Length of time for Marketing Suspend

[Anonymous]

Good afternoon:

Anyone have suggestions on the best length of time to suspend lead nurtuing after a lead has become SAL and an Opportunity created? Our sales team is providing their input but I was hoping the community might have some suggestiosn as well. Thanks.

Mike

[Anonymous]

We continue to nurture while the lead has been accepted by the SDRs/MDRs, but once it is added to an Opportunity, we stop the nurture emails (both scheduled and ad hoc) unless sales says it's OK to include them in a broad email like an invite to a tradeshow or webinar, or an email about a new research report.  Our sales team told us that they would be receptive to having a scheduled email early stage nurture program, but we haven't implemented it yet.

[Josh_Hill13]

Generally sales wants these stopped until they know more about the Opp's success. They'll want to send invitations out on their own. So suspending until a decision is made can work.

[Anonymous]

It depends on your sales team's own communication activities.  

Generally, I wouldn't recommend suspending nurturing during this period, *unless* they commit to an SLA moving leads to another stage within a certain amount of time.  With a longer sales cycle this can be more difficult as you may not have a clear next step for a few months.  

An alternative approach:

• Ask sales what the perfect marketing emails would look like during this stage.  What can you send that reinforces their approach?
• Allow sales to individually opt-out their prospects of marketing emails.  This creates a bit more work for them, but it provides a glimpse into the SAL that have lapsed without an opportunity.  When your sales team has larger territories this can be especially important.