracted, had second thoughts, or encountered technical difficulties, a simple reminder email or even a promotional offer to entice them to complete the purchase may move many of these almost purchasers to become loyal customers.

Did you know that, according to the Sales cycle, almost half of the abandoned cart emails are opened—and over 30% of clicks result in purchases? Even more exciting, the average value of these purchases is 19% higher than typical. You don't want to give up on these leads.

A great way to follow up and get those leads to convert is to send follow-up emails to people who don't complete a purchase. The easiest way to do this is to automate it with email marketing software because you won't have to do a thing yourself.

Here are ten email techniques to use to get people to purchase:

Ten proven abandoned cart techniques

1. Include a reminder of the limited inventory of the desired item or time-sensitive urgency (such as a sale or coupon ending soon).
2. Offer a limited-time discount to encourage the purchase.
3. Don't ignore the importance of branding, subject lines, and images—stay on brand and use compelling copy.
4. Include a short and simple survey to discover why they abandoned the cart in the first place.
5. Include a visual or text description of the items in the cart to remind would-be shoppers of what they wanted (and, quite likely, why).
6. Include multiple links back to the cart to maximise the likelihood that your email will lead to a desired return to the abandoned purchase.
7. Offer to help. Include customer service contact information if technical difficulties were behind the original abandonment.
8. Remind the reader of compelling advantages, such as money-back guarantees, free shipping, or high product ratings from past purchasers.
9. Let the customer know you'll reserve or hold their purchases for a specific time (but only if you can guarantee this).
10. Time is of the essence—don't wait too long before sending your email. The best time is within twenty-four hours.

Check out this post for more insights into why people abandon their shopping carts and how to prevent it from happening.

Spam is the bane of a small business email marketer's existence. Even though you'd never send spam or unsolicited emails, sometimes your emails get filtered into spam folders anyway. (There are many reasons this could happen. Check our guide to maximising email delivery to learn why this happens and how to overcome it.) So, there's an excellent chance that you've got solid leads out there who want to receive your emails but are not getting them.

Place to Find Lost Leads: Their Spam Folder

Unfortunately, once your email is lost to spam, it's doubtful your lead will ever see it. So, it's best to focus on staying out of the reach of spam filters in the first place. Here are some handy tips on how to avoid the marketing purgatory known as the spam folder:

1. Words matter
Mentioning large amounts of money, promising huge breakthroughs, or free iPads (and any mention of a bank and your ascension to the throne in Nigeria) will likely land you victim to a spam filter. Check your email against a list of common spam alert words and play it safe.

2. Don't get attached
Keep your content inside your email. The attached files are huge spam warning signs that will keep your email from reaching your lead.

3. Keep it clean
No, we're not talking about a PG rating; we're talking about your code. Messages with too many images, an overload of links, or sloppy HTML coding can send you straight to email purgatory.

4. Keep an eye on your score
Monitor your reputation by monitoring your sender score. If there are any issues, take care of them immediately. You can check your sender score on senderscore.org.

5. Ask recipients to whitelist you
when a lead joins your list, ask them to add you as a contact or to their safe sender list (you can even go the extra mile and provide complete instructions for their email platform).

Here's an example of some copy to put in your email:

"To make sure you don't miss any of our messages, please take a name to add name@email.com to your contact list or safe senders list."

One thing to note: People tend to click links, so make sure your recipients don't mistakenly think that clicking the link to your email address will complete the whitelisting process.

Getting whitelisted will tell your lead's email client that they want to hear from you and significantly lower the chances that your email will end up flagged as junk or land in their promotions folder.

Place to Find Lost Leads: Your Spam Folder

Likewise, email service providers go to great lengths to filter spam out of your inbox so you can focus on important emails and never have to deal with unwanted communications.

Unfortunately, this means that legitimate emails occasionally end up in your junk folder. Most of the time, this may not be a big deal, but if that legitimate email happens to be from a lead who was this close to making a purchase, and you don't see it for several weeks (or worse, not at all), you may find yourself losing out on a sale.

Response time dramatically impacts the likelihood of purchase, so it's essential to take steps to ensure that all crucial emails reach your inbox as soon as possible.

How to get your leads out of hiding

As sophisticated as spam filters are today, they still make mistakes. Follow these practices to ensure your leads and client emails do not end up resigned to junk mail purgatory.

1. Regularly scan your junk folder for legitimate email.
Set a repeating calendar event with an alert set to remind you to browse through messages regularly. If you find an email marked spam that should have been in your inbox, take the appropriate steps to notify your email client that this sender should always be sent to your inbox.

2. Add all leads to your safe sender list
You won't be able to do this for your entire email list, but if you communicate personally with a lead, whitelist each email address. Or even the overall domain of their company by adding them to your contact list (Gmail) or safe-senders list (Outlook).

3. Consider using filters or rules
Creating specific filters or rules instructing your email client to move all lead or client correspondence to specific folders can help you organise your emails.

You don't have to go far to find some of your very best leads. They are right in front of you. They've consumed your content, signed up for your list, and followed you on social media. Why aren't they buying? The reasons they are lollygagging around your funnel without making a purchase quite likely fall into one of these categories:

• You haven't asked them to buy or provide a clear call to action in each of your messages.
• You haven't asked them to buy how they want to be asked or via the channel; they are most receptive to being asked.
• You're trying to sell them the wrong thing.
• You've contacted them so infrequently that they've forgotten about you.
• You've contacted them so frequently that they've begun to ignore your messaging.
• Your emails were not relevant or targeted enough to create genuine engagement.

Getting someone on your list is only half the battle; the real challenge is keeping them engaged over the long term. Many small business owners lose a significant part of their list each year to this very struggle, which hurts engagement rates and increases the danger of a spam report.

If your leads are disengaged, you need a re-engagement campaign to rekindle the flame. From time-sensitive offers to long-term anniversary follow-ups, many options may work to re-engage your list.

Brainstorm personalised ways to reconnect with those less-than-enthused prospects and win them back into your good graces with an engagement campaign that connects with your leads.

1. Determine whom you will re-engage
Is your campaign aimed at people who haven't opened your last five campaigns or who haven't engaged with your content by clicking through to your site in the past four months? Define the subset of your list that you're working to re-engage to ensure your campaign is on track.

2. Create your re-engagement campaign
Design one that you believe will best resonate with your target segment. Be ready to make changes as you get results, or consider split testing two campaigns. A quick Google Image search for the term "Re-engagement campaign" turns up many inspiring examples.

3. Be ready to say farewell to permanently inactive subscribers
It's never easy to purposely make your email list smaller, but if your re-engagement campaign did not win over these subscribers, keeping them on your list only hurts you by lowering your engagement rates and making you vulnerable to spam complaints.  

When your deliverability decreases now, it impacts your deliverability later. Even if a recipient engages with your emails, their spam filter might see that your emails are going to many other spam filters and lump your email into even more spam filters. That means the people who want to see your content are less likely to see it. So, bite the bullet and cull out those inactive subscribers.

Of course, the primary goal is to minimize inactive subscribers in the first place.

Here are five ways to keep your list active and engaged:

1. Set your target correctly
A huge part of keeping your list active and engaged is attracting the right people to sign up in the first place. Have you done the background work of getting down to the nitty-gritty of understanding your target customer? Who are they? What do they need most? What do they fear? Where do they spend their time? An in-depth understanding of your ideal audience will help you create the content and products they desire, which will keep them returning for more.

2. Set correct expectations
When a lead opts into your list, are you telling them what content you'll be sharing and how often you'll share it? If a lead chooses to download your amazing lead magnet and suddenly starts receiving twice-weekly blog posts and sales emails, you may end up ignored or, even worse, reported as spam. Be sure your opt-in is specific and reiterate the information via your thank you page and/or your welcome email.

3. Segment and target
Not everyone on your list is the same, and the same content will not resonate with everyone equally. Your target market may have easily recognisable groups (often called buyer personas) with different needs and requirements. Once you fully understand your target customer, use your campaign metrics and audience demographics (gender, time zone, etc.) to segment your list further. Use this segmentation to send highly relevant emails that drive engagement and conversion.

4. Create an email preference centre
An email preference centre allows the people on your list to precisely choose what content and how often they want to hear from you. A cold lead may get an incorrectly targeted email at the wrong frequency. Put your list in the driver's seat by allowing them to choose exactly what they want to receive from you and segment your list accordingly. This can result in a much more engaged list.

5. Ask them what they want
Create a periodic survey of your list to determine how they feel about your content and delivery schedule. Ask them what they need more of and how you can be of service. Let them know you care what they want—and then deliver it.

At A New Email Address

Back in the good ol’ days of the Internet, people often had just one email address and kept it for years, even when it might have been embarrassing (cutie87@ hotmail.com, anyone?).

Today, most people have multiple personal addresses—often several simultaneously. Beyond multiple personal addresses for different purposes, the job market—and frequent career changes—means that professional email addresses can frequently change. Your lead may have been a good one and even engaged with your content, but if she is on multiple email lists, she may not have remembered to change her contact information when she switched companies or switched back to Gmail.

It’s easier to reengage a former lead than to win over a new one, but to do this, you’ll have to find a way to recover those bounced email addresses. If your opt-in forms only collect name and/or email address, you may be out of luck.

However, if you have collected other data, such as a website, secondary emails, or a phone number, some manual effort may bring this lead back into the fold. You could even check out a reliable social media platform, like LinkedIn, to figure out new contact information.

Remember, not every bounced lead will be worth this extra effort, but if your bounced lead was hot, with solid engagement and receptivity to past communications, the extra sleuthing might be worth your while.

If you manage to track down new contact information for a strong bounced lead, consider a more personal initial re-engagement effort rather than simply adding them back onto your list. Reach out via email or phone (depending on what is most appropriate for your process) to reconnect and to see if they have any questions or concerns about re-engaging with your company.

Be Proactive

Unfortunately, many of your hard bounces may be lost in the ether. To minimise the chance that this will happen in the future and to help you determine which leads are worth the extra effort, consider the following techniques:

1. Progressive profiling
If you only ever collect your leads’ name and email address, your contact options are limited. Instead, consider implementing progressive profiling, where additional information is requested incrementally as a lead engages with your content. Early engagements only require basic information; subsequent visits collect more specific lead data.

Benefits:

• Leads become more qualified over time
• Conversions increase as fewer fields are required on each web form.
• Additional tracking options are available in the case of a future hard bounce.

2. Lead scoring
If you’ve been building your list for long, you know that all leads are not created equal. But it’s not always easy to know which leads you should spend time on. Incorporate a lead scoring system (usually available via your CRM or email software). Lead scoring assigns a score to each lead based on their actions with your website, emails, or content. This will enable you to quickly determine if a hard-bounced lead is worth the extra effort to track down and help you focus your future marketing efforts.

If you’ve been following our series about where to find lost leads, today is the day we tell you the final places to find them and how to reactivate them and turn them into customers.

On Vacation

Taking a vacation is good for us because it improves health, increases productivity, and relieves stress. And even though we don’t do enough of it, chances are a significant portion of the folks on your email list take a vacation at some point during the year. And if you happen to send a message to your list during this time, you may receive an out-of-office email.

Out-of-office emails are most often ignored, but they can provide a valuable source of additional information on your lead or the company they work for. They can give you a clearer picture of the lead and provide additional contact information or contact information for colleagues and higher-ups in the decision-making chain.

Aside from the valuable data you may discover, it is important to consider what often happens when your lead returns to the office. With hundreds of emails to scan through, there is a good chance that your lead may never read the communication or offer made while they were away.

Set up a task or calendar reminder to review your campaign responses or out-of-office replies. Take note of the data obtained within the email, and update your lead’s contact information with any relevant data. Create another task that will alert you when your lead will be back in the office so you can reach out with a more personal email, if appropriate.

Lost in your sea of emails

Admit it—it’s been a long time since you’ve reached inbox zero. If you’re like most small business owners, your inbox is probably a complicated mix of business emails, personal correspondence, newsletters, and client or lead messages. As vigilant as you may be, some of your essential messages may slip through the cracks. Whether you miss the email initially or you mean to reply and get distracted by one of the countless tasks related to running your small business, the result is the same—a potentially lost lead.

How to get your leads out of hiding:

1. Utilise website forms

Though you will always have your email visible on your website for client contact, as much as possible, direct your website visitors to a contact form to get in touch the first time. Creating a filter for these form responses will keep most of your new leads in one place, making it easier to stay on top of responses. 

2. Implement an inbox management system

Systems like SaneBox can help you manage the deluge of emails you get each week. They create folders of emails to help guarantee that you see the emails you need to see. By prioritising important emails, summarising the rest, and calling your attention to messages that have not received a reply, your inbox can move from out of control to manageable.

3. Flag all-important messages for follow-up

You just received and responded to an email from a lead; immediately flag your message and create a follow-up task to remind you to look for a reply or get back in touch after some time. If you use Gmail, use Boomerang to set a reminder if no reply is received in a specific period. If your lead does not respond, the system will ensure you follow up.

4. Create a personal system that works for you

If one of the out-of-the-box systems is not your style, research other methods to tame the inbox beast. The most important thing is to ensure that you don’t end up drowning in a deluge of incoming emails and missing the leads that need your personal attention.

5. Create an automated follow-up campaign

Instead of risking missing emails going to spam and spending so much time manually following up with your contacts, set up an automated follow-up campaign that addresses the most common questions, issues, objections, or topics you usually cover. This doesn’t mean you’ll never have emails that require a manual response, but it will significantly cut down on emails that slip through the cracks and those that require your attention.

As a small business owner, you work hard to build your list and nurture your leads. It’s frustrating to know you lose valuable leads when you’ve put your heart and soul into your businesses and the products and services you create.

Just as you continue to focus on growing your list and your leads, devote time each month to seeking your leads in these ten hiding places and enjoy knowing that your funnel is being refilled with valuable and engaged leads.