Lead nurturing is a powerful tool — and not just for your marketing and sales teams, but for your customer service team as well. While it’s often marketed as a way to engage with non sales-ready leads during the sales process, the applications of lead nurturing actually extend through the entire length of the buyer journey, from initial brand awareness to a repeat customer.
In fact, lead nurturing can also play an important role in your internal enablement efforts (let’s be honest, what can’t lead nurturing do?). For those of you who are hoping to get more creative with your nurturing campaigns this year, we’ve put together a list of eleven must-try drips to add to your repertoire. And don’t forget to check out the worksheet at the bottom of this post to get you thinking about putting these into action!
If your goal is to engage…
1. Welcome Campaign
Welcome emails are highly anticipated, frequently opened, and simple to automate. Keep in mind that new prospects in your database should be treated differently than the ones that have been with you for weeks or months. By turning your welcome emails into a drip campaign, you can introduce these new prospects to your company, product, or service at a comfortable pace, instead of flooding them with information right off the bat. Remember to remind them why they converted, confirm their opt-in, and start providing them with light educational content to build awareness and keep them interested.
Learn more about building nurturing campaigns for the net new leads in your database in this article.
2. Top-of-Mind Campaign
The top-of-mind drip is designed to engage with your not quite sales-ready leads at regular intervals, preventing leads from forgetting about your company and getting swooped up by your competitors. This drip takes place over a longer period of time, providing sales with consistent touch points, and provides content primarily focused on value to the prospect. Some great content to consider for this type of drip would be blog posts, white papers, videos, webinars, infographics, and relevant industry news.
3. Reengagement Campaign
Not all of your prospects will make it through the sales process and become a closed deal. At any given time, your database will likely consist of a number of leads who became inactive at some point during the sales process. Reengagement campaigns are targeted toward these inactive leads. The goal is to encourage leads to take a “hand-raising” action that will indicate that they are ready to reenter the sales process. Try sending a helpful blog post, a new white paper, a cool piece of interactive content, or a successful case study for these kinds of drips.
Want more details on the tone, content, and timing for these drips? Take a look at our in-depth article on cold lead nurturing programs.
If your goal is to educate…
4. Product-Focused Campaign
As prospects progress through the sales process and begin to seek out more product-focused content, you’ll want to make sure they’re getting that information from you, and not a competitor or biased third party. Focus on your prospects’ pain points, how your product can address them, and the key features and benefits that can help. For this type of drip, you’ll want to use more middle-of-funnel content like case studies, customer testimonials, data sheets, and more in-depth white papers.
5. Competitive Drips
This campaign focuses on differentiating your product or service from your competitors by highlighting the advantages of using your product, as well as the disadvantages of not using it (note: you’ll want to refrain from harping on the disadvantages of your competitors’ products, since this can come off as distasteful). Tailor your content to the priorities of your prospects and the competitors that come up in deals with your company.
If your goal is to close…
6. Industry Expertise Drips
As prospects move closer to the middle and bottom of the funnel, it becomes important to reinforce that your company is the right choice. Pass on any helpful press releases, industry reports, or high-traffic content as part of this drip to establish your company’s authority. For example, if your company was recently covered by an analyst report, be sure to share it with your prospects and put your own spin on the review.
7. Promotional Drips
As your prospects near the purchase stage of the sales funnel, a well-timed promotion or special discount can be just the catalyst they need to pull the trigger on a purchase. Consider offering special pricing or additional features based on their individual needs, especially if you’re working with bigger accounts where closing the deal is critical to growing your business.
If your goal is to retain…
8. Onboarding Campaign
Onboarding a new client will always be a high-touch and manual process, and rightly so. However, nurturing campaigns allow you to automate some of the more repetitive tasks involved in onboarding, like providing introductory training resources, a list of next steps after close, timelines for product kickoffs, and frequently asked questions. These helpful resources can help your new clients get started on their own, without having to wait on a customer service rep for assistance.
Take a look at a case study of our own efforts to build an onboarding drip at Pardot.
9. Upsell Drip
The upsell (or cross-sell) campaign is designed to capitalize on your existing pool of clients. By providing your clients with information and incentives to expand the list of products they are using, you can drive more revenue with little effort from your sales team. Just be sure to focus your message around the benefits of the upsell, instead of turning your emails into sales pitches.
10. Renewal Campaign
The renewal drip can be a convenient way to remind your existing customers that it is time to renew their contracts. This drip can be triggered a month (or more) before the renewal date, send multiple reminder emails over a specified period of time, and notify the assigned user in the marketing automation tool if no action takes place. This makes it far less likely that your clients will miss the renewals on their contracts, and takes the tedium out of the process for your service reps.
If your goal is to enable…
11. Sales Enablement Drip
Lead nurturing can be a critical tool for enabling your internal sales teams. By dripping your sales team with new marketing content that they can use to help sell your product, you can position marketing as a valuable resource to sales. This includes content like data sheets, new eBooks, competitive one-sheeters, and even educational videos that provide selling tips from other sales reps. However, consider making this drip opt-in for your sales team — you don’t want to risk becoming a nuisance by cluttering up their already-busy inboxes.
Here’s a look at how Pardot’s marketing team created their sales enablement drip just last year.
Ready to get started? Take a look at the worksheet below to get those creative juices flowing. Feel free to print it out, or just use it for inspiration as you begin organizing your new nurturing campaigns (right click and open in a new tab to view the full-sized version).
Want more information on lead nurturing? Take a look at the Complete Guide to Lead Nurturing by clicking on the banner below.
