The Key To Nurturing Your Leads

The title of this blog may suggest that there is just one single key to nurturing leads, however there are many things you need to consider.

In this blog, I will run through the six considerations you need to make when creating your nurture.

The right person — segmentation

First of all, you’re going to want to make sure you’re nurturing the right audience to begin with. In order to do so you need to make sure the leads you have gained and are going to be nurturing are from your efforts targeting your ideal buyer persona.

Once you have your overall group you can further segment this down into more specific groups, allowing you to really personalise your content to a lead.

The right time — frequency

So you’ve secured your lead, but how much follow-up is needed to nurture this lead? Research shows you should have an average of ten ‘touches’ in place throughout your nurture plan from when your prospect begins the journey to when they finished and become your customer.

In terms of how often to send an email, this depends on the campaign duration itself and what the expectation you have set with your audience. However, in terms of when to begin your nurture sequence, statistics suggest implementing your follow-up ASAP. Leads are 21-times more likely to become qualified leads if you contact them within the first five minutes versus the first 30 minutes.

A great way to help you do this on a large scale is to use automated emails that go out to a prospect as soon as they become a lead, ensuring you don’t have to do this manually every time.

The right content — throughout the journey

So, what are you going to nurture your prospects with?

The aim of content should be to help and educate your leads with information that is relevant to answering your buyer personas problems and pain points. This should refer back to your segmentation and personalisation as this will help you send the right content to the right person. A factor in this process is also to address where your prospect is within their buying journey and provide them with relevant information that will drive them along through to the next stage.

The right platform — are you thinking outside of the (in)box?

Using all of these key points is no good if you are doing it in the wrong place. Therefore it is important to consider which will be the most efficient platform on which to carry out this nurture.

Typically this used to be email, but if you are finding your open rates are dropping it might actually mean your ideal persona isn’t using that platform. Before presenting information to your leads, make sure to actually find out where they are first! This should form a key part of your persona work anyway.

Multi-channel targeting is also a good method to utilise, as a combination of tactics in an overall strategy will allow you to find out what works best for your audience.

Tracking and qualifying — lead scoring

Once you have set up your nurture and it is being executed, check back regularly to review how it is performing and whether or not leads that enter it are becoming more qualified.

Lead scoring can help you with this, assigning a numerical value to the actions your prospects take. This will give you an idea of where they are in the funnel and if they need to be nurtured further, or if they’re ready to be contacted by sales.

Collaboration — Smarketing

So, who should take on the task to create this nurture? You maybe thinking the answer is the marketers within your company, however research shows that both markers and sales should both be responsible for the creation of this plan and execution.

So, now you have the key(s) you should be able to unlock the process for nurturing the visitors and leads you get through efficiently.