Enagement Programs?

[Anonymous]

We are currently setting up engagement programs for the first time - I was wondering if anyone would have any best practices or be willing to take a look at what we are thinking and give us your thoughts.

Any help that anyone can offer would be great appreciated.

[Edward_Masson · Accepted solution]

Sure, what are you planning on doing?

Best things I can advise is to keep it very simple to start with. Simple engagements to begin with so that you have quick wins.  Then, as you get more confident to can start to break out your streams.

Start with 3 streams - Early, Mid and Late stage, with content for each stage.

Think about your content as a series of touches to get the lead to take your offer in the early stage, cadence every 1-2 weeks (depending on your business). Each early stage touch is to get them to click/fill out a form for your asset. Point is to get them to take one of those offers in the early stage. Then they can move out of you're early stream into the Mid stage stream with a faster cadence as now there are engaged. This can be ever 48 hours, again more touches to engage and take one of those offers then be moved to the Late stage. In the late stage, offer a more sales focus asset.

By the time they take one late stage asset they can be ready for a sales conversation, and you can upgrade their lead status by lead score and tag them as MQL.

Some food for thought.

[Anonymous]

Sharla:

Congrats on making the decision to start the lead nurturing process. Been through it numerous times and have am currently working on a guide. Shoot me a message if you want a draft.

Like Ed said, start simple. Buying stage is usually a good place to start. Teams tend to want to define 7 streams of content across 8 industries across 5 product lines. Way too many complexities there.

Some steps to take..........

1. Define Nurture Structure - Pick 1-2 to starts (Stage? Product? Industry? Geo? Title?)

2. Establish Audience - Who should receive it? And better yet, who shouldn't?

3. Inventory Content – Candidates Include eBooks, blog posts, videos, recent news, etc

4. Determine Traffic Cop Rules - Who should receive what content when someone enters the nurture journey.

5. Setup to Measure Success - Determine what is important to track.

6. No Dup Content: Exclude Past Consumers - Decide if person who registered for XYZ content via website shouldn’t get email about XYZ content.

7. Define Any Fast Track Rules - Any actions accelerate a buyer’s journey?​

8. Pause and Restart Content - Decide when and if to pause content....and when to restart.

9. Define the Sender - Should the nurture emails come from the lead owner or from a generic email address?

10. Automove when Content Exhausted? - What to do with leads when content is exhausted?

11. Change the Conversation When Needed - How to listen for key behaviors and change the conversation.

12. Don’t Forget the Post Sale Messaging. Think about building customer loyalty and retention. ​​

13. Customize if Needed.

[Anonymous]

I would love a copy of the draft.  Thank you so much!

[Josh_Hill13]

Other than all the great tips above, think about it in a basic framework for doing this in marketo:

Entry - who gets in and when? (Audience)

Exit - Goal - when do they stop? What is our goal for them? MQL? Opp?

Exit - Bad - did they unsub or do something else we don't like?

Exit - Other Criteria - did we switch them to another nurture (traffic cop)