THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING 1 THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING

THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING 1 THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING

Most marketers roll out lead nurturing primary for new customer acquisition. This makes sense, as most leads are not sales ready and need a little marketing TLC. Why pass a high volume of leads to Sales that will not convert to opportunities today? That is not to say that most of these leads won t buy, they are just not buying today. Instead of abandoning these leads, savvy marketers nurture them and get 20%, 25%, or 30% of those leads to engage and become qualified opportunities over time and see significant incremental revenue. Unfortunately, that s where lead nurturing ends for most marketers. Today, however, lead nurturing programs have evolved, taking on different shapes and styles. If you are not leveraging all of them, you could be missing out on millions in potential revenue. 57 % of B2B organizations identify 'converting qualified leads into paying customers' as a top funnel priority. (Source: MarketingSherpa) 2 THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING

The 5 Types of Lead Nurturing Programs 1. New Customer Acquisition If you do not currently have a lead nurturing program, this is where you should start. Don t think of lead nurturing just in terms of email. Think of it as an omni-channel journey where you are pushing out relevant content of all styles to specific personas at a specific stage in the buying cycle. You ll find that this approach will help drive higher quality leads down the pipeline and build awareness and recognition in the marketplace. 2. New Product Launch/Update Marketers often use this opportunity to publish a press release, leverage social media, and send out an email. However, a new product launch is also a great time to roll out a lead nurturing campaign that engages and educates various audiences with different messages. According to Marketing Donut, 63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months 20% will take more than 12 months to buy. Using a well-designed lead nurturing program will accelerate the purchase decision for many. 3 THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING

3. Existing Customer Upsell/Cross-sell Too many marketers focus all their time on acquiring new customers and overlook existing customers. For many companies, over 75% of revenue comes from existing customers. What makes this kind of lead nurturing approach particularly interesting is that you can leverage purchase history as well as buying preferences and behaviors to help you segment audiences and identify your upsell/cross-sell opportunities. In your organization, these types of campaigns may not come from Marketing, but from Customer Success, Customer Service, or Account Management. The groups may not be familiar with the mechanics of lead nurturing, so the initiative may require Marketing to work with other teams to kick off the program. No matter where they come from, these campaigns will make your customers feel valued and help improve loyalty. 4. Dormant Customer Re-engagement No matter how strong your marketing is, you are going to have a certain percentage of dormant customers and prospects. Lead nurturing programs that target dormant customers can help, but they must be data-driven so you can accurately segment your audiences. Research shows that the investment of your time is worth it. Many companies who have launched this type of nurturing program have seen up to 35% of their dormant customers and prospects re-engage and even become active advocates for their products, services, or brands. You have already made the investment in acquiring these names and many of them had expressed a good amount of interest in your company at some time. Aren t they are worth reaching out to one more time? 4 THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING

5. Competitive Win-Back The vendor-customer relationship can be hard to explain and understand. Sometimes you just don t know what happened at a specific stage in a given buyer s journey. What you can know is that whatever the trigger was that caused a customer to choose your competitor over you can also work against your competitor. Often it is just a matter of time. With this type of lead nurturing program you need to make sure that you are showcasing very clear value propositions and competitive advantages, such as pricing, benefits, support, and training. Because you have nothing to lose, the tone for these campaigns are often a bit bolder. Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts. (Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report) If your organization already has a formal lead management process and is leveraging marketing automation, don t forget about Lead Recycling. Sometimes, no matter how well Marketing qualifies a lead, once it is handed over to Sales, it is not accepted. Perhaps budget has changed. Other times a timeline has been altered. Who knows? If that lead is recycled, it will go back to Marketing to be nurtured again. But it should be placed in a new, different lead nurturing program from those leads that are going down the lead management funnel for the first time. Since lead nurturing is all about timing and getting the right message to a specific prospect or customer when they are ready to buy, lead recycling programs can be fairly successful. 5 THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING

ABOUT MARKETBRIDGE For over fifteen years Marketbridge has been helping customers drive sales and marketing productivity through four customer lifecycle solutions: demand creation, lead nurturing, sales acceleration and customer retention. These solutions combine the art of content personalization with the science of data and analytics, to drive higher quality leads, ready-tobuy customers and shorter sales cycles. From buyer segmentation to lead nurturing programs to digital sales tools, our unique connecting sales and marketing approach delivers significant revenue growth and cost savings to our customers. Corporate Website: www.market-bridge.com MarketBridge Community: www.the-digital-bridge.com Phone: 1-888-GO-TO-MKT Corporate Headquarters: 4800 Montgomery Lane, 5th Floor Bethesda, MD, 20814 San Francisco, CA 601 Montgomery St., Suite 650 San Francisco, CA 94111 New York, NY 79 Madison Ave, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10016 6 THE FIVE CATEGORIES OF LEAD NURTURING