We often talk about buying decisions in terms of a journey. Think about the difference between leading groups along a hiking trail versus guiding each hiker along the path personally. In groups, it’s possible for hikers to lend one another support and for guides to indicate points of interest to a larger audience at once. On the other hand, a personalized tour that lets travelers move at their own pace is a more memorable experience for them.
How, then, do you provide individual guidance that makes leads happy while batching your marketing activities in ways that make sense for you?
Drip nurture programs are your answer.
Defining a Lead’s Purpose
When leads come to you, each one has different needs and knowledge. They’re armed with different questions and have different budgets. You want them to reach the same point, though, and nurture programs are the different roads by which they come to their individual buying decisions. Before you can build a fully effective drip nurture email marketing campaign, you first need to understand what brought your leads to you. Once you know what they’re looking for, you can group leads by purpose. Some leads, for instance, might follow an educational track, learning more about what you have to offer, while others are still in the process of learning who you are and need entry-level content.
Know Your Prospects
Here’s where smarter lead nurture programs distinguish you from the competition. With data enhancement and better knowledge of your leads, you’re able to address them individually and in relevant ways. It’s not enough to call them by name; you also need to get a handle on demographic and firmographic details that demonstrate your knowledge about your leads. Take a look at our available marketing lists, and you’ll see how larger demographic, firmographic, and behavioral segments contain individual data to personalize email marketing correspondence.
Supply Enough Content
Drip nurture campaigns need a constant supply of content to run smoothly, especially in B2B marketing. Your sales cycle can last for months or even years, and you need to hold your audience’s attention over time. Their knowledge level won’t stay static, either; with each piece of content you share, your prospects become more educated and want to drill deeper. One lead nurture program can then feed into another as prospects become ready for them.
Go with the Flow
Nurture programs are dynamic. They lead prospects from one point of the sales pipeline to another, and the more seamless the process looks to your leads, the better your flow rate will be. Smart nurture programs contain triggered events so you’re not only delivering the right content, but also making sure it gets there at the right time.
Analyze Your Results
Deployment’s half of a successful drip program; the other half is analytics that accurately reflect how successful it’s truly been. Using A/B split testing to pinpoint the most successful content and troubleshooting analytics to spot sticking points that disrupt the flow of your nurture program will make your next nurture campaigns an even bigger hit than your current ones.
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