An Effective Lead-Nurturing Program in 3 Steps
Develop a lead-nurture e-mail series that will help you gather more information about your leads so you qualify and prioritize them.
Develop a lead-nurture e-mail series that will help you gather more information about your leads so you qualify and prioritize them.
B2B (define) marketers are constantly being asked to generate more leads. But is it enough just to collect the leads when prospects complete a form on your website and then pass them over to sales? Probably not, as studies show that sales departments don’t follow up on almost 80 percent of marketing leads.
The solution? Develop a lead-nurture e-mail series to gather more information about your prospects. You can then analyze the responses to help you identify the “sales-ready” leads.
Follow these three steps, and your salespeople will no longer have to guess which leads are the best.
Step 1: Define a “Qualified Sales Lead”
Work with your sales and corporate management teams to agree on a definition of “qualified sales lead,” those leads that are considered valuable and worthwhile to follow up on. Every company will define “qualified sales lead” differently. These are some of the criteria you should consider:
Step 2: Develop Your Lead-Nurture Program
An e-mail lead-nurturing program should build a trusted relationship with viable prospects, regardless of their timing to buy.
According to an Aberdeen Research report, implementing a lead- nurturing practice can yield a 50 percent-plus increase in sales-ready leads.
In practice, much of the selling in a complex sale happens when the salesperson is not present. In fact, studies show that longer-term leads typically ignored by salespeople represent almost 80 percent of potential sales.
Good lead nurturing establishes your organization as the source of authority in your prospects’ minds when they’re looking to find the answers to business problems. It also reinforces the benefits of working with you.
The program creates value by giving prospects useful information a little bit at a time so that you don’t overwhelm them. The goal of this program is to deliver sales-ready leads to the sales organizations that are as close to the buy decision as possible.
A lead-nurturing program should addresses typical concerns of potential customers as they are in the process of making a buying decision:
Information is delivered through relevant, educational, or thought-leadership content in a series of e-mails. These messages highlight meaningful articles, events, white papers, case studies, customer success stories, and Webinars that address the needs of your potential customers. The timing and frequency of touches should be linked to the prospect’s buying cycle.
Step 3: Measure Your Success
Once you have defined a qualified sales lead and implemented your program, the next step is to analyze your program.
If your lead-nurturing program isn’t delivering on these points, it’s time to reevaluate how you define a sales-ready lead and optimize your program accordingly.
The Last Word
Remember, the ultimate goal of a lead-nurturing program is to deliver high-quality leads to the sales organization that result in a strong sales pipeline with high close ratios and shorter average sales cycles. Nurtured prospects should bring in more initial revenue and have a higher positive impression of your company as well.
When you succeed at lead nurturing, you have a program that will provide a predictable and sustainable flow of qualified sales leads over the long term.