Planning A B2b Lead Nurturing Program

By Author: martin well
Total Articles: 364
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Lead nurturing is the process by which B2B marketers continuously engage with prospects to create a lasting impression on their product, offering or brand. What starts as a good impression will enable a B2B marketer to pitch at the right time, giving him an edge over his competitors. Moreover, since lead nurturing plays a vital role in inbound marketing it helps to rightly time and distribute appropriate content promptly and effectively. Here are some important pointers when planning for B2B lead nurturing programs.

Create Lead nurturing Strategy
Establish timelines for email frequency and offer strategy. Establish lead profiles that need to be pursued. Decide on the qualitative and quantitative metrics that will measure effectiveness of the lead nurturing program. Aim to increase the number of sales ready leads marketers by identifying decision makers and nurturing them. Work out a strategy to ensure that the leads leaked out of sales funnel or rejected leads are also dealt with. The initial lead nurturing programs must be aimed at lesser recipients in order to identify what works well with prospects.

Deduce ...
... lead intent
In order to increase effectiveness of lead nurturing programs, marketers must be able to deduce lead intent from website activity. Marketing automation tools can be leveraged to identify interest areas of online visitors based on the pages visited, buttons clicked, forms filled, links clicked, etc. Using this deduced intent, and based on the lead profiles that were initially set, marketers can zero in on prospects that are most likely to buy.

Integrate Quality Content
Lead nurturing is not about simply sharing newsletters, eBooks, offers, etc. What actually motivates an email recipient to click open an email is, industry news or competitive analysis. Blogs also generate equal curiosity when they are written by experts and leaders. So, by integrating quality content with lead nurturing programs, marketers can expect readers to respond or share comments.

Share Relevant Messages
The most important factor for lead nurturing success is relevancy. By sending mails that are relevant to recipients area of work, interest, industry segment, job location, etc., there is more likelihood of the reader responding to the email, even if not immediately, at some point of time.

Practice Email Ethics
For lead nurturing to succeed, basic email sending ethics must be maintained. The recipient should be able to opt-out of emails at anytime. The delivered email should be easily downloadable and viewed. Inclusion of call-to-action buttons increase the likelihood of an immediate response while providing additional reading material will only ensure that the interest element is sustained. Providing social media links in the email such as Forward to Friend, Subscribe, etc. can help recipients to share content or links with other professionals or friends.

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LeadTracker ,
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