Many companies struggle with the ability to effectively nurture a lead after the initial acquisition. Regardless of the acquisition channel, creating a lead nurture process that reaches the prospect in the initial stages of the customer lifecycle is key. Lead nurturing is critical because it is about engaging in a consistent and meaningful dialog with prospects, regardless of their purchase timeframe. It is truly about reinforcing and building a trusted relationship with prospects after the initial acquisition. Each touch needs to be meaningful and make sense from the prospect’s perspective.
We identified a weakness in our marketing regarding leads that weren’t sales ready, and our ability to manage them. They were quickly falling to the wayside without any additional touches. This is careless when you think about the time and effort placed to create that first engagement and have it return successful. After discussing our business objectives, we created a strategy for impacting using email marketing.
Opt-In
Absolutely necessary to have a successful email marketing campaign is sending relevant messages to prospects and customers that have opted-in to your email marketing. We decided to include across all sources, an opt-in mechanism at acquisition. Only those that opted in for email marketing would receive our lead nurture email campaigns. For those that didn’t, we created a program that focused on offline channels. In order for an email lead nurture strategy to be successful, you have to require an opt-in. It reinforces the trust and furthers the conversation with the prospect.
Welcome Message
Including a welcome message immediately after a prospect subscribes to your email marketing is essential to strengthening what the prospect subscribed to and is also a good place to collect more data and reinforce frequency and brand. We included several different welcome messages depending on the prospect’s action. If a prospect downloads a whitepaper as well as opt-ins to our email marketing, they receive a campaign thanking them for downloading the whitepaper that includes an update preferences component within the message. For those that strictly opted in online or through our conversion paths, we send them a message regarding their opt-in only.
Preferences
Through our reinforcement of the subscription, we allow a subscriber to indicate their preferences for receiving email campaigns. We include newsletter options as well as specific subject matter, so that we may better facilitate a truly relevant and engaging campaign. This tactic really puts the prospect in control of what they will receive versus sending them everything.
Campaigns
Lastly we decided on the campaigns that we would use to target our prospects and chose two different approaches. For prospects that are being pursued by phone as well, we created a series of touches that respond to their pain points and can be customized based on those conversations. For those that aren’t engaging in conversations, we chose several email campaigns that fit our company’s mission to make marketers better at email marketing. Those include Bronto News, Tips & Tricks, and Industry Innovations, as well as web seminar alerts and whitepaper alerts. Using dynamic content, we can also customize the message based on the subscriber’s preferences. When choosing which touches are most appropriate for your prospects, remember to keep in mind your business objectives as well as the customer relationship.
If you currently don’t have a lead nurture program in place or aren’t leveraging email marketing for that purpose, you should consider incorporating it to create an ongoing dialogue and prevent leaving so many prospects on the table. We at Bronto did, and have seen an increase in our opportunity conversions from it.
Sally Lowery
Director of Lead Acquisition at Bronto
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Excellent post! But I wish to add one more thing. It can definitely be a big help if you can use a marketing automation software, something that can be of use when you’re trying to manage your leads more effectively. There are a lot of them that are already web based, so they can be used by businesses anytime and anywhere.