In a time of such uncertainty and volatility, it is amazing to see how rapidly organizations have been able to pivot their business strategies to adapt to the times. In fact, if you are reading this blog post, you are likely a marketer who also had to quickly pivot to a 100% digital strategy with little-to-no room for error. It’s a huge feat, but you’re doing it, and you’re doing great!
But guess who else pivoted their entire marketing strategy? Your competitors, and all of their friends. Now everyone is flooding the digital space with flashy incentives and competing for your leads’ attention. So the question now is: How do we effectively nurture our leads in an oversaturated digital space?
Here are a few tips to help you optimize your nurture programs for the times:
1. Fill your nurture streams with interactive experiences
From January 2020 to March 2020, the use of B2B webinars increased by 49%, and this number has likely grown since then. Chances are your leads are receiving multiple webinar invites on a daily basis. Make your content stand out from the crowd by adding an interactive twist to the digital experience. Think about it—would you rather watch a one-hour video of someone speaking to a broad audience or spend an hour in an exclusive, invite-only interactive session with an expert and a handful of peers?
Not to say that you should scrap all your webinar plans! Webinars are a powerful tool for knowledge sharing. Just be sure to consider ways to keep your audience engaged through other interactive mediums.
2. Revamp your audience targeting strategy, and hyperfocus more than ever before
In the marketing world, we are supposed to love every lead. But admit it, you don’t love every lead—especially when they give you fake names and email addresses (“Orville Tootenbacher” is one of my favorites).
With many companies increasingly moving their marketing plans online, it may be worthwhile to narrow your focus and dedicate your resources to building nurture programs that are more specific to a higher converting audience type.
If you already have a standard nurture campaign to re-engage cold leads, take it a step further and look into Account Based Marketing (ABM). Already using ABM? Take it a step further and add a layer of persona-based targeting on top of your ABM plans. Already doing that? Identify what your highest converting leads had in common and build a stream specifically for leads with those traits + ABM + persona. There is always room for improvement when it comes to audience strategy.
By hyperfocusing your nurture streams, it allows your team to reclaim some of the time and resources spent on lower-priority initiatives and lets you reallocate your efforts to nurturing prospects with a higher likelihood to convert.
3. Let your prospects temporarily opt-out
This may sound counterintuitive, but stay with me here. Consider adding a secondary call to action (CTA) to your emails which removes your prospect from a nurture stream for only a certain period of time. Offering a temporary opt-out option can give your prospects the break they desire without having to permanently unsubscribe.
You can be as direct as stating “Click here to stop receiving emails for a month,” or you can have fun with the wording like, “Need a break? We respect that! Click here, and we’ll give you some space for a couple of weeks.”
4. Nurture your leads across multiple channels
This may not be a new technique, but it’s a good one to remember. By incorporating social media, paid media, blogs, and other mediums in your overall nurture strategy, you are continuing to reinforce your message without causing email fatigue in your viewers.
And on that note, here are a few standard nurture practices to consider revisiting:
- Revisit your cadence – is now the time to space out your sends?
- Revisit the volume of emails in a stream before it is considered exhausted
- Revisit the time period your nurture is set for
- Revisit your offers for staleness and tone – are some of the offers about to expire? Does the copy or offer make your company appear tone deaf to the current state of the world?
- Revisit your exit strategy – consider a temporary opt-out option for leads before they exhaust the entire stream of content or permanently unsubscribe
Wishing you all the best in your digital marketing initiatives!
