Fundamentals of Lead Nurturing

Fundamentals of Lead Nurturing

Marketing Automation The Fundamentals of Lead Nurturing Lead Nurturing The Net-Results Master s Series started as an idea to summarize the success components of a Revenue Performance Management strategy. It has developed into a learning community. But at its core, the Master s Series is about you. The creative class of people that are plugged into what s new and are inspired by innovative ideas. Your quest for new ideas, ingenious implementations, and the latest marketing trends inspires us to create this community. Doing your part to make things happen today must involve Lead Nurturing. Today s topic, Lead Nurturing, has a direct and significant impact on the revenue performance management cycle.

TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR PART FIVE PART SIX PART SEVEN What

PART ONE: What is Lead Nurturing? Lead Nurturing is a method to provide consistent communication and relevant content to educate, inform and nurture leads to become sales ready. The information access dynamic has changed to a user driven model. Prospects look for information from search engines, web sites, white papers, webinars, blog postings and video and with each level of engagement their actions and your responses to their actions are creating a more savvy and potentially interested prospect. Your goals are to generate buzz, keep the lead interested and convert the lead to a qualified prospect. So how can you effectively nurture leads along the sales funnel? Page 4

PART TWO: is Lead Nurturing Important to the Sales Process? The examples of lead nurturing are endless in our workplace. Building brand loyalty, awareness and connection can be seen in the any number of communication and productivity tools we use daily. Examples of nurturing include social posting for brands we recognize, endorsements, customer reviews, commercials, demos, certification programs, web site content and content that is specifically directed at prospects through campaigns and lists. Brands recognize that building personal relationships based on trust and authenticity displays a level of professionalism that customers recognize and reward with their business, loyalty and evangelism. Lead nurturing recognizes the most basic desire of interaction: do you see me and do you hear me? This remarkably successful belief is shared by many brands around the world and is taught by a vanguard of brand loyalty, the Disney Institute, in this way:...if our guests understood and believed that everyone in the organization cared about them and their business, they would be loyal to Disney forever. That philosophy continues to this day. Whether guests are visiting a Disney theme park or watching a Disney movie, they expect not just to be entertained and amazed, but also to feel special as though the story were meant for them. Disney Institute Lead nurturing is about crafting a story meant just for that individual. It involves carefully screening suspects, selecting content delivery that s appropriate to their interest level, connecting emotionally to their challenges and desires, and moving them along the education/evangelism continuum to become a sales ready lead. Page 5

PART THREE: do I Need to Understand Lead Nurturing? Lead Nurturing is a responsibility. It requires thought, engagement and persistence. For a marketer, lead nurturing is akin to empathy. It is an evolved capability. Experienced marketers are driven to connect and understand those with whom they interact. They demonstrate an understanding of their audience through their interactions, solutions and information delivery. Anyone with an interest in language can create content. And isn t that the buzz of the day? Content is king! Make it fresh! Have it in abundance! But, all content is not the same. It has to be relevant. It has to connect with your audience. How you ensure relevance is either through conversational empathy or through research and data. Since we don t have the luxury of face-to-face communication with all of our prospects, we need to rely on analytics and technology to guarantee the appropriate interaction. Lead nurturing is a pivotal capability of Marketing Automation success. It is an advanced capability that is sought after and highly regarded. Your role in creating an effective lead nurturing program is to create a strategic implementation of information delivery that provides the right message, to the right prospect at the right time and moves that prospect to a sales qualified lead. Lead nurturing is your chance to have personalized interactions with prospects using your marketing automation tool. Page 6

PART FOUR: Does my Business Need Lead Nurturing??? D r i p? N u r t u r e In some circles, marketing automation and its key components lead nurturing and lead scoring are not fully understood. Is Marketing Automation just a new name for email marketing? Not even close. While email marketing had its time in the sun, the process for intelligent communication with prospects has evolved. Email marketing does not have lead nurturing or lead scoring capabilities. It relies on lists and opting to create the target audience. Rather than leveraging user behavior as a lead nurturing and lead scoring system can, email marketers create a schedule for email delivery and then blast that message to the list. As new prospects enter the delivery cycle, they receive the next piece of marketing material that is on the schedule. Email marketing has a place for sending messages and coupons. But, today s savvy prospects want messaging that is targeted directly to them and their stage in the buying cycle. And Marketing Automation enables you to leverage that knowledge to provide the buyer with exactly the messaging and content that has the most relevance for them. Page 7

PART FIVE: to Define Lead Nurturing Define Design Capture Implement Manage THE HIGH LEVEL ACTIVITIES INCLUDE: 1. Define the strategy 2. Design the path 3. Capture key information 4. Implement the plan 5. Manage the Solution Lead Nurturing is a process that builds trust, awareness and value by keeping your prospects and suspects engaged. Effective Lead Nurturing begins with a mission and approach. It also depends on the people and processes to monitor and implement the approach through your technical solution. Marketing Automation creates a behavior-based approach to information delivery. It allows you to apply behavioral analytics to your responses and it creates the ability to nurture with the prospects interests in mind. In the following section, we explain the five foundational steps your company can take to set up an effective Lead Nurturing strategy and from that we ll examine a few types of nurture campaigns that are available to you when you implement Marketing Automation. Now let s breakdown the high level activities. Page 8

1. Define the Strategy Define Design Capture Implement Manage Gain an understanding of the objectives and identify and understand the nature and purpose of the interactions between Marketing and Sales with the system and its actions. a. Examine what behaviors make a quality lead or ideal prospect b. Examine how sales and marketing can collaborate on lead nurturing and at which point a prospect returns to or enters a nurturing cycle. c. Examine how the departments will follow up once the system is in place e. Explore your objectives for your campaign(s): 1. Is this a new client acquisition campaign? 2. Is this a sales accelerator? 3. Are you qualifying prospects? 4. Do you have a clear Call-to Action? 5. Are you driving awareness for a product/service/event? 6. Is this campaign design to re-engage cold/warm prospects or prior customers? 7. Is this a post-purchase campaign? Page 9

2. Design the Path People Technology Processes Define Design Capture Implement Manage Including the people, processes, and technology that comprise the solution. Identify the necessary roles and responsibilities to implement and support the solution. a. Consider lead routing rules for people or departments b. Determine what criterion sends a lead directly to sales, and what criterion send a lead to nurture c. Consider existing assets, material, white papers, content d. Consider schedules, availability and timing e. Consider response times for sales to qualified prospects f. Consider campaign implementation types: Drip and Nurture g. Define campaign durations: one time/perpetual Page 10

3. Capture Key Information Inputs: -Marketing -Sales Define Design Capture Implement Manage Collect key inputs from Marketing, Sales, Executive Management, Sales Managers and Field Reps. a. Define pertinent contact information: first name, last name, valid email, job title, industry b. Define activity criteria: specific pages viewed, PDFs read, videos watched, whitepapers downloaded, etc c. Define engagement criteria: actions to take when prospect responds to web forms, makes a blog comment or participates in a webinar d. Define the scores you want to assign to behaviors. e. Define Service Level criteria with sales to ensure that qualified prospects are contacted within company accepted timeframes f. Define the assets, material, letters that prospects will receive, or define an approach for collecting that material Page 11

4. Implement the Plan Define Design Capture Implement Manage Now that you have gathered information, built consensus, and understand what prospect behaviors are important, it s time to implement. a. Test your Lead Nurturing plan with your MAP vendor b. Confirm the test ran as predicted c. Announce the go-live date to your team d. Schedule and run your first campaign Page 12

5. Manage the Solution Define Design Capture Implement Manage Revisit the strategy, activities and Lead Nurturing responses regularly. a. Review campaign results every 30-45 days b. Review recently closed business and website analytics to look for key indicators of success c. Restructure Lead Scoring criteria with any new success indicators d. Continue to build new assets, material, white papers and content Page 13

PART SIX: A Good Place to Start Lead Nurturing enables you to generate business and continue connecting with your clients, partners and constituents with information that is specifically targeted to them. It s important to approach Lead Nurturing with a target audience, clear goals and stakeholder buy-in. Begin your Lead Scoring exercise by gathering stakeholders from Sales and Marketing and then begin the conversation about the objective of your nurturing campaign for your unique buyer personas. Then write several simple easy to read sentences, such as: A client acquisition campaign involves outreach to new markets. An awareness campaign will provide news, production or service information to both existing, former and outreach prospects. A post-purchase campaign to thank clients and inform them of new goods or services. Refine your objectives through discussion, feedback, and conversations. This helps ensure that you ve clearly defined your objectives and will ensure that you consider what makes a good Lead, and what defines a Prospect that needs additional nurturing. Your goal is to clearly define the handover to Sales and the Prospects/ Suspects that require additional nurturing before they are sales-ready. Page 14

A sales-ready Lead may have the following qualifications: someone that requests a trial, completes a form and provides contact information and/or any of the other following characteristics: a job title and is a decision maker industry is our target has viewed our pricing page in the last 7 days has viewed our product page for more than 30 seconds arrived at the product page via keyword search These characteristics should signfiicantly impact Lead Scoring, which is another fantastic benefit of Marketing Automation. Each activity is assigned a score that s relevant to sales qualification and it is this criteria that implies to sales that the prospect has interest, plans to make a purchasing decision, and is most likely ready to engage with sales. Page 15

Likewise, you want to craft criteria that defines which leads require nurturing from a Marketing perspective. These are Leads that are not sales-ready but are fully available to receive and benefit from your marketing efforts. Examples of marketingready leads may include: A prospect that downloads our whitepaper has recently signed up for a monthly newsletter has downloaded sales material or educational material has opted in to receive more information has not viewed our pricing page in the last 7 days has viewed our product page for more than 30 seconds has visited the site multiple times in the last month Once you ve established the criterion for Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), you can craft those rules within your Marketing Automation Platform. Page 16

Here s a simple depiction of the criteria for MQL and SQL leads. Notice how different activities are undertaken for each group. LEAD STAGES Engaged Marketing Qualified Sales Accepted FINISH Anonymous Sales Qualified Copyright 2013 Net-Results. Trademarks belong to their respective owners. All rights reserved. Closed Page 17

PART SEVEN: Campaign In general, there are two approaches to nurturing through campaigns. They may have different names with different Marketing Automation vendors, but for our purposes since they perform the same activities we ll use our nomenclature. Campaigns are either (Simple) Drip Campaigns or Advanced Nurture Campaigns. Both perform the function of nurturing, but the way in which they do so is what sets them apart. Drip Campaigns exist solely to send an email or a series of emails, with optional Lead Scoring based on Opens or Clicks of the email(s). Nurture/Advanced Campaigns can take a variety of actions, including sending or resending an email, and they can do so conditionally based on the attributes and/or behaviors of the participating contacts. These distinctions are significant and important for you to understand before you set up your initial campaigns. So let s take a deeper look into the differences and objectives of these two types of campaigns to ensure that you are using the best approach for your goals. Page 18

More on Campaign Drip marketing is a type of nurturing campaign that sends messages to prospects and customers at regular intervals based on certain behaviors or lead status. The term drip marketing refers to the steady process of dripping your messages to your prospects. The term drip marketing is derived from the process of drip watering in irrigation. If you dump a bucket of water on a plant, the plant will drown and die. Yet if you give the plant drops of water over time, the plant will get the water it needs yet it won t be overwhelmed. That s the idea with drip marketing. By sending regular messages at appropriate intervals you won t overwhelm your prospects and you ll successfully nurture each one until they re ready to buy what you re selling. Marketing Automation can use drip marketing techniques to send messages to specific prospects over time. In general, drip email marketing is used to send a series of emails on a schedule. During this campaign, all contacts will be sent the scheduled emails unless they bounce or unsubscribe. Advanced Lead Nurturing campaigns can manage a variety of behavior-based or attribute-based characteristics of the participating contacts. Nurture Campaigns can generally, also hand off to other Campaigns using actions, or automatically re-send an email to all of the contacts who didn t open the previous email. And Nurture/ Advanced Campaigns are a great method by which to perform A/B Testing or to delay the first action your campaign takes. Likewise, Nurture/Advanced Campaigns can also be used for A/B Testing or to delay the first action your campaign takes. There s quite a bit of tactical advantage you can enjoy when you learn the nuances and power of marketing automation campaigns using drip or advanced capabilities. When you align your approach with goals and buy-in your Marketing Automation platform can amplify your sales and marketing efforts. Marketing Automation provides you with a powerful tool in your revenue generating efforts. Page 19

Lead Nurturing Example L E A D N U R T U R I N G E X A M P L E (+) Lead reads email announcement (+) Form completed, white paper downloaded (+) Lead spends >3 minutes on company website Product/Service announcement email sent Gated content offered Free webinar offered on home page of company site (-) New white paper offer is ignored (-) Lead declines case study offer and leaves landing page without downloading it (+) Lead signs up for webinar Since case study was rejected, another white paper is offered Case study suggested on Thank you page Thank you for signing up landing page (+) (+) Lead spends time on the company pricing page Lead enters free trial KEY Alert is triggered based on activity (time spent on pricing page) and sales gets the alert via text Salesperson sees alert and contacts lead to offer a free trial CONVERSION LEAD ACTIVITY NURTURE PROCESS Page 20

Glossary Activity Score information that is specific to a prospect s page views or site access source that is numerically weighted to produce a contact event or system action. Contact Score information that is specific to the prospect s name, email address, industry, and revenue that is numerical weighted to produce a contact event or system action. Engagement Score information that is specific to the prospect s interaction with forms, email marketing or web events that is numerically weighted to produce a contact event or system action. Explicit Information lead scoring information given by the prospect or gathered from a CRM. Implicit Information lead scoring information gathered by observing the prospect. Lead Scoring is a methodology of assigning a numerical score, or points, to prospects. Nurturing the process of keeping in meaningful and consistent communication with quality prospects. Qualified Lead prospect that meets the customer profile, is a decision maker, has a need, plans to make a purchase in the near term and is ready to speak with sales. Page 21

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