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I don’t literally mean “dead people” although it would be a great advance in technology if lead nurturing could do that. I mean bringing dead leads back into the sales pipeline using lead nurturing. A lot of companies gather leads over long periods of time through various channels and somewhere along the line, they get marked “cold” or “dead” in the CRM and never to be seen again. These dead leads can still be very valuable but they need a little nurturing.
Steve Woods of Eloqua shares a fantastic example of how VFA put together a lead nurturing program to breathe new life into a set of old “dead” leads they had gathered over time in the post VFA: Nurturing to Re-Engage Dead Leads
. The insightful case study explains just how they managed to do this and is a must read for anyone who knows of a database somewhere in their company that has been lying untouched since everyone thought it had no potential. The end results of the campaign as quoted from the original post:
The campaign succeeded in bringing back a tremendous number of leads from the “dead”. Over 120 highly qualified leads were passed to sales, and over $1.6M in pipeline was created. In a typical example, a lead may have been disqualified at a much earlier date, but given changes in the prospect’s organization, they were now ready to purchase and a sales opportunity was discovered. Only through nurturing and observing the buyers’ digital body language were these opportunities rediscovered.
To think a $1.6 million pipeline was created from leads that were presumably no longer worth pursuing, makes you wonder how much untapped revenue can be set free if companies everywhere would digg up some dead leads and nurture them the way VFA did. That is something to think about right?
And the Marketing Sherpa email marketing award for Best Automated Series – Auto Responder goes to (long pause) Sony Corporation & Datran Media! If you look into the campaign which Datatran made a superb case study
out of , you’ll find a well crafted and equally well distributed campaign which consisted of 3 automated welcome email messages to a group new Sony Rewards Loyalty Program each sent a few days apart to engage them while educating them about the program. In contrast they also carried out a simple single welcome email sendout and the results were impressive. There are a number of different things you can take home from this great case study and lots that can be learnt but here are two points that stand out and can be useful in setting up automated email or lead nurturing campaigns too.
Great Copy
Well designed content and a great copy that encourages action in the form of click throughs goes a long way in the sucess of a campaign. Have a look at one of the sample emails that was auto triggered by a new customer registered for the program and definitely click the image to see the flow of the messages on the Datatran website:
Sony & Datatran Welcome Auto Responder Email
Customer Engagement Strategy coumadin
The second point that stands out is the customer engagement approach used by sending the emails on day 1, day 4 and day 7 to prompt action and get the customers attention and educate them on the benefits. This is the same strategy offered by lead nurturing technology which allows a programmed send out of emails and then subsequent follow up email messages activated on triggers which maximize the number of opens and click throughs. The effect of the customer engagement strategy for Sony? Well the results are quite stunning. Compared to the group that received a single welcome message, the multiple touch messages group had 157% more click throughs and 627% more clicks in general to the site.
Simply put. Customer or prospect engagement through email can be a powerful strategy!
A question posted on Linkedin on why very few B2B vendors do lead nurturing effectively sparked off an engaging discussion on what kind of expectaions sales and marketing executives have from lead nurturing and what the reality and actual purpose of it is. A brilliant reply by Rachel Schneider - President, Magnus Marketing Group gives a clear perspective on how far away from reality these expectations can be. Rachel says
There is no such thing as demand creation, only demand identification. People seem to think they can create markets – only with a great deal of patience and education, and potentially money. It takes time to find buyers at any time who are willing to listen or have a need. This is step one.
Marketing automation and lead nurturing programs are not designed to magically create demand for a product or solution. Those executives who believe this, believe in a myth. The reality is lead nurturing helps identify sales ready leads from amongst your database or eco-system of prospects and alert you as to which ones are actively responding to your company or product. It simply helps in customer engagement and identification of their interest level so you know which ones to engage at the right time rather than pushing them to buy when they are not ready to buy. However, a completely unqualified name in your marketing automation system who is potentially never likely to need what you offer can’t be automatically converted into a warm lead simply by running a lead nurturing program
and hitting them with messages from your company.
Another point to remember is lead nurturing and marketing automation are long term pull strategies of keeping prospects in the loop and waiting for them to respond to your product not a push strategy like cold calling so it’s wrong to compare the two. As Rachel states in her reply to the discussion:
Reality: Take any business owner what do you hear? I want sales now, now now, make me money, now now now. We aren’t going to make our goals this quarter, how many calls were made, what is our pipeline look like. Now. Close them today. Not thinking conducive to any type of true nuturing.
Lose the targets, telemarketers, short term goals, company centric sales mentality and try to really build a market or business strategically – then you will have lead nuturing.
If your database yielded 40 sales ready leads one month and only 20 in the next it doesn’t always mean your lead nurturing program didn’t work. It more likely means from your total prospects in the program a sub set of 40 had an immediate interest or were ready to be engaged last month and another 20 were ready to be engaged the next month. Having a healthy perspective on what a lead nurturing program can help you do is important to being able to use it effective and build a sustainable process which will keep your lead funnel filled with quality leads. It’s not magic but if its done right, it can work pretty damn well.
Most businesses has thousands of leads in their CRM database Cassandra’s Dream rip but majority of those leads are not sales-ready. They are not in the buying cycle right now, but may be in the future. In such cases, its futile for the sales team to call on all leads without knowing which ones may be the best prospects to consider their offering. Lead nurturing is the apt marketing technique that can help businesses to identity and focus on potential customers who are sales ready.
Lead nurturing is the process of reaching out to your potential customers on a consistent basis across multiple channels to build a conversation with them, engage them and build trust that makes them think about your company and offering when they are ready to buy. Lead nurturing helps you to cultivate relationships with potential customers and to be right there when they are ready to buy. It allows you to create a stronger and more predictable channel for customer acquisition. The trust created by innovative lead nurturing campaigns helps you to not only be one of the shortlisted vendors every time a need arises but that trust also creates positive word of mouth where potential customer engaged with your campaigns, recommends you and your offering to other potential customers.
The most common channel used for lead nurturing has been email, but it is highly recommended to consider lead nurturing across all channels including email, direct mail and telemarketing, as every channel further strengthens the conversation and trust. Infact, the role of human touch in lead nurturing detrol is getting increased attention and endorsement as it helps sales teams connect with potential customers and makes the follow-on email and direct mail feel more personal as potential customers are able to connect and relate to the messages based on their actual conversation with a sales person.
Are you explore lead nurturing as a way for cultivating relationships with your prospects?
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