It’s tempting to build lead nurturing streams around your major campaigns—and stop there. But lead nurturingisn’t “one size fits all.” The best streams (or “nurture tracks”) help you send targeted messages based on a prospect’s stage in the buying process. Here are eight (admittedly offbeat) tracks that will help move prospects through your marketing and sales funnel.
1. Red Carpet Track (welcome)
Give new contacts the celebrity treatment by showing them how you can cater to their needs. These prospects might not know anything about your brand or solutions. Bring them up to speed with what you do, how you help companies like theirs, and who you are. In return, you’ll learn more about them.
2. Boomerang Track (recycling)
When a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) is chucked by sales, it doesn’t have to be forever. If handled properly, some of these leads can fly right back to sales. First, make sure that rejected leads are segmented based on the reason for disqualification. If leads were rejected for reasons that can be fixed, like low interest or un-readiness to buy, place them in your boomerang track. Once you build interest through a targeted nurture program, you’ll throw them to sales. And this time, they won’t come back.
3. Sales-Nado Track (sales nurturing)
The sales-nado track is a roaring twister that picks up stagnant prospects and hurls them through the opportunity pipeline.
Most of lead nurturing is focused on the marketing side of the funnel. Sales-nado focuses on sales-qualified leads (SQLs) and leads in the pipeline. Because sales reps don’t always have time to individually reach out to prospects, an opt-in nurture track helps to keep leads engaged.
But beware: The sales-nado should be approached with the delicacy of a tornado-chaser following a cyclone. The last thing any sales rep wants is to have an actively-worked prospect get an impersonal email right before closing the deal. You should attempt sales-nado only when marketing and sales are tightly aligned.
4. Gopher Track (stay in touch)
Pop up in front of contacts from time to time and stay relevant, even if they aren’t ready to buy. With the gopher track, you can assure contacts that you have the best solutions. Send messages at a slow, but steady, pace. By staying relevant, you’ll increase the chance your prospect will buy from you in the future.
5. Gorilla Glue Track (retention)
Make your customers stick! Nothing adheres like Gorilla Glue…so glue customers to your solutions for the long run.
This is your chance to show customers that you value their business. How? Send them tips, industry news, service updates, personalized messages, or feedback surveys. When renewal is on the horizon, send offers they can’t refuse.
6. Detective Track (insufficient data)
Discover missing information about visitors to your website, webinar attendees, and content downloaders. Build systems that easily follow their trail: why they landed on your page, the content they viewed, and more. Send offers to get them “cookied” on your website. Ask them to submit forms that fill in the missing information you need to qualify them for sales. When you know more about them, you can segment them for additional nurture marketing.
7. Baby, Come Back Track (win back)
Creating an emotional connection is a vital part of lead nurturing – if you lose touch, you’ve got to reignite the flame. Before placing an SQL on this track, you need to know two things: where they were in your pipeline, and why they broke it off in the first place. Determine this from surveys, emails, phone calls, database segmentation, and CRM reports. After you know the reason, prove you’ll treat them better this time around, with well-targeted messaging and personalized offers.
8. Sleeping Beauty Track (wake up)
Revive sleeping contacts. Your first step is to make sure you’re correctly categorizing leads. Have you been sending a CTO content meant for a VP of Product? Double-check your data, since nothing makes leads hit the snooze button like irrelevant content. Next, make them an offer. Targeted content can warm up prospects, bring them back to life, and re-capture their interest. Once they’re active again, you can move them into a new track that fits their needs.
Have you used these, or other unorthodox nurture tracks to convert prospects? What’s the best (or worst) off-beat nurturing stream you’ve used… or had used on you? Let us know in the comments below.
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