3 Nurture Campaigns you (probably) don’t have, but need
Lead nurturing is a process of delivering relevant, timely and personalized content to your customers. At every stage in the customer lifecycle there are opportunities to build stronger relationships and position your company as a trusted partner. This leads to a positive impact on your bottom line—Research has shown that companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost.
You may already have some successful nurture campaigns in place, but here are a few you probably don’t have, but need.
“Wake Up” Campaigns
The purpose of wake up campaigns is to re-engage a dormant audience. The word re-engage implies that this audience was at one point active and engaged, but for whatever reason, they have faded away, and you’re not sure if they’re coming back or not. You may think you already have a “wake up” campaign in place, but take another look at your audience. Are you targeting all inactive contacts, or just the ones who have taken a break? The key here is that this audience has engaged in the past. Contacts with no activity have less potential and may even be a risk as there’s a higher chance for spam traps and deliverability issues. The difference between these audiences is subtle, but important enough to treat them differently.
To find these users in your database, look for contacts who had activity in the past, anything from email clicks to purchases, but haven’t done anything recently. The time periods you use to evaluate your audience will depend on your sales cycle as well as individual characteristics and behaviors of your target audience. Don’t be afraid to play around with different time periods to find out what makes the most sense for your business.
This audience has potential, and with the right messaging, you can “wake them up” and bring them back to make a purchase. Try offering a promotion, announcing a new product or service, or just asking them straight up if they’re still interested in your business. Once you feel confident about the messaging, you can use automation to trigger the campaign to begin at the exact moment a decrease in activity is detected, as well as move them into the next campaign once they’ve “woken up.”
Sales Enablement Campaigns
There’s a common misconception that marketers are all about generating leads, leads, leads. While generating leads for the sales team is an important role of marketing, the reality is that marketing is responsible for so much more and serves a multitude of audiences–both internal, like your buyers and customers, and external, like the Human Resources or Sales teams. Marketing is responsible for supporting the sales team not only by bringing in leads, but also by providing content and messaging guidelines to use in their communication to prospects and customers.
The purpose of a sales enablement campaign is to provide up to date and relevant content to your sales team that helps them close more deals. Include anything that your sales team would find valuable—from new eBooks, to competitive one-sheeters, to new Eloqua Engage email templates available to them. This will help your team members in sales close more deals and highlights marketing as a valued resource and partner.
To take your sales enablement nurture to the next level and enhance the experience for your sales team, go beyond email marketing and incorporate other tools from your martech. For example, use tools like Uberflip to create content streams that your sales team can review at their own pace, then send to prospects straight from their inbox. Another example is to create a Slack channel for the team to share updates real-time and collect feedback while avoiding cluttering up the inbox.
Closed-Won
You read that right. Everyone’s doing a closed-lost nurture (and if you aren’t, you should). But what about the deals you won? While 81% of brands have early-stage lead nurturing tactics in place only 29% are targeting their existing customers beyond the first purchase.* This audience could be your biggest opportunity—not only are they more likely than new leads to buy again, but you’ve most likely already invested lots of money and time to acquire them. Maximizing your return is critical.
There are a couple of different nurtures you can send to this audience depending on your company goals and business model. If you are a subscription-based company, it’s important to continue to build a relationship and provide value so that when their subscription is charged each time, the thought of canceling doesn’t exist. If you sell multiple products, there’s an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell to this audience—they’re already familiar with your brand and hopefully consider your company as a trusted partner. Lastly, consider reaching out to your happy closed-won customers to ask for referrals or testimonials. If they are happy with their purchase, they may already be acting as brand advocates and eager to help you out!
Whether you have nurture campaigns in place, or just getting started, remember to think outside the box. There are opportunities like these at every stage of the customer lifecycle, so go beyond your Welcome and closed-lost campaigns. If you like these ideas and want to chat more with us, drop us a line.
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