The 7

of a Successful Lead Nurturing Program

Building Blocks

INTRODUCTION The campaign is dead. Prospects aren’t waiting for your messaging, they’re actively reaching out to self-educate on the market, on your products, and your competitor’s products. This new reality requires an always-on mindset. Here are the 7 Building Blocks to creating an always-on lead nurturing program that goes beyond the email inbox.

DEVELOP A STRATEGYA solid lead nurturing program begins with a smart and comprehensive strategy.

That strategy should determine what good leads look like. What are the business demographics and behaviors of a good lead? Marketing should work closely with sales, use the past as prologue and analyze the characteristics of those who bought your product/service in the past. Consider collaborating with IT, finance, and other departments to make sure the lead nurturing program has the technical support and investment it needs to thrive.

DEFINE PERSONASBuilding an effective program requires personas, which demand that B2B marketers know more about their audience.

Knowing the job titles of the target audience is not enough to build a topflight lead nurturing program. To truly personalize a nurturing program, the B2B marketer has to know the personality of each member of the target audience. Surveys of customers, visits with prospects, and interviews of your salespeople can provide the insight necessary to create these personas and gain a deeper understanding of your target market.

SEGMENT YOUR AUDIENCEIntelligent segmenting is key to making a lead nurturing program thrive.

Segmenting an audience allows a marketer to personalize every message to potential clients. Using marketing automation software, marketers can create literally hundreds of segments. In addition to targeted messaging, this segmentation enables marketers to reduce investment in programs that aren’t working and double down on the programs that are driving sales.

CREATE CONTENT AT EVERY STAGE OF THE BUYING PROCESS

This content must speak to each segment of the buying team at every stage of the funnel, from awareness to consideration to actual purchase.

Because many B2B purchases involve an extensive buying team, from the influencers to the person who controls the purse strings, marketing departments must create a variety of entertaining, helpful, and persuasive content that speaks to the needs of everyone involved. Marketers can also create customer-focused nurture content such as welcome letters, upsells, and cross-sells.

MEASURE, TEST AND OPTIMIZE

Whether you’re nurturing via email and telephone or display and social advertising, analytics tools exist to track your performance.

This technology lays the foundation for understanding the types of content that drive sales. By tracking what efforts land engagements or drive prospects through the funnel, marketers are able to optimize their programs to deliver a measurable return on investment.

Data is good, accurate data is better.

Marketers should be maintaining the health of their databases. Email deliverability is a critical path to nurturing leads. For the most effective lead nurturing, marketers should commit to improving their data hygiene, which can be accomplished by having customer- and prospect-facing personnel regularly ask their contacts for updated contact information and other data.

MAINTAIN A CLEAN, UPDATED DATABASE

of companies’ email deliverability ranks as “questionable.”

of records were missing industry and revenue data

Email is the foundation of most B2B marketers’ lead nurturing programs, but the most effective marketers are exploring multichannel nurturing and moving beyond email.

Email is effective as a nurturing tool, but its drawbacks are well known. For this reason, many B2B marketers are implementing lead nurturing programs that move beyond email. Marketers are also using multi-channel nurturing programs that reach the anonymous website visitors who expressed an interest in their companies.

MOVE YOUR LEAD NURTURING BEYOND EMAIL

of your email database doesn’t open your emails—on a good day!

of website visitors don’t share their email address.

CONCLUSION Lead nurturing has changed dramatically. The most effective marketers are embracing this new normal and building always-on lead nurturing programs that take into account these building blocks.

Learn more about the basics of using multi-channel nurturing in

The Sophisticated Marketer’s Crash Course in Lead Nurturing.

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