Guest Post by: Katie Byrnes
A great addition to Marketo’s Resources has been the Spear Marketing Group white paper, Top 10 Tips for Lead Nurturing Success, written by Howard Sewell. Not only is it a helpful resource when starting your lead nurturing, it also embodies and reinforces so many Marketo best practices. For a quick summary of the 10 tips, read below.
- Start with a goal: Setting up a lead nurturing program is not a goal. You need to decide what you hope to achieve by setting up a program. Some objectives can include: converting raw sales leads into qualified prospects, identifying key decision-makers, turning dormant accounts into active accounts, etc.
- Ask the right questions: In order to create the most effective lead nurturing program, you must evaluate your current lead management processes by asking the right questions. Read more to learn the top 5 questions to ask.
- Start small: Don’t get carried away. While marketing automation allows for immediate response, anytime, with multi-step, personalized, dynamic series of email communications, based on demographic and behavioral scoring (deep breath), it doesn’t mean you have to implement these processes just yet! Start simple and implement your plan in phases.
- Respond to Inbound Leads: By automating follow-up communication tailored to behavior and demographics you can have the ability to respond to every web visitor, helping them along their pre-determined sales path. For more information about inbound marketing, check out how B2B Marketers can get more leads into the funnel via inbound marketing.
- Don’t be limited by lack of content: While many marketers are bottle-necked by lack of content in their nurturing programs, you must remember that content is more than just white papers. Lead nurturing is possible without lots of content.
- Make your blog an integral part of the program: Dump your e-newsletter. Your blog has much more advantages, including: broader reach, interactivity, no editorial calendar, and much more.
- Keep it relevant: Relevancy is the key factor of generating response. Utilize segmentation and tailor your message for specific lead source, job function, industry, product interest and activity.
- Don’t forget the thank you page: To most marketers, the thank you page is an afterthought. Make sure you don’t miss this opportunity to make the thank you page work for you. Read more to learn the 5 simple ways the thank you page can move prospects further down the sales cycle.
- Fulfill offer content via email: Your best option is to send an email containing a link to the content – it forces the prospect to provide a valid email address, there’s no attachment necessary (less likely to hit spam filters or firewalls), and it stays in the prospect’s inbox (making it more likely to be referenced in the future, or forwarded to a friend)
- Test: When it comes to email, we can’t stress this enough. Because this is a repeatable process, there are many lessons to be learned. The 5 elements to test consistently include: subject line, offer, frequency, design and copy length. Learn more in the Secret to Successful Email Marketing: Testing.
Start improving you lead nurturing strategies today. Download The 10 Tips to Lead Nurturing Success.
Original Post: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2010/10/top-10-tips-for-lead-nurturing-success.html
