Hey look kids, there's Big Ben, and there's Parliament! --Clark Griswold

Eloqua’s recent Customer Success tours have spawned good discussion around lead nurturing.  One question that stuck out to me was “When do you stop nurturing a lead?“

Let’s start by reviewing the basics of a good nurturing program…  First, the goal: to progress a lead from one lead stage to the next with the goal of acquiring a new customer or of retaining or developing an existing one.  To obtain a new customer though, you have to start by building a relationship.

Before you go crazy with marketing automation, let’s think about the journey.  First, recognize where your lead is in your funnel.  Is your intended audience comprised of suspects that you know little about? Are they sales rejects – not yet ready to purchase? Are they pure responses – someone who has responded to a campaign, but who doesn’t yet meet the qualification criteria necessary to send them to Sales for follow up?

Tailor the campaign content, frequency of communication, and messaging vehicle to funnel stage.  Many clients shared successes around their welcome programs.  This early-stage opportunity allows frequent communication and can often yield high conversion.  For sales rejects, less frequent but more personalized content that relates to your original interaction may be more appropriate.

But back to the question at hand:  just how long is this journey?  Sirius Decisions reports that the leads in your database will likely make a purchase within 24 months – either from you or from your competitors.  By process of elimination, the journey may be short for two groups within your target audience – those that convert on to the next stage – and into another phase of the relationship – and non-responders.  (If someone hasn’t clicked or been prompted to visit your site following your communication, it’s just not working.  Remove them, set their status to inactive and try a different tactic to re-engage them.) 

The most challenging group is like an annoying ex-boyfriend – they show occasional interest but just can’t commit.  They click but don’t convert.  They’re active, just not active enough for our pipeline-loving taste. 

Depending on the length of your sales cycle, you may consider several scenarios.  Try mixing up the channels - introduce new tactics such as direct mail, phone outreach, or social media if you’ve not previously.  If your benefit-focused campaign has exhausted all enticement, invite them to subscribe to your e-newsletter or some less-specific content in order to preserve the relationship without the burden of creating additional content.  Conversely, a polite but bold campaign that requests the user to bluntly signal their intention gets to the heart of the matter. 

“We noticed that you’d not responded to our recent emails. We don’t want to continue to fill your inbox if you’re not interested.  If you’d like us to continue to periodically send you information, please click here. Otherwise, we’ll remove you from our regular communications.” 

Bottom line:  There’s no exact answer to how long your nurturing program should last.  Above all, remember, this is a relationship you’re building.  Even if frequency and format change, it’s worth it to stay in touch.

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1.        Benchmark and assess for improvement in marketing effectiveness

2.        Review the health of your database

3.        Lead stage definitions – get in alignment with sales and implement in CRM and Eloqua

4.        Implement lead scoring and make sure you are monitoring results

5.        Identify manual processes and automate where appropriate

6.        Track everything you possibly can, but only report on actionable data

7.        Have fun with your campaigns

8.        Identify MBOs that are jointly shared with sales

9.        Document your marketing processes

10.      Take inventory of your campaigns, update where appropriate

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Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Ever heard that saying?  Well, I can’t tell you how many marketers when asked, “What results have you received?” They answer with, I don’t know or I can’t track or report properly.

So if you execute marketing programs and do not know what to expect, but keep executing, are you insane?  No, not necessarily.  Before marketing automation, my day-to-day professional life was the definition of insanity.  Every day I repeated the same actions and expected a different result…or at least hoped for a different result.   I expected my funnel to improve, but had no ability to measure the results.

Once I implemented marketing automation I had the ability to measure results. From there I was able to make sure I didn’t spend my time executing programs that didn’t make sense.  We figured out what worked and what didn’t work based on lead source tracking from inquiry to opportunity close.  We created personas and marketed to them based on tracking activities and behavioral criteria.  We did more of the things that worked and less of what didn’t…therefore we were more efficient and effective.

Insanity no more!

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I believe that Twitter is a useful tool for any marketer in any industry; however, the way you use it may be different depending upon your communication objectives with prospects and customers as well as your own career needs.

Learn
I personally started out just listening to the Twitter elite and marketing gurus to see what they posted about marketing topics that I was interested in. It was a great way for me to check in, get a pulse for  trends, and drill down further when I had time to research. I would certainly encourage any marketer to leverage Twitter in this way.

Tip: You don’t have to be “on Twitter” all day long – it can quickly become a timesink. Set up times in your day or week to tune in and review tweets.

Listen and Engage
Then, I discovered TweetDeck and become a much more efficient Tweeter by organizing my followers in groups and searching on keywords, etc. Now, I am able to really connect with Eloqua customers and partners – it has been incredible to watch the our active and growing community here. The ability to reach out and answer questions or direct people to resources in the moment has proved helpful to internal employees, customers, and partners alike. Are your customers, partners, and employees talking about your brand or asking questions you can answer on Twitter?

Tip: Maybe you just want to listen. LinkedIn has a great integration called Company Buzz where you can monitor tweets on certain brand names if TweetDeck and other tools appear daunting.

Embrace
Now, I feel that I am hitting the next frontier of Twitter – sharing and exchanging ideas. Now that I have a voice via this blog, I want to get the messages and ideas out to our community and beyond. I also want to hear more directly about what is working for people and what is not so that I can share this back with my clients.

So I am exploring a new set of chirping tools to maximize the dialogues I can have with my network on Twitter. First, I discovered auto DM functionality with TweetLater. I was intrigued enough that I set one up to welcome new followers:

 Thank you for the follow! Hope my tweets inspire your own marketing efforts.

My assumptions were as follows: (1) I advocate the best practice of a welcome, why wouldn’t I practice here? (2) I can go days and sometimes weeks when I travel without logging in to Twitterland…if I welcome them weeks later, will they even remember me? I did read some “best practices” to not self-promote and tried to make it about the follower and not me. Some Twitter purists, disagree, however. Some advice from a 10-year old – The Top 4 Common Twitter mistakes:

 Seriously, get rid of those auto responders. Auto responders are impersonal.

But, do they really have to be? Is it possible to have a warm, value-add auto welcome to a new Twitter follower? Or, are they simply a No-No in Twitterquette? I am certainly still learning how best to leverage this medium and welcome thoughts on if Auto DM Replies can work. I am now considering revising mine to:

 Thank you for the follow! What marketing topics are you most interested in?

Please comment or vote on our poll or send me an @jenhorton on Twitter with your thoughts!

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You can check on this through your marketing automation system, or by simply filling out your website forms. You might be surprised by what you find!

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