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@nurture
Nurture has been instrumental in helping us track our leads and personalizing... 
Nurture is an innovative marketing automation application that empowers businesses to build personalized one-on-one conversations with prospects to build strong relationships leading to increase sales.
So the giant companies have their complex marketing automation solutions which are programmed to millions of existing and prospective customers to gush out a flow of qualified leads to the salesforce and make sure they meet their multi million dollar quotas every month. How does and marketing automation software and technology apply to the one man marketing/sales team in a start-up or a smaller company? The multi-role professional who can be CEO, VP of Marketing & VP of Sales all rolled into one and looks for and sends emails while simultaneously making phone calls to prospects. Does it have any relevence at all?
It does. In fact lead nurturing is just as well suited to the one person or small team setup as a large global corporation. Working in a smaller setup, you tend to divide your time across multiple activities all of which need attention. At some point you may need to focus on . Other times would involve sending emails and making contact with these leads to see if they have an immediate requirement. Often, if they are not ready they stay in the database till the time comes to follow up and check on them again. Beyond a certain number of prospects it becomes difficult to touch base with every lead or prospect every month or very periodically as the number of contacts you add to your ecosystem of leads grows and even if you are methodical, it takes longer to get back to leads and do that regular check for readiness.
This is where can provide great support for a smaller team. It can’t replace a call but what it can do is help you keep the communication with every lead you touched active till they seem ready to be engaged again personally. Once you have created a nurturing program with a series of emails and content which can keep your customer engaged, you have that system in place which can do those follow-ups for you to some extent and moreover you need not be overwhelmed by the volumes of leads that build up within your database. It lets you keep your focus and selling time on the qualified and sales ready leads and spend it on other aread such as . With the help of a to support some crucial activities you can still do a lot without a big team.
Here is a paragraph from the Aberdeen Group
for their recent research study, ”
“:
The importance of being able to run programs has been quite clear for some time now and marketers looking to build a sustainable lead generation machine which churns out qualified and actionable leads have a the top of their lists. It’s also widely predicted by fellow marters that lead nurturing will be one of the key areas to see development and wider adoption in 2009. However, among those who have stood back from exploring a , there is a perception that implementing a lead nurturing program would involve a sizable investment or cost which is somethiing that just can not be considered when budgets should be focussed on generating new leads and opportunities.
Now perhaps its a matter of perception but investing only
in new lead generation can create waste. Lead that are generated from campaigns and various other marketing investments that do not convert to sales immediately fall through the cracks and end up sitting in a database forgotten. Remember, there was a cost to generate each one of those leads and by not converting those to revenue, they simply build up cost as more money is poured into generating new leads. Lead nurturing programs ensure your leads are still being tapped and are still working for you even when there is no immediate conversion into sales which really makes you realize the potential of your lead spend and prevent waste. With a host of available with flexible pricing models, it need not be as expensive and investment as it may have seemed earlier and in the long term, think of it as increasing the efficiency of your lead program and not just
as adding cost.
Seller
: Do you need a pair of shoes?
Buyer: No
Seller
: Here are some facts on our shoes and why they are better than others.
Buyer: Hmmppff… ok
Seller : Here are some promotions and discount coupons which you can use later this year if you ever need shoes from us.
Buyer
: Alright but I don’t need them now
Seller: We have just launched a completely new line of sports shoes since and thought you may want a copy of our latest catalog
Buyer: Intertesting
Seller: Here is an interesting article on the history of shoes which we thought you may like
Buyer: Do you still have that promotion you sent me two months ago? I’m going on a hiking trip and wanted to have a look at what you have that could work for hiking
Seller: (Smiles wide and knows he could make a sale here)
This may not be an everyday business to business marketing scenario but the fundamental rules remain the same. This is in its simplest form what is all about. You can’t force someone to buy something when they don’t need it and yet, just because he/she doesnt need it now, it doesn’t mean they may not buy from you when they do need it. Knowing who your prospects are is the easy bit. Knowing when they are ready to buy from you and when they are ready to be pitched to is where
plays such an important part. It’s essence is about being able to build and maintain a relationship with the buyer through regular communication and then being able to tell when they are “sales ready”. It’s what a B2C mom and pop shop would do with their customers in a shoe store for example like the scenario above with a smaller number of customers where its possible to manually keep in regular touch with them. Where the number of prospects increase and physically keeping in touch with thousands, tens of thousands or more prospects becomes unthinkable that lead nurturing technology really comes to the rescue. Automating the process and being able to scale it to a larger number of users needs marketing automation or however the basics remain the same.
Just before the new year dawned put down their predictions and trends for the coming year. From what’s going to be hot in 2009 to what we may see burn as business to business marketing evolves along with the technolgy that drives it. Based on what we saw last year, one of the predictions that I would put my money on is that more marketers will look towards marketing automation and lead nurturing solutions over their current email campaigns.
Towards the earlier half of December 2008, Robert Lesser of Direct Impact Marketing wrote a really insightful post titled “” based on a the company carried out. The findings were really interesting and showed that 86% of the responders did use email campaigns for . What was more fascinating is that other than email solutions such as Vertical Response and Constant Contact, more comprehensive lead generation and solutions such as ,
and were gaining ground.
Email campaigns have been a staple for b2b marketers and while its unlikely to become any less popular for quite some time to come, there is a clear interest to have a lead generation system which does more than send out emails and track responses. can provide that automation and more comprehensive system of reaching out to prospects periodically, tracking their activity and measuring their readiness to buy not to mention continuing to those who are not yet ready. was specifically built to help bridge that gap between simpler email marketing tools and much more comprehensive lead generation applications and provide a cost effective alternative to running one off email campaigns. The benefits are very significant and more marketers are becoming aware of how effective the nurturing technique is.
Only time will tell just how much of a share will take from email tools but it will be an interesting one to track through 2009.
