Lead nurture campaigns are automated digital marketing flows that are designed to respond to interest by prospects by delivering content that educates, persuades, or otherwise nudges them farther down the funnel and closer to conversion. Because of that goal of movement down the funnel, different nurture campaigns are aligned with different stages of the funnel and are generally triggered by the transition from one funnel stage to another.
Let’s talk about four nurture campaigns that every B2B brand needs to efficiently move prospects through the sales funnel.
1. Traditional lead nurture campaigns
These campaigns span the pre-purchase portion of the funnel and are triggered by a prospect becoming a marketing qualified lead. Components include:
- To move prospects through the Interest & Consideration stage of the funnel, these campaigns include educational content around the problems, issues, processes, industries, and roles addressed by the brand and its products and services.
- To aid prospects in the Evaluation stage, these campaigns generally answer the question of “Why us?” It highlights unique products and service capabilities, and explains why the brand is a better choice than their competitors.
- And to get the deal over the line in the Conversion stage, these campaigns make the argument for buying now, providing justifications for not waiting.
Related webinar: Evolving Your Account-Based Marketing Program
2. Post-purchase nurture campaigns
While nurturing prospects so they become buyers is important, so is nurturing new customers so they become satisfied customers. This is especially vital for software-as-a-service and other subscription-based businesses, as well as businesses that sell single-use and other highly consumable products, like many medical and janitorial supplies.
These campaigns span the post-purchase stages of the funnel. Components include:
- To move customers through the Onboarding stage, these campaigns provide installation information and quick-start tips, access to training and how-to information, highlight answers to frequently asked questions and customer communities, and more. It’s all with the goal of ensuring new customers see the value of their purchases as quickly as possible.
- Once customers are in the Loyalty stage, the goal shifts to maximizing customer satisfaction over the longer term. This messaging might include updates about the customer’s products (e.g., maintenance, free software updates, eventual replacement) and NPS surveys. The latter can be used to identify at-risk customers who need attention, as well as happy customers who would be willing to evangelize and advocate for your brand (e.g., customer referrals, provide testimonials, speak at events with you). These campaigns can also include evangelism opportunities, such as encouraging or rewarding customers to share content on social and elsewhere.
Related checklist: 110+ Automated Campaign Ideas
3. Non-buying path nurture campaigns
Not everyone in your audience is a customer. Some are simply users of your products through their employers (although they might become customers in their own right in the future). Their engagement and satisfaction is just as important as that of your customers, because dissatisfied users often lead to their employer becoming dissatisfied.
Paralleling post-purchase nurture campaigns, these campaigns span the post-purchase stages of the funnel. Components include:
- To move non-buyers through the Onboarding stage, these campaigns provide welcome information to get them up to speed on the new product or service. This content may focus on particular user types or roles to increase relevance.
- Once customers are in the Loyalty stage, the goal similarly shifts to user satisfaction, with a focus on maintaining engagement through valuable content and virtual and in-person events.
Related post: Messaging & Content Strategies for Long-Lifespan Products
4. Mini-nurture campaigns
Think of these as micro-experiences. Often they’re tied to a specific product. For example, if a prospect were to sign up for a 30-day software trial, you would craft a nurture campaign that spans the trial period.
That campaign could start by supplying quick-start tips, providing answers to frequently asked questions, and featuring how-to videos. It could end with a countdown to the trial expiration that provides social proof and other information to overcome objections to moving forward. And in between those beginning and end phases, messaging could be personalized based on the prospect’s use (or lack of use) of the software.
Additional Messaging & Design Considerations
When implementing these nurture campaigns, keep the following considerations top of mind.
Pacing
The pacing of your nurture campaigns should reflect the duration of your sales cycle. If you have a long sales cycle of a year or more, then you’ll want to adopt a slow-burn approach, where the messages in your nurture campaign arrive, say, every few weeks. However, if you have a short sales cycle of only weeks or a few months, you’ll want to have a faster nurture journey.
Personas
For each of those nurture campaigns, use personalization or segmentation to ensure your different audiences are getting messaging that’s geared toward them. For example, these campaigns could be tailored by industry (e.g., government, manufacturing, retail), customer type (e.g., partner, dealer, end user), company size (e.g., SMB, enterprise), and other factors.
Related post: 7 Types of Customer Attributes for Segmentation & Personalization
Reflecting a Deepening Relationship
As a prospect moves farther down the funnel, the content and design of your nurture campaign messages should reflect the deepening of your relationship. For instance, the level of personalization should increase as you move down the funnel. Also, while Interest & Consideration stage messaging is likely best sent under your brand name and heavily designed, much of the Evaluation & Conversion stage messaging is probably best sent dynamically from the local sales rep and be text only.
Your calls-to-action should also change to align with your prospect’s progression down the funnel. In the Interest & Consideration stage, most of your CTAs should be low-commitment—meaning they don’t entail any commitment to purchase or to speak to a rep. However, once a prospect progresses to the Evaluation & Conversion stage, CTAs shift more toward being high-commitment, such as beginning a free trial, seeing a live demo, getting an estimate, or speaking with a sales rep. Be careful, as sending messages with high-commitment CTAs prematurely can have a chilling effect on a new prospect.
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Lead nurture campaigns are amazingly powerful. They help your brand accelerate your prospects’ journeys down the funnel and better qualify leads before a sales rep speaks with them. Ultimately, this makes your entire sales process faster and more efficient.
If you’re not currently using lead nurture campaigns, start small with one of these and expand from there. If you already have some in place, consider this your reminder to audit them to see if they’re functioning properly, are up to date with the latest messaging and assets, and are performing well.
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Need help with your lead nurture campaigns? Oracle Digital Experience Agency has hundreds of marketing and communication experts ready to help Responsys, Eloqua, Unity, and other Oracle customers create stronger connections with their customers and employees—even if they’re not using an Oracle platform as the foundation of that experience. With a 94% satisfaction rate, our clients are thrilled with the award-winning work our creative, strategy, and other specialists do for them, giving us an outstanding NPS of 82.
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Now completely updated, this post was originally published on Dec. 23, 2021 by Autumn Black.