The Evolution of Lead Nurture

It has long been fashionable to predict the death of email nurture. Whether it was the widespread usage of BDRs, the rise of ABM or the current AI hype, every new marketing trend is predicted to mark the end of email marketing in B2B. Yet, nurture campaigns are still running, and are still producing results.

In truth, much has changed within B2B marketing and that has impacted lead nurture strategies more than most. The traditional formula for large-scale drip nurtures stopped generating leads years ago. Poor content sent to a mass audience no longer converts, regardless of the channels or strategies you use.

Content is King

Nurture is a personalisation play. It needs to be relevant. Nurture should be about sending the right content to the right audience at the right time. Designing a nurture program starts with identifying the best ways to identify purchase intent among cold prospects, and then finding the right content to progress leads to the next point in the buyer's journey. This may sound like an impossible task, but it doesn't have to be. Nurture is an excellent opportunity to reuse evergreen content.

When selecting content to use in a nurture program, look for assets and asset types that have already been successful with the target personas at a similar stage in the past. Then, reuse that same content for nurture. Companies with a mature content generation engine shouldn't be looking to create significant volumes of new content just for nurture campaigns. Content created for lead generation activities or ABM programs can then be repurposed for nurture once the initial content promotion has been completed.

More than Email

Also, don't limit nurture campaigns just to email. It is a good idea to nurture contacts over web and social channels as well. Tools such as Pathfactory, Folloze or Uberflip have built their platforms around a digital nurture board concept that is an excellent fit for nurture campaigns. The same experience can be built directly on the web using a related content module on your resource pages to highlight the next content in the nurture stream.

The key is to build a content experience that keeps contacts coming back to the website for the next asset. Email is the easiest and quickest way to do this. However, also consider building nurture sequences using ad retargeting through social or programmatic channels. These personalised ads can be combined with email touchpoints, or used to replace email depending on contact preferences.

Getting Started

Planning a nurture should work the same way as planning any other marketing program. The starting point has to be who the target audience is, where that audience is in the funnel right now, and where you want them to get to at the end of the campaign. In effect, the most important step in planning a successful nurture is identifying what level of interest is needed to push the campaign audience to the next step in the buyer's journey. The content and channels you include in the nurture are then selected to fit the personas and buying stages identified for the campaign.