Nurturing Leads, Intelligently

Nurturing Leads, Intelligently:from Wide Angle by Courtney Long
Last year, we found that B2B customers are waiting until they are (on average) 57% of the way through their purchase journeys before they engage in serious contact with Sales.  And these customers aren’t even being faithful to Marketing: In addition to using supplier information, these customers are educating themselves through third-party content, social media, and other non-supplier-owned communications.
To regain control of the midfunnel, Marketing must nurture its leads well.    With technologies like marketing automation, it is now quite easy to send emails to prospects and customers.  But barraging your prospects with information isn’t enough; in fact, sending too many emails can damage a relationship.  Instead, Marketing must nurture its leads, sending prospects the right information that will educate them to get them closer to purchase, without sending excess information that will overwhelm or annoy.
Citrix uses a targeted nurturing program to provide customers with the information they need while still maintaining flexibility to capitalize on timely opportunities.  Citrix found that its traditional, quarterly newsletter program was not generating the quantity or quality of leads Sales and Marketing needed.  Citrix then switched to a targeted nurturing program that includes both pre-programmed, automated content – like a series of welcome emails sent to new prospects – and flexible content – like targeted and timely emails to convert prospects into leads.  The flexible content allows Citrix to act on current offers and events, like highlighting the importance of workplace continuity after a particularly bad snowstorm.
Once Marketing has nurtured the leads to make them Sales-ready, Sales often struggles to identify which leads are the most promising.  Most Sales teams rely on anecdotes or rep lobbying to decide which leads to pursue, which both misses opportunities and wastes time following duds.   McKesson tackles the problem of identifying the most promising leads through a scorecard that brings rigor to the lead-selection process.  McKesson does this in three stages:

1. McKesson segments and prescreens opportunities before they enter the pipeline.
2. Opportunities are scored based on the likelihood of a sale based on the presence of positive deal factors.  These deal factors can range from the prospect’s firmographics and position within the firm to online activity and engagement.
3.  McKesson decides which opportunities to pursue based on their scores.

MLC members, if you are interested in learning more about lead nurturing, we are hosting a webinar that will discuss best-in-class practices for:

• Hosting live customer events and tradeshows to generate and prequalify leads
• Creating a scorecard for Sales to evaluate lead potential
• Tracking lead handoff and ensuring follow-up by Sales.

The webinar will be held on July 16, and you can learn more about and register for it here.