Don’t just email, nurture!

How to schedule posts and monitor conversations

Not everything in life can be rushed. Some things take time. Your sales pipeline’s one of them. A long-term commitment to communication is what’s required. You need to nurture your database; not just send a constant barrage of emails in the blind hope that, if you submit enough of them, some messages will be the right one, reaching the right audience at the right time.

The term ‘lead nurturing’ is a relatively new phrase in marketing circles. Done properly, it can increase conversion rates and speed up the sales cycle. Music to your ears?

Because us marketers love our acronyms, here we demonstrate how to implement a nurture programme using the iMAPS structure:-

  • i is for iteration and testing. Get started with your next piece of content by producing different variations on the same theme and apply varying test methodologies such as day of the week, time of day, subject line, pre-header text, header height, images, colour scheme, links, testimonials… the list goes on! Track what works, what doesn’t and keep going onwards.
  • M is for marketing and sales alignment. As anyone with a marketing or sales role will know, the two departments go hand in hand. Invite your clerks into a meeting to agree the purposes and definitions of the stages of your sales process. With proper collaboration, you can establish a jointly defined lead nurturing plan.
  • A is for accelerators. These are, effectively, factors which strongly influence success. Listen, monitor and learn accordingly.
  • P is for personalised content. Despite all the major advances to marketing technology and overhauls in marketing theory, content is still king. Where possible, personalise for your audience as this is more likely to touch a chord. You may wish to consider a content calendar for this purpose.
  • S is for segmentation and scoring. Apply all the usual segmentation criteria such as geography, area specialism, role, vertical markets, sales cycle stage etc to set up your target group. Measure which are most receptive to your messages with some nifty analytics.

Our closing comment is this: nurture beyond just email because you can’t communicate with someone who’s unsubscribed. Multi-channel nurturing is the best approach.

Please follow and like us: