Last week, we published the first post in our new series about different types of lead nurturing campaigns, beginning with a campaign revolving around Net New Leads. Today’s post focuses on one of the most popular use cases for drip campaigns: nurturing leads for sales.
Not sure when to use this campaign, or the best way to space out your emails? Take a look at the guidance below, sourced from some of our in-house experts, to learn more about this type of campaign.
When would you use this campaign?
The goal with this type of nurturing campaign is to help sales reps stay in front of prospects over a long period of time. Your sales team shouldn’t be wasting time crafting follow-ups for leads who aren’t ready to buy — or even talk for that matter! The easiest solution is to have reps add prospects to drip campaigns that can nurture them over time, removing the manual process for sales.
One of the great things about this type of campaign? While the goal is to help your sales team, it can be handled almost in its entirety by marketing. Just be sure that there is ample communication between these two teams as you kick off your nurturing campaigns. Your sales reps should be acting as trusted advisors to marketing since they’re the ones on the front lines, dealing with prospects every day.
What should the timing look like?
Work with your sales team to determine timing for this program. Start by talking to your top sales reps to find out how often they reach out to their prospects, because they’ll have the best idea of what works best. Then, mimic this cadence. One schedule that many sales reps have found success with is 2-2-12-30-17-2-2-12-30 (the numbers indicate pauses). The goal with these drip emails is to appear as natural as possible.
What kind of email should you use?
At Pardot, we recommend sticking to plain text emails for your sales nurturing programs. These types of emails will appear the most natural (think about it — do you really feel like you’re getting a personalized email when it’s styled with HTML?). Your marketing team can easily set these emails up to come from the sales rep that each prospect is used to working with. This adds a personal touch that increases the effectiveness of these emails.
What should you say?
With sales emails, you want them to sound casual — almost as if they’re one-off communications sent by a sales rep. Don’t worry too much about impressing your prospects with your fancy sentence structure; these emails should sound as “human” as possible. Be sure to include a call to action so that your prospects have the option to take a qualifying action (like downloading a resource). Here’s an example of a sales drip targeted toward an SMB:
I just wanted to pass along a new resource that our marketing team created, called [Insert Resource Name Here]. This eBook has tons of helpful statistics and best practices advice that are perfect for smaller companies working with limited resources. Feel free to take a look and let me know what you think!
More questions? Take a look at our Complete Guide to Lead Nurturing to learn all you need to know about these powerful programs.
