Close: Email marketing tools can be used at this stage to close your leads

The inbound methodology is the best way to turn strangers into audiences and promoters. For the past decade, inbound marketing has been the most effective online marketing method. Instead of old outbound marketing methods, such as buying ads, inbound marketing methods align the content you publish with your audiences’s interests. You naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert.

The graphic below features four actions: Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight. Organizations doing inbound marketing must take these actions in order to obtain visitors, leads, customers and promoters.

Close

You’re on the right track. You’ve attracted the right visitors and converted the right leads, but now you need to transform those leads into customers. How can you most effectively accomplish this feat? Certain marketing tools can be used at this stage to make sure you’re closing the right leads at the right times. Closing tools include:

1. Close: Email

What can you do if a visitor clicks on your call-to-action button, fills out a landing page, or downloads your information, but still isn’t ready to become a customer or supporter? A series of emails focused on useful, relevant content can build trust with a prospect and help them become ready to buy or donate.

Inbound marketing involves sending personalized, beautiful emails that your prospects will look forward to receiving, and that allow you to measure which messages are most effective.

2. Close: Marketing Automation

This process involves creating email marketing tailored to the needs and lifecycle stage of each lead. For example, if a visitor downloads a guide on a certain topic, you may want to send that lead a series of related emails. But if they also follow you on Twitter and visit certain pages on your website, you might want to change the messaging to reflect those different interests.