SOLVED

Nurture Campaign Setup

Go to solution
Gerard_Donnell4
Level 10

Nurture Campaign Setup

I have not yet found a best practice nurture campaign setup.  I would love to find out what people here currently do.

Things I'm really interested in knowing:

Do you move people between streams based on a score field for the nurture campaign or through behaviours?

If you say behaviours then what does that look like? Opens x emails, clicks x emails, downloads content etc...

Some other things I'd like to know:

How much content in each stream?

How do you decide cadence? Does in decrease as you move streams?

Do people have the ability to binge on the content? Can a lead consume content faster than the cadence.

Anything else you see relevant.

I know this is open ended.  I just want to get some good pointers to move forward with.

Thanks,

Gerard

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Nurture Campaign Setup

Hi Gerard,

I am currently in the process of building a number of best practice Engagement Programs, so here are some tips we use:

- Content: in terms of the content you want to add to your Streams, you can either do it based on Emails or based on Smart Campaigns in Programs (you can only add one Smart Campaign per Program to your Stream). You can mix both, but to start with I would probably suggest sticking with one type of content, as it can otherwise get quite complicated. The amount of content in each stream will really depend upon the complexity of your campaign and if you are using Emails or Programs, but to start with I would probably have no more than 5-6 items per Stream especially if its based on Programs. We usually create 3 streams:

  - Non-Gated content Stream - to build a relationship with the customer

  - Gated content Stream - to get some rich data now that we have a relationship with the customer

  - Mostly Non-Gated content Stream - we already have a relationship with the customer and rich data

- Cadence: to set the best cadence for you and your company you probably want to run an 2 reports to determine this:

   - Email Sent Activity Heat Grid

   - Email Click Activity Heat Grid report

With these reports you can determine which days and which hours are best for you to send based on customer engagement.

We also found running a number of tests that a long cadence seems to get more engagement than a short cadence. But again, this will depend on your industry and will need to run a number of reports to test first.

Some leads will move quicker through the content than others if you are using Smart Campaigns. When they consumer all the content they will appear as Exhausted.

- Transition Rules: transition rules only work with a Trigger. To keep our structure organised and clear, we usually add customers from each stream in different Lists based on their behaviour, and then use the Added to List trigger in the transition rules.

Hope this helps you!

Macarena.

View solution in original post

5 REPLIES 5
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Nurture Campaign Setup

Hi Gerard,

I am currently in the process of building a number of best practice Engagement Programs, so here are some tips we use:

- Content: in terms of the content you want to add to your Streams, you can either do it based on Emails or based on Smart Campaigns in Programs (you can only add one Smart Campaign per Program to your Stream). You can mix both, but to start with I would probably suggest sticking with one type of content, as it can otherwise get quite complicated. The amount of content in each stream will really depend upon the complexity of your campaign and if you are using Emails or Programs, but to start with I would probably have no more than 5-6 items per Stream especially if its based on Programs. We usually create 3 streams:

  - Non-Gated content Stream - to build a relationship with the customer

  - Gated content Stream - to get some rich data now that we have a relationship with the customer

  - Mostly Non-Gated content Stream - we already have a relationship with the customer and rich data

- Cadence: to set the best cadence for you and your company you probably want to run an 2 reports to determine this:

   - Email Sent Activity Heat Grid

   - Email Click Activity Heat Grid report

With these reports you can determine which days and which hours are best for you to send based on customer engagement.

We also found running a number of tests that a long cadence seems to get more engagement than a short cadence. But again, this will depend on your industry and will need to run a number of reports to test first.

Some leads will move quicker through the content than others if you are using Smart Campaigns. When they consumer all the content they will appear as Exhausted.

- Transition Rules: transition rules only work with a Trigger. To keep our structure organised and clear, we usually add customers from each stream in different Lists based on their behaviour, and then use the Added to List trigger in the transition rules.

Hope this helps you!

Macarena.

Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Nurture Campaign Setup

Any of these things can work. You have to decide for your audience. Macarena's suggestions are good, however, the Heat Grid is only available with RCE.

there are several threads here related to this and you should look for Engagement or Drip Nurture setup.

Gerard_Donnell4
Level 10

Re: Nurture Campaign Setup

Thanks Josh Hill​ and Macarena Lopez Mazzeo​, some great info and stuff to look at.

Autumn_Mahoney1
Level 3

Re: Nurture Campaign Setup

Here's my basic outline. I can provide additional information if you'd like.

Streams and Content: I use a buyer's stage process. My programs are separated by Industry/Job function(Persona) and campaign theme (so they can move to another if this one does not work). Content is also sometimes dynamically offered based upon information gleaned from forms like current solutions, industry sub-segments, etc. I have 3-5 programs in each stream, adding and removing as content ages. Later stream content changes least often.

  1. Suspect to Awareness: we know you but you may not know us or what we do. Content includes high level eGuides and checklists, interactive tools, etc. that introduce the problem that that prospect is trying to solve.
  2. Awareness to Evaluation: you know what problem you are trying to solve and are looking for options. Content is a deeper dive into solutions that could solve your problem through white papers and longer form papers/eBooks and case studies.
  3. Evaluation to Selection: you want to learn about our solutions, specifically. Content includes product-specific articles and data sheets, technology papers, demo videos, etc.
  4. Selection to Qualification: you are ready to talk. Content offers are a mix of soft and hard hand-raisers for contact like asking for a demo, pricing, or using a self-service limited trial.

While in nurture, once a lead interacts with a Qualification-stage piece of content/hand-raiser, or does something that indicates buying behavior (e.g. visits pricing page), or hits a certain threshold score, then they are paused and passed to Sales as an MQL for them to act upon.

Transitions: No content is gated until Stream 4 (hand-raisers are the goal for our program). Once they engage with content in one stage/stream, then they moved to the next with the goal to get them to a hand-raiser and ready to talk to sales (depending on how much content or how long you think you need to nurture leads, you might opt to wait until they get x number of emails or do x number of things before the transition). I also automatically move exhausted folks from Stream 1 to 2 after a break. Depending on the lead source content, the prospect could start at any Stream based upon our best guess of stage (I have all content and offers mapped to a stage and persona to help plug them into the right program and stream and to see our gaps). There is no need to start someone at the beginning if they are added after interacting with lots of content or certain pieces of content. I have triggers that change a prospect's stage (Suspect, Awareness, Evaluation, Selection, Qualification, Opportunity, Customer, Unqualified) depending on actions they take on our website independent of the nurture emails and how they interact with the sales team or get updated through market research (I guess this addresses your "binge" question). These also trigger them forward (and back) between streams and pause/unpause them in the nurture program.

Cadence: I do as you suggest and have the early stream content spread out every 3 weeks, every 2 weeks, and then once a week when they are closer to buying...EXCEPT that I had a large database that had not been nurtured ever, so this year I took all old, cold leads and accelerated them through an every week cadence to see what we could jump start. Any that came alive but only got to the 2nd or 3rd stage before exhaustion, I am resting them and then putting them into the standard cadence program. All new and future leads see the standard cadence.

There are obviously lots of nuances and it depends upon your lead management process with your sales team as to how the nuts and bolts will need to be put into place. But this is my basic framework. Hope it helps.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Nurture Campaign Setup

this is unbelievably helpful! THANK YOU AUTUMN!