The Right Email Timing Can Help Your Dental Lab Close More Sales

Closing sales opportunities in your dental lab probably is and absolutely should be among your major priorities for your business. If you have contacts in your database, why not do everything you can to make sure they convert to customers?

While the above is a simple fact, it can also be difficult to achieve. Again and again, we hear from small businesses looking for tips and techniques to close more sales. Lead nurturing tends to be an easy answer, but how do you set up your automated nurturing emails to maximize their success? Here's one crucial part: get the timing right.

Timing Your Initial Inquiry Response

Timing matters from the moment a lead enters your database. Research has long suggested that when someone fills out the contact information necessary to become a lead, they require an almost instant response to maximize their chances of becoming customers.

In fact, a landmark study by the Harvard Business Review found that following up with a lead within 1 hour of their conversion increases your chances of that lead becoming sales-qualified by 700%. Subsequent research has confirmed just how essential that first email contact is to inspire a closed sale in the future.

Following up quickly will also set you above your competition instantly. One study found that 30% to 50% of dental lab leads are closed by the business that responds first, while between 40% and 50% of all sales leads never receive a follow up at all. If you send even a quick lead acknowledgement with a promise to follow up in more detail later, your chances of closing that sale will increase substantially.

Spreading Out Subsequent Emails

Of course, the initial follow up is just the beginning of your lead nurturing efforts. From now on, you should send regular emails that both invite your leads to learn more about your brand, and share new content alongside regular industry news.

But in what intervals should these emails go out? While the answer will ultimately depend on your individual audience, Marketing Sherpa found that hovering between once a month and once a week receives optimum results. In other words, if your nurturing emails go out between 2-4 times a month, your emails will work effectively to help your business close sales.

But you have to be careful. According to a survey by Technology Advice, the most common reason your audience marks emails as spam is because they received too many emails. Keeping your emails to no more than once per week, while also varying the days of the week at which your emails send, will optimize your nurturing efforts.

How Far Out Should You Go?

Finally, the third variable of email timing is just how far out your nurturing efforts should go. In other words, how long should you keep emailing leads that do not seem to move through the funnel?

This variable is also the most difficult to narrow down specifically. Ultimately, the answer depends entirely on the length of your sales process. If you sell convenience goods that don't require much thought or consideration, a month is enough to communicate everything you need for your leads to make a purchasing decision. But if your business depends on high-consideration decision processes, going further out (sometimes to 3 months and beyond) may make more sense.

And of course, don't discount the idea of sending up infrequent follow-ups even to cold leads. They may just not have been ready to buy in the past, so checking to see whether they are now makes business sense. 

To learn more about optimizing your lead nurturing efforts to close more sales, and to find the right software to set up automated emails that increase your chances of success, contact us at 1.888.715.9099 or DentalLabSupport.com