6 Nurture Campaigns to Jumpstart Your Marketing Efforts
No matter how great your content is, sometimes your leads are not ready to buy—yet. Attracting visitors is only the beginning, as 96% of visitors who come to your website aren’t ready to buy.
Your challenge is to keep these leads engaged until they are ready to make a purchase. Lead nurturing is no different than building long-term relationships: If leads are handed to sales too early, they will not receive the experience they desire, and there is a high chance they will look for it elsewhere.
This is where nurture campaigns come into play. They enable organizations to invest in future potential business. Since a prospect requires an average of 8 touches before speaking with a sales rep, make sure you approach your prospects exactly where they are on their buyer journey, and not where you want them to be.
While there are several options for designing your nurture efforts, here are six tried and true campaigns:
1. Welcome – New Customer
The Welcome Nurture is an excellent opportunity to educate new customers. Whether you simply need to share key contacts’ information or details on how to get started, why not automate that process? A new customer nurture is just the way to do that.
- Goal: Create a positive experience for new customers and provide them with the necessary information to succeed.
- Content to consider including: Welcome letter from your CEO, key contacts, educational materials such as webinars or user guides, and potentially new value-added products or services they should buy.
- How to trigger the start of the campaign: Using a CRM integrated tool enables you to start nurturing your new customer based on when the opportunity was closed/won.
- Suggested length: The campaign length depends on the onboarding process and the amount and type of information needed to communicate.
2. Introduction – New Prospect
If someone downloads content on your website or signs up to receive your communications, get the ball rolling with an introductory nurture to provide some high-level information and start an ongoing conversation with new leads.
- Goal: Start to build a positive relationship.
- Content to consider including: You want to be a valuable resource for your prospect by providing relevant, useful, and not too “sales-ly” content to help them do their job better and explain the business problems you can help solve.
- How to trigger the start of the campaign: Set up listeners to launch the nurture campaign after prospects fill out certain forms or download an asset.
- Suggested length: New prospects need longer-term nurture, no more than one email per week or every other week.
3. Remarket / Recycle
Remarketing targets leads who didn’t convert but had engaged with your company and content.
- Goal: Remarket nurtures ensure leads do not leak out of the funnel but are instead recycled. This gives marketing another chance to warm potential customers for sales.
- Content to consider including: Newsletters, free educational webinars and thought leadership pieces that establish you as a trusted advisor (eBooks, whitepapers, third party articles, etc.).
- How to trigger the start of the campaign: If you are integrated with CRM, you can have this campaign start from a lead status change (e.g., No Response, Remarket).
- Suggested length: Longer-term nurture. No more than one email every other week for several months.
4. Closed / Lost Prospect
Don’t abandon leads who were once engaged in the sales process with you but did not choose you in the end. Automated closed/lost nurtures can give you a chance to revive that opportunity by reminding that prospect you’re still available whenever they want to have a conversation.
- Goal: Stay top of mind. If a prospect considered purchasing from you, remaining a trusted advisor could open doors back up for you in the future.
- Content to consider including: Treat these emails as check-ins. Share thought leadership materials that will prove you as a trusted advisor (eBooks, whitepapers, third-party articles).
- How to trigger the start of the campaign: If you are integrated with CRM, you can have this campaign started from an opportunity being closed/lost.
- Suggested length: Start about three months after losing the deal. One email per month for approximately ten months.
5. Stay in Touch
This nurture campaign allows you to stay top-of-mind and build credibility until your prospects are ready to buy.
- Goal: These campaigns help educate prospects and position your company as a thought leader and authority on the subject.
- Content to consider including: Content that will establish awareness and educate your audience—relevant blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, newsletters, and other thought leadership pieces.
- How to trigger the start of the campaign: If you are integrated with CRM, you can start this campaign from a lead status change (e.g., Fit, Not Interested).
- Suggested length: These should be further apart than most other nurture campaigns—about one email per month or every three weeks.
6. Accelerator
Necessary when leads you thought were moving quickly start slowing down. Rather than throwing in the towel, use an accelerator program.
- Goal: Attempt to nudge leads along the process faster by providing relevant information at the right time.
- Content to consider including: Look at what they are already interacting with and provide additional assets that give more information. Continue with more hard-hitting sales materials and meeting requests.
- How to trigger the start of the campaign: Scoring listeners (once prospect hits a certain scoring threshold, the campaign kicks off) or form complete listeners to launch the nurture after certain forms are filled out / assets are downloaded.
- Suggested length: Never overwhelm your recipients with several emails at once; the length depends on your sales cycle and how quickly you want to move things along.
Closing Thoughts
With the right tool, your nurture campaigns can be simple. While nurture marketing is used most often for leads, it’s important to remember that it can also be used to provide meaningful experiences for customers and partners.
Not sure where to start? Take a look at our lead nurturing guide and learn how to integrate your nurture efforts into your existing sales and marketing process.
