Marketo Definitive Guide To Lead Nurturing

The Definitive Guide to
Lead Nurturing
Table of Contents
Introduction
Why should I read The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing? 04
Part I: What is lead nurturing?

Defining lead nurturing 06
Why does my business need lead nurturing? 07
Part II: Lead nurturing strategy

Goal setting 09
Technology selection 10
Nurture as part of your overall marketing strategy 12
Marketo Engage customer case study: Comvita 14
Part III: Who to nurture

Defining a lead 16
Lead scoring 17
List building 19
Database health 21
Marketo Engage customer case study: Oktopost 22
Part IV: Multichannel lead nurturing

Nurturing in a multichannel world 24
Table of Contents
Part V: Content
Content strategy 28
Align content formats to customer buying cycle 29
The types of nurture content 30
The anatomy of a lead nurture email 32
Email creation best practices 33
Part VI: Basic lead nurture segmentation

Why do you need segmentation? 37
The two dimensions of segmentation 38
Part VII: Advanced lead nurture segmentation
Behavioral segmentation 42
Specialized campaigns 44
Late-stage lead nurture campaigns 45
Worksheet: create your lead nurture matrix 46
Part VIII: Testing and optimization
Why you must test 51
Part IX: Calculating the ROI of lead nurturing
Basic lead nurturing email measurements 54
Advanced measurements 56
Conclusion 58
INTRODUCTION
Why should I read The Definitive

Guide to Lead Nurturing?
Today’s potential buyers don’t become customers overnight—they require
marketing over time as they self-educate and build trust with a company.
Lead nurturing can make your marketing specifically when building relationships
and sales efforts much more effective by with potential buyers on multiple
warming up leads before they interact channels, even if they are not currently
with your sales team. Developing a looking to purchase a product or service. This definitive guide will outline:
relationship with leads before they’re
At Marketo, an Adobe Company, we 1. How to create a lead nurture strategy
sales-ready results in a much higher
have gathered the best practices from
conversion rate and helps generate more 2. How to nurture leads across channels
across the Marketing Nation®—thought
revenue for your business.
leaders, customers, research, and our own 3. How to segment a lead database
With lead nurturing, marketers can experiences—to bring you our brand-
communicate consistently with buyers new third edition of The Definitive Guide 4. How to choose appropriate content for each lead nurture track and audience
across channels and throughout the to Lead Nurturing. 5. How to get the most value from lead nurturing with testing and optimization
sales cycle—addressing the gap in time
This definitive guide is designed to be 6. How to measure and explain lead nurturing’s return on investment (ROI)
between when a lead first interacts with
useful, practical, and informative. It offers
you and when they're ready to purchase. Use this guide as a workbook. Take notes, highlight what you find
a comprehensive description of lead
Lead nurturing is an integral part of nurturing best practices, from getting inspirational, share what you learn with your colleagues—and start
a successful marketing strategy— started to advanced techniques. using lead nurturing to drive revenue growth.
© Copyright 2020, Adobe, Inc. All rights reserved.

4
PART I
What is lead nurturing?

5
PART 1: WHAT IS LEAD NURTURING?
Defining lead nurturing

Lead nurturing is the process of building effective relationships
with potential customers throughout the buying journey.
According to our benchmark study, on Sophisticated technology like marketing

average, 50% of leads are not yet ready automation makes modern-day lead
to buy. Lead nurturing creates automated, nurturing personalized and adaptive; it
ongoing communication with your can listen and react to buyer behavior in
potential buyers throughout the sales real time.
cycle and beyond—maximizing results
Modern lead nurturing enables you to
and revenue for your organization.
listen and respond to buyers on multiple
In fact, we have such an active and channels—not just email. And now,
wide top of funnel that 98% of leads with breakthroughs like personalization
entering our database are not sales ready. software, marketers can nurture
Therefore, we have to nurture those anonymous leads throughout the entire
buyers until they are ready to make a lifecycle, creating a more engaging
purchase. Lead nurturing automates experience than ever before.
your communication with those leads
so that you are constantly engaging in
a relationship throughout their entire
buying journey.

6
PART 1: WHAT IS LEAD NURTURING?
Why does my business need lead nurturing?

Businesses today exist in an increasingly connected market. Buyers expect an extremely personalized,
cross-channel experience. They do not want to be spoken to; they want to be listened to. And companies
want to create relationships with potential buyers, to build trust and eventually advocacy.
Lead nurturing facilitates your buyer

getting to know your business—it’s
essentially courtship before marriage.
With lead nurturing, you spend time
79% 50% 47%

establishing a relationship with your
buyer and building trust. As a result,
communication with your buyer is
welcomed instead of intrusive. of marketing leads never more sales-ready leads larger purchases are made
convert to sales. Lack of lead generated at a 33% lower cost by nurtured leads versus
Without effective lead nurturing, talking
nurturing is the common for companies that excel at non-nurtured leads.
to your buyers can feel like an awkward
case for poor performance. lead nurturing.
first date, full of mistrust and hesitation. The Annuitas Group
MarketingSherpa Marketo, an Adobe Company,
Lead nurturing helps with: Research
• Increasing the propensity to buy
• Relationship building
• Brand and thought leadership
• Shortening the sales cycle

7
PART II
Lead nurturing strategy

8
PART 2: LEAD NURTURING STRATEGY
Goal setting
Qualitative objectives • Turn dormant leads to active leads Without quantitative goals in place, your Start small, think big
Your lead nurture efforts will include lead nurturing program can lack purpose, As you look to implement qualitative and
• Increase sales productivity by
qualitative goals. What business distributing only sales-ready leads and you’ll have greater difficulty tracking quantitative benchmarks, it’s important
outcomes do you hope to get from your progress toward your objectives. to take a phased approach to your
Set qualitative goals for your lead nurture Here are some quantitative goals you
setting up lead nurture tracks? Consider nurture launches and implementations,
campaigns to guide decisions on timing, may want to consider:
the following goals: depending on how complex they may
frequency, segmentation, and strategy.
• Improve the percentage rate at be. Phasing your engagement growth
• Convert sales inquiries to qualified Continue revisiting these goals to ensure
prospects over time which raw leads convert to qualified can allow you to:
your nurture programs achieve them. prospects
• Move your buyers through their buying • Launch faster and more systematically
journey at an accelerated pace Quantitative objectives • Improve the percentage rate at which
raw leads convert to closed deals • Minimize risk of error over complex
In addition to creating qualitative solutions and implementations
• Engage in conversations with your
buyers objectives, be sure to set goals that • Increase the number of sales-ready
leads per month • Set goals and benchmarks to see
are quantitative—those that you can
• Qualify and collect more information what works
measure. Even if you aren’t sure what • Reduce the number of leads rejected
from inbound leads
your metrics should be initially, setting by sales
• Educate and build trust with existing estimates up front helps you define your
leads • Generate X incremental opportunities
program. Quantitative metrics not only per month from the existing database
• Stay in touch with existing leads, so help you define success, but they also
they can call on your company when help you determine the scope and scale • Faster sales cycle
they need to of your overall lead nurturing efforts. • Better win rates
• Acquire more business from current
• Increase upsell/cross-sell with current
customers
customers

9
Technology selection
Beyond the time-saving and efficiency benefits of automation, marketing automation
enables essential business processes for any modern marketing department.
This can include lead nurturing, lead need to plug into third-party providers? all teams who are part of the process to • Give you the ability to limit customer
scoring, lead lifecycle management, Will you need strong nurture capabilities? make sure you’ve covered your bases. interactions with filter criteria or
personalization, and analytics. So, how How much segmentation will you be system-based limits to end the
From there, make a decision.
possibility of too many touchpoints.
do you select the right solution for your doing? What level of reporting do you
What to seek in a solution for lead • Offer capabilities of advanced send
business? Depending on your business need? What are your goals?
nurturing controls around actions, criteria, timing,
objectives and goals, there are different
Step 3: Define users and teams: Will Lead nurturing is a key component to interaction, and so forth.
solutions available to suit your needs.
there be a centrally managed team doing any marketing automation solution. Here • Allow you to communicate to
Here is a process to help you find and all the work? Will you have agencies is a checklist to make sure your vendor customers at the right time and in the
buy the right marketing automation needing access to the system? Who has all of the latest and greatest lead correct stage. It should be adaptable to
solution for your company: builds the assets? What restrictions will nurture capabilities. communication use cases other than
just email.
exist for those who aren’t admins?
Purchase process Your marketing automation solution • Allow you to score leads based both on
Step 1: Define a timeline: Are you Step 4: Align different vendors against should: demographic and interactive points.
switching tools or are you starting net your criteria in a consistent way: What do
• Enable operational and communication • Be easy to use and implement. Are
new? Does this need to align with a some have that others don’t? How does triggers based on lead or client activity. there training materials and strong
product launch? Are there other factors pricing align to capabilities, and so forth? support for the tool?
• Be dynamic, based on individual lead or
to account for, such as integrations or Step 5: Check references and perform client (e.g., primary language or region).
additional stakeholders? other final checks: If you can, be sure to
• Allow you to nurture prospects and
Step 2: Develop requirements: How check references with other companies customers online and offline via social
many leads will you generate? Will you close to your area of work. Resync with media, events, or direct mail.

10
• Simplify content management. For

example:
• The ideal solution allows you to add
new content simply by dragging and
dropping it into the work stream.
• The system should be intelligent

enough not to send the content to
those who have already received it.
• It should be smart enough to know if

someone downloaded that content
through another channel.
• For limited-time events and special

offers, the system should automatically
activate the content at the right time
and pull it out of the nurture stream
when the event is over.
• The system can intelligently help

measure what content asset is Marketo Engage automatically and intelligently sends prospects
performing best. and customers the best message and the best piece of content,
• Provide predictive web content using
based on who they are, what they have seen in the past, and
artificial intelligence (AI) to serve up their behaviors.
dynamic content that is relevant to
the viewer. You simply drag content into a stream, Marketo’s version of a
track—which can be thought of as a conversation—and the
• Have full account-based marketing
system automatically manages the timing and sending of the
(ABM) functionality for selecting and
prioritizing accounts using AI and right content to the right person at the right time.
delivering relevant messages across
The system also takes outdated content out of rotation in a
all channels.
particular program, and will warn you in advance when there
isn’t any more content available to continue the conversation.

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Nurture as part of your overall marketing strategy

When creating your lead nurturing strategy, do not think about nurture in isolation.
Think about how nurture fits into the other marketing communications you send.
You can’t think about lead nurturing often you hit your database with other nurturing (email, direct mail, phone, etc.). • Day 45: Email best practices white
in a vacuum. You need to take a look communications. The first step to getting paper
In the following example, let’s assume
at your entire marketing calendar to this right is to determine your overall • Day 60: Social campaign on email
a prospect downloads a white paper
determine what other communications communication cadence. How often best practices
from your website, and your lead scoring
your leads receive. You might be are you engaging with the contacts in
methodology deems this individual a • Day 75: Website personalization and
sending newsletters, product updates, your database? Meet with stakeholders banner ads to promote webinar series
lead nurturing candidate. If the buying
database emails, and other cross- in your organization to decide what this
cycle for your product is three months, • Day 85: Personal email from sales rep
channel communications. How are number should be. Be sure to test and
the nurturing path for this specific offering a product demo
these interactions working together iterate this over time to determine the
prospect might look like this: • Day 90: Personalized ad on Facebook
in harmony? You want to deliver correct number of touches based on
coordinated and relevant customer your results. • Day 1: Website personalization using targeting
experiences across all of the channels persona-based offer
Consider the length of the buying
your buyers use. • Day 10: Follow-up with intro email
process and the communication
Communication timing approaches used. The timing of your lead • Day 15: Email offering new content
nurturing programs is impacted by the related to first download and
How often you send lead nurturing
subsequent website activity
communications, particularly email, length of your average buying process
needs to be reconciled with how and the approaches you use for lead • Day 30: Personal email from sales rep

12
Marketing calendars
You need a way to see all of your
campaigns in one place—so you know
exactly what database email and nurture
campaign sends are going out in any
given week.
A marketing calendar, like the one to the

right, is an ideal place to ensure you're
not overmarketing to the same people.
We use our solution’s marketing

calendar to see a holistic view of all
communications with our database
across the entire marketing department—
we can see event invites, nurture emails,
demand generation emails, and so on.
With this holistic view, you can see

exactly who is being communicated
with and when.

13
Marketo Engage customer case study: Comvita

management system with a built-in products, the previous solution put Benefits
email tool, which allowed them to send Comvita at a distinct disadvantage. In only six months of using Marketo
emails and determine if those emails had Engage's nurturing, Comvita has seen a
Solution
been read. Unfortunately, it did little else. 480% increase in new lead conversion
Comvita was able to implement Marketo
and a 255% increase in sale value
Comvita had no way to differentiate Engage and send out their first campaign
when leads are exposed to nurturing.
• 480% increase in new lead conversion among a new lead, someone who had in about six weeks. The first focus was
in six months of using Marketo Engage Email marketing at Comvita is now the
purchased from Comvita before, and simple: lead generation and sales.
second highest revenue generator of
• Average sale value up 255% when those who were already loyal customers.
With Marketo Engage, Comvita could all their online activities and Marketo
part of a lead nurturing campaign Every contact received the same
determine that their average conversion lead nurturing has one of the highest
content—a monthly promotional email.
• Email marketing is now the second time was three months for a B2C conversion rates for online activities.
highest revenue generator of all online In addition, the previous solution was not
activities customer. Comvita leverages Marketo
user friendly, making communications Engage to accelerate the sales process
• Nurtured leads have the highest difficult to send and offering almost no with nurturing streams and more
conversion rates of all online activities insights. Comvita couldn’t even identify targeted, specific content. Now, Comvita
their most loyal customers. Because the knows whether customers are likely
Challenges
holistic health industry requires a vast to purchase again and how soon, and
Comvita is a global company with
communication to educate consumers can even talk to customers about the
a vision for preventive and holistic
about the science and credibility of products they are interested in.
health. Prior, Comvita used a content

14
PART III
Who to nurture

15
PART 3: WHOM TO NURTURE
Defining a lead
To build your lead nurturing strategy, you need to start with the basics. Every organization has its own
definition of a good lead. In our own revenue cycle, a lead is “a qualified prospect who is starting to exhibit
buying behavior."
Sales and marketing lead alignment Square-Full Create service-level agreements

(SLAs) around lead hand-off to sales
To define the perfect lead for your
and communications. Define the
organization—so you can determine full-journey process from won and
which leads should be nurtured, and onboarded all the way through to the
which should not—you need to come up lost stage.
with a joint lead definition agreed upon Square-Full Set regular meeting cadences between
by sales and marketing. sales and marketing to continue to
iterate, test, and adjust SLAs based on
Here is a simple checklist that can help: insights.
Square-Full Schedule time with sales and other
involved parties to define target
markets, database design, leads
available to sales, and characteristics
of closed leads.
Square-Full Define scoring procedures and what
constitutes a high-value action versus
a low-value action. Additionally, what
constitutes a high-value demographic
or attribute versus a low one?

16
Lead scoring
Lead scoring is the shared sales and marketing methodology for ranking leads in order to determine sales
readiness. By scoring leads based on their interest in your business, their current place in the buying cycle,
and their demographic fit, you get a better idea of where each lead is in the buying cycle and can segment
and nurture accordingly.
Companies that use lead scoring see a 1. Lead fit Typical demographics might consist of: 2. Lead interest
huge lift in ROI, and their sales teams Determining lead fit, or explicit lead Scoring lead interest, often called
• Title
spend less time selling and more time scoring, is based on observable or • Role implicit lead scoring, is done by tracking
closing deals. directly shared information—often • Location your prospect’s behaviors (e.g., online
collected via an online form or body language) to measure their level
To create a lead scoring strategy, your Firmographics: Firmographics are
registration process. Demographics, of interest in your product or solution.
sales and marketing teams need to organizational characteristics that help
firmographics, and BANT (budget, Interest scores tell you how attractive
work together to determine what scores you find your ideal customer. Typical
authority, need, and time) tell you how you are to a potential customer. Implicit
should be assigned to which actions. firmographics might consist of:
well a prospect fits your buyer profile. lead scoring can also mean inferring
This can be based on business priorities
• Name of company additional information about a prospect
and buyer readiness and is intimately Demographics: When profiling and • Company size and location
based on the quality of data you have—
connected with your definition of a lead. defining your leads, you need to look at • Revenue
• Number of divisions like the location of an IP address.
demographics—quantifiable identifiers
There are three dimensions of lead • Number of products/services sold
that characterize your lead population. Anonymous leads
scoring that help to determine whom • Geography served
You can then take these demographics • Industry How do you nurture and score
you should nurture and who gets fast-
and create lead nurture tracks that map • Products already owned anonymous leads? Anonymous leads are
tracked to sales—lead fit, lead interest,
to them. buyers who interact with your content
and lead behavior.
or website before you have their data.

17
With personalization tools and marketing This will help you to determine whether
Passive behaviors Active behaviors
automation, you can actually identify someone is an early-stage prospect (Engagement) (Buying intent)
attributes about anonymous visitors to who is just looking to be educated or
your site. entertained—or an active lead who is
• Early-stage content +3 • Pricing pages +10
considering a purchase.
Personalization software enabled on • Attend webinar +5 • Watch demos
• Visit any webpage/blog +1 - Overview +5
a website can detect the following You can track these by asking the lead
- Detailed +10
information: directly, or through implicit factors. For • Visit careers pages -10
• Mid-stage content +8
example, we have found that there are • Decay inactivity -1, -5, -10
• Company size • Late-stage content +12
some behaviors highly correlated with
• Server’s IP address • Searches for branded
prospects moving into a buying cycle. keyword “Marketo” +8
• Industry
Take a look at the chart to the right for a
• Company size
detailed view.
• Revenue
Data augmentation for lead scoring
• Page visits By scoring and identifying active buying
• Geo-locations behaviors, you can be more relevant
• Referral sources when you nurture and follow up with Sometimes you won’t have all of the data you need to score your
leads appropriately—particularly if you are importing a lead list
• Search terms your leads. If someone has a high score from a webinar or event. Using a data augmentation service, like
• Browsing details but low buying intent, you know you Leadspace, can help you fill in the gaps so you can score and
need to be more educational in your segment better. Data augmentation can also be more accurate, as
3. Lead behavior people often lie on forms
nurturing—but if someone has high
Interest and fit are not enough. You buying intent, they can be fast-tracked to Data augmentation services can help enrich the following data:
need to track additional factors, such sales and not nurtured at all. • Email • Phone
as behavior, which will indicate timing. • Role • Title
• Company name • Company size
• Social profile information • Technology selection

18
List building
In order to successfully nurture prospects, you need to grow your list of engaged subscribers and collect contact
information for your database. According to Moon Marketing, you lose up to 25% of subscribers each year due to
email attrition, and not all engaged subscribers will become paying customers. To grow your business and set up
a robust lead nurture program, you need to feed the top of the funnel with list-building tactics.
There are many channels and tactics 2. Request: With gated content, such as and possibly other information
that marketers use to build their email premium reports or ebooks, an email (demographics, preferences, etc.). They
address is the key that opens the gate.
list. Consider building your email list are immediately subscribed and will
from the following sources: Opt-ins automatically receive the next email in
your nurture campaign based off what
• Website registration page Before you can fulfill and maintain
you learn from the opt-in form.
• Social media expectations with your nurture
• Offline events communications, you must set them. Implicit opt-ins
• Online events Expectations start with the opt-in. A
An implicit opt-in occurs when a website
• Purchase or trial registration smart opt-in process sets an accurate
visitor fills out a form on your site to
• Blog registration page and positive notion of what’s to come
download a content asset or register for
and how it will arrive.
There are two ways to collect this a webinar. Your website’s privacy policy
information through opt-ins: There are various tactics for building must state that performing this action
your list of opt-in email addresses, but automatically opts users into email
1. Ask: When you give your visitors marketing. This option is low effort, but
great reasons to subscribe—news, in general, they fall into one of the
updates, discounts, content—they’ll following categories: also has the lowest level of engagement.
often gladly give you their email
Single opt-ins Here is an example of an implicit opt-in
address. Then you can include these
contacts in your nurture programs. on our website for downloading one of
A single opt-in works when a new
our definitive guides:
subscriber enters their email address

19
Explicit opt-ins Confirmed or double opt-ins Subscription centers • Customizable preferences: Include
checkboxes that make it simple to
Explicit opt-ins require the user A confirmed or double opt-in occurs One of the best ways to establish trust
change options.
to voluntarily sign up for email when a new subscriber enters their with your audience is to allow them to
marketing. Often this takes the form email address and, depending on your take control of communications—they • A pause option: Some subscribers
of a registration box or page that reads needs, other information and content should never feel trapped. You can be simply need a break! Offer them the
ability to pause for a period of time.
something like “I want to receive news preferences. A post-subscribe thank-you smart about your opt-out by creating
and updates.” page may alert them to look for an a subscription center on your website. • An opt-down feature: Opting down
email confirmation. Once they receive When subscribers click “unsubscribe,” allows subscribers to receive fewer—
Explicit opt-ins indicate additional but not zero—emails.
the email, they’ll need to click on a link they will be taken to the center and
engagement as a subscriber explicitly
or button to confirm. given the option of changing their At Marketo, we allow subscribers to
requests information. Here is an
communication preferences, because choose which channels they subscribe to,
example of an explicit opt-in on Note: Please keep in mind that these
maybe (hopefully) they still like you— unsubscribe from, or simply pause for 90
our blog: options can also be dependent on
they just want to see less of you. days—and we take these selections into
legislation, such as the General Data
consideration for our nurturing tracks.
Protection Regulation (GDPR) or Most subscription centers are fairly
California’s anti-spam laws. bare—asking for only the subscriber
email and the reason they have opted
The General Data Protection Regulation Maintain your list
out. However, you can also give
(GDPR) of the European Union (EU) It’s not enough to simply build a list for subscribers other options, such as:
makes it a legal requirement to have lead nurturing—you must also maintain
explicit opt-ins. • A list of current subscriptions: Show
it. This means letting subscribers
subscription details.
manage their preferences and opt-out if
they wish.

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Database health
Having a clean database is critical to Here are the top reasons to keep your Identify duplicates Eliminate junk contacts
your lead nurturing success. According database clean: Duplicate leads in your database are It is common to get incorrect
to Robert Pease, CMO Practice Lead an inevitable problem. It’s important information when a lead fills out your
1. Better segmentation of leads,
for Heinz Marketing, “The accuracy allowing you to focus your message to proactively scrub your data on a form. Some anonymous leads will
and effectiveness of the information on the right people at the right time, regular basis and make sure to eliminate write in abcd@gmail.com or blah@
available to you that is used to engage is key for lead nurturing. duplicates as they come in. Luckily, your blah.com to avoid sharing their real
prospects through the buying journey 2. Avoid duplicate sending of emails. marketing automation solution should contact information. You don’t want
is extremely important and requires have rules for automatically deduping these leads dirtying your database,
3. Accurately report to your executive
constant attention to keep up to date.” lead records. Just make sure you do not so run campaigns in your marketing
team.
mass delete leads. automation tool to automatically identify
Josh Hill, Senior Director, Lead 4. Potentially hurt pending deals if you
records with bogus contact information.
Lifecycle Management at RingCentral, email the wrong marketing material Check for uniformity
to key prospects during a sales cycle. Then you can delete, blacklist, or
recommends taking the following steps
Uniformity is critical to a clean suspend these contacts if needed.
to maintain a healthy database: 5. Too many old, bad, and duplicate database—but this is challenging. For
leads might push you over your example, if you let leads type their What about competitors? Many
Give your leads a checkup
pricing threshold in your marketing competitors will subscribe in order to
country of residence instead of choosing
In order to maintain good database automation or customer relationship
from a drop-down menu, you might learn the ways you market to your
health, you need to continuously give management (CRM) system.
collect inconsistent results. Residents of customers. You may not want to market
your leads a checkup. You need to make 6. Personalization that goes wrong—
the United States might write “US,” “U.S.,” to these folks. Sit down and have a
sure you are close to your leads—know incorrect info within your email.
“USA,” “United States of America,” etc. conversation with your team to decide
exactly where they are coming from, and
your strategy for competitor leads.
how they are getting into your database.

21
Marketo Engage customer case study: Oktopost

Challenges Solution Oktopost has seen a 15% increase in
Oktopost, a B2B company offering a Marketo has been instrumental in their lead-to-conversion rates since using
social media management platform, success—significantly increasing revenue Marketo Engage. Acquisition costs have
is riding the crest of the social media and lead flow, and enabling the company decreased significantly, while the lifetime
• 80% of conversion from lead to paid
wave and helping customers bridge to make better informed decisions. value of a lead is increasing. Velocity
via zero-touch strategy using Marketo
Engage nurturing the gap between social media, content over sales, both in terms of the amount
“Implementing a zero-touch strategy has on a month-by-month basis and from
marketing, and lead generation.
• 50% open rate per email campaign— been something we were looking to do each individual sale, has significantly
a major increase using Marketo Engage As a lean start-up, one of the key and we can now see that 80% of the increased as well.
• Ability to synchronize sales and challenges is the ability to align sales conversions we have from lead to paid
marketing and marketing. Prior, the marketing have been in zero touch—solely based
• Intelligent lead scoring capabilities, team was manually processing and on the automated nurturing process
improving sales and marketing running marketing email campaigns and from Marketo Engage,” said Mark Lerner,
efficiency all lead generation activity. They needed Director of Marketing, 2014. “In addition
to ensure the sales team was aware of to the lead scoring and nurturing,
• Accelerated campaign creation,
execution, and increased results via which leads were warm and when to analytics have uncovered where leads
lead nurturing move them along in the sales cycle. come from and enabled us to measure
the effectiveness of specific programs.”
• Increased win rates and velocity
over sales

22
PART IV
Multichannel lead nurturing

23
PART 4: MULTICHANNEL LEAD NURTURING
Nurturing in a multichannel world

Today’s consumer moves seamlessly—sometimes even quickly—across digital and offline channels.
They jump from email, to social media, to your website, and then back to social media, without losing
momentum. And they do this from whatever device is most convenient at the moment.
The modern, digitally empowered buyer Multichannel marketers need tools to service we’re offering!” Your customer over any channel, it is imperative to
is channel-agnostic. This new buyer help them: responds with a puzzled look. He thinks understand their behaviors across all
has become the undisputed controller you have a terrible memory or that channels—you need a single, cross-
• Listen: Pay close attention to buyer
of their relationship with your brand. behavior across channels to create a you’re confused. channel view of the customer.
Now, more than ever, the customer is single, integrated buyer persona view.
The same thing happens when a Act
in charge. Before we jump into more
• Act: Manage, personalize, and act customer receives dueling messages
details on creating your lead nurture Engaging conversations with buyers
on conversations with buyers across from you on different marketing
content and plan, we wanted to address multiple channels. should be maintained seamlessly
channels. If you’re not listening across as your subscriber moves from one
how to think about nurture with a cross-
Listen different channels, you’re not delivering channel to the next. A conversation you
channel lens.
Imagine you had a great phone an integrated experience. To create start in an email must continue when
As a marketer, you need to think conversation yesterday with one of your relevant interactions with a buyer the buyer navigates to your website, and
across channels in your lead nurturing. best customers about a new service
Through advanced lead nurturing offering. Now imagine that after you
technology, like Marketo Engage’s read this, you go out for a cup of coffee
customer engagement engine, real-time and run into him on the street. “Hi! So
personalization, and more, you can glad we bumped into one another,” you
listen and react from various of channels. say. “I want to talk to you about a great

24
shouldn’t skip a beat when they jump • Identify a person’s relevant attributes— the appropriate campaign is launched. to refine your account-based marketing
over to your Facebook page. Instead intent, behavior, and profile. Automatically, the text, banners, calls-to- approach, you can nurture high-value
of competing against each other with • Customize that person’s online action, and images dynamically change, accounts through their decision-making
disconnected messaging, or repeating experience by presenting the most instantly creating a more personalized, process with a mixture of web content
information your buyer has already relevant content. seamless experience. and email.
absorbed, your email and marketing
Nurturing anonymous leads Your personalization software then When someone comes to your website
channels should work together to
As we mentioned in the last section, sends data directly to your marketing from a strategic account, you can
coordinate the customer’s experience.
with personalization tools, you can automation platform, and can send change messaging, images, content, and
Let’s take a look at examples of how to discover information about anonymous triggered, targeted email campaigns logos to make an experience that is
integrate a multichannel approach into leads. But how can you nurture and scoring updates based on how that completely personalized and relevant.
your lead nurturing efforts. those leads with relevant content lead interacts with your personalized
Retargeting
that is seamless with your email campaigns.
Web Some companies are including a
communications?
Your website is of course a great place Persona and account-based retargeting pixel on their website and in
Once your personalization software marketing
to capture new email addresses, but it’s the emails they send to prospects and
also a fantastic place to continue and discovers demographic and behavioral With personalization, you can target customers (including emails sent by
start conversations. The web experience details from your leads, it looks for both persona and account. With individual employees). This sets a cookie
can and should be dynamically pre-set marketing campaigns that account marketing, your organization on the subscriber’s machine, which
personalized to reinforce and extend match the visitor’s data segment. This can focus on a group of accounts allows the company to target specific
the dialogue started in emails. Using campaign is initially created by you, the with similar attributes that are either display ads to them as they navigate
personalization software, like Marketo marketer, and should be consistent with most likely to generate revenue, the web. If done well, it can create more
Engage’s real-time personalization, the nurture campaigns you set up for or strategically important to your coordinated experiences between the
enables you to: various segments. If a match is found, organization. Using personalization tools messages seen over email and online.

25
Social Direct mail Sales involvement Your sales rep should be asking:
Social is a critical part of nurturing cross- Consider adding personalized direct mail Don’t underestimate the power of • Who is this lead?
channel. Running social campaigns is to your lead nurture campaigns as a way personal contact when it comes
• What do they know about my
great, but making every campaign social to further personalize and add a human to lead nurturing. Cross-channel
company already?
is better. Think of social as an ingredient touch. There are solutions available that communication is great, but adding
in the campaign cake, rather than just integrate with marketing automation that human touch is a powerful way to • What communications have they
received from my company to date?
the frosting. When you connect your platforms that make it simple to create accelerate the sales cycle. A call from
lead nurturing to your social efforts, they highly personalized email. your sales reps should be an integral • Do they fit our ideal customer profile?
enhance one another. part of every nurture campaign. Here
Imagine sending a fun, unique, and Mobile
are a few steps to get you started.
Combine email and social media personalized package after a lead Not only are today’s buyers
You can easily combine your email lead has interacted with your nurture Know whom you are calling multichannel; they’re also multidevice.
nurture campaigns and social media in communications. Adding that human This is the most important aspect Because mobile is an area where your
the following ways: touch can accelerate your leads and of including a sales call in your lead buyers spend copious amounts of time,
help build trust. nurturing campaigns—you must know you need to think about how you can
1. Social connecting: Use email to
grow your social followers. whom you are calling and what their include a mobile experience in your
Add a PURL
past experience has been with your lead nurturing programs.
2. Social sharing: Use email to extend PURLs are personalized URLs. Leads
company. Make sure you research
the reach of your message through type a custom URL into their browser Make sure all of your nurture email
social channels. your buyer and check your CRM
from a postcard or package they receive content is responsive—including your
system and marketing automation
3. Social promotion: Use social to in the mail. This address brings them to emails and landing pages. That ensures
database to ensure your conversation is
grow your email list and promote a landing page designed specifically for your customers can see and interact
your email marketing efforts. relevant and consistent with the other
their persona. By offering them targeted with your nurture emails on their
communication your company has had
web content in this way, you can mobile devices.
with them.
improve conversion by 30% or more.

26
PART V
Content

27
PART 5: CONTENT
Content strategy
Having a well-planned content strategy can increase the effectiveness of
lead nurturing by delivering compelling content to each persona at just
the right time.
A comprehensive strategy should be Creation of content can be more

data driven, using metrics from your efficient by developing “big rock” assets
marketing automation solution to and dividing them into smaller chunks
determine which types of content are to serve up one at a time.
the most engaging for each persona at
Your metrics solution should be able to
each stage of their journey.
attribute buyer activities and revenue to
Search engine optimization (SEO) specific content assets, so you can learn
should be taken into account in your what works and what does not.
strategy, so each new content asset you
create improves your organic search
rankings. High-volume search terms
should be written into your content.

28
PART 5: CONTENT
Align content formats to customer buying cycle

Each stage of the buyer’s journey calls Exploring possible solutions—
for certain content formats to engage Value story
buyers with the right content at the right • Sales presentations
time, so they come to trust your brand • In-person demos
and ultimately make a purchase. • Case studies
Internal blogs
According to SiriusDecisions, these
content formats work well at each of Committing to a solution—
Solution differentiation
these stages:
• Trials
Loosening of the status quo— • Proofs of concept
Thought leadership • Competitive tools
• Subject matter expert (SME) access
• Articles
• Social media
Justifying the decision— The 411 rule four early-stage, light, and informative
• Newsletters
Financial justification You’ll find that nurturing your buyers content offers you provide, you can
• White papers
• Blogs • ROI tools means maintaining the careful balance have one soft-sell offer like a third-party
• Total cost of ownership (TCO) tools between helpful and promotional. To review, and one hard-sell offer like a
Committing to change—Solution • Business case demo. This rule helps you avoid being
help you negotiate this balance in your
knowledge • Financial presentation
story arc, we look at our content mix thought of as only a great resource, and
• Events through the lens of the 411 rule. never pushing your buyer through their
Making the selection—
• Webinars lifecycle. It helps you balance being
Decision validation
• Website This rule, popularized by Joe Pulizzi, helpful and asking for business.
• Self-guided demos • Executive briefings Founder and CEO of the Content
• Analyst reports • Analyst reports
• Product collateral Marketing Institute, states that for every
• Customer references

29
PART 5: CONTENT
The types of nurture content

According to Edward Unthank, founder at Etumos, “The most successful nurture
content is a perfect intersection of what your buyer wants to do and what you
and your organization want them to do.”
Each message must teach and with outsourced writers, or commission Below is an example of an original
accelerate. Your nurture content must third-party thought leaders to create content lead nurture email from one of
teach your leads something new by exclusive content. Giving your audience our own tracks highlighting our Definitive
providing interesting and relevant original content is a great incentive for Guide to Account-Based Marketing.
content, but through your story arc them to opt-in.
creation, you also must accelerate your
At Marketo, an Adobe Company, we
leads through your sales cycle using
create a multitude of original content.
content to nudge them to the next step.
We publish a daily blog, create ebooks
Now that you have thought about your and cheat sheets multiple times per
story arcs, in the following pages, we month, and create a new definitive
discuss the different types of content guide (like this one) every quarter.
you can use to create the right mix for
Every new content asset that is created
your business.
gets added to the appropriate lead
Original content nurture program as part of the content
Original content is content that you promotional plan. Then, the lead
create. It’s yours, and only yours. You nurture manager assesses where it fits
can write this content in house, work into the story arc and adds the new
content to a track and stream.

30
PART 5: CONTENT
Curation Content curation for social is particularly

The primary goal of nurturing is to keep effective, since you can use curated
in touch with the potential buyer. As content to practice the 411 rule
long as you are hyper-relevant, you previously described.
are accomplishing this goal. A nurture
User generated
interaction doesn’t always need to be
Asking your community to help create
about an ebook. In fact, it doesn’t even
content can inspire your creative team
need to be about something you wrote!
and engage subscribers. Social media
Consider including content curation in
is perfect for this. You can send an
your nurturing.
email that links to a poll you created
Content curation—the process of on Twitter or Facebook and then
collecting, organizing, and displaying post the results of the poll in another
relevant content—can be an important email. Community content can also
part of your lead nurture strategy. come from blog comments, customer
Curation can be an effective tool, but testimonials, and reviews. It helps lend
make sure it is relevant. authenticity and build trust in your user
community
Content curation is successful in emails
as well as social interactions. If you are
using content curation in emails, make
sure your email topic is of interest to the
receiver and your curated articles are
high quality.

31
PART 5: CONTENT
The anatomy of a lead nurture email

Email is a critical part of your nurture programs. Your lead nurture emails need to incorporate the right
elements. Not only should your emails offer the right mix of content at the right time, they also need to
consistently help your buyers save money, solve a problem, educate themselves, or be entertained.
Of the emails you send and receive, Alert: Alerts offer convenience; they are This email is meant to maintain a This email communicates information
you’ll notice there are standard types: emails triggered by a certain event, such relationship in the late stages of within the email itself without an
as the one you receive when your flight nurturing and say thank you to a lead additional call-to-action.
Promotional: These emails are
is delayed or when someone asks to who attended an event.
meant to stimulate an action (purchase, Reminder: These are “nudge” emails
connect with you on LinkedIn.
registration, usage, etc.). As an example, Communication: These emails send sent to a subscriber who has abandoned
take a look at the email below, Relationship development: The most updates or communicate other types of their online shopping cart. For example,
promoting a Brunch and Learn. The common type of lead nurture email. It's information (e.g., a newsletter). Groupon uses this method to remind
action we are looking to stimulate is to meant to simply build and maintain a users of unredeemed coupons.
As an example, look at the nurture email
RSVP to the event. relationship over time.
below about Champion Tips and Tricks: The example below sends a quick
As an example, look at a standard late- reminder to schedule a call with a
stage nurture email below: sales representative to learn more
about how Marketo Engage fits into
their MarTech stack.

32
PART 5: CONTENT
Email creation best practices

Email styles vary for each organization and even from campaign to campaign. Your nurture
emails will have standard elements, like the subject, from address, calls-to-action, and so on.
But you will need to determine the best practice for your organization.
Subject line subject lines, a very helpful abbreviation

inspired from Copyblogger to help 5 subject line techniques that work
The subject line of an email is one of
the first things a recipient sees in their determine if our subject lines are ready:
inbox. They are likely to make a snap • Useful: Is the promised message • Educate: “7 Things Marketers Can Learn From Sales”
judgment based on that subject line valuable to the reader?
about whether to open, ignore, delete, or • Ask a question: “Did You Miss This?”
• Ultra-specific: Does the reader know
mark it as spam. Subject lines are critical what’s being promised?
for successful lead nurturing. Your email • Announce a sale, new product, or an exclusive: “First Peek: Our Latest Definitive
• Unique: Is the promised message Guide to Engaging Content Marketing”
doesn’t matter if no one opens it!
compelling and remarkable?
Not every subject line needs to be a • Urgent: Does the reader feel they • Offer a solution to a problem: “Pay Down Your Loan”
literary achievement, but there is power need to read it now?
in a subject line that is magnetic.
• Jump on a popular topic: “The State of Social Advertising: What’s Working Now?”
Sender
Let’s face it, if you can get a subscriber to
Like we talked about in the first part
open your email eventually, you’re doing
of this guide, lead nurturing is really all
a good job, but if you can get them to
about trust. You want your buyers to
stop what they’re doing and open your
trust communications from you, so that
email immediately, you’re winning.
they are always willing or even excited
As guidance, we use “the four U’s” of to open them.

33
PART 5: CONTENT
In addition to the subject line, one way email—that’s an awesome first step! So • Consider experimenting with styles of Design
to create and reinforce trust is with the now what? You want your buyer to land emails—sometimes heavy text works
The design of your communication
better than a beautiful visual.
sender name—or the from address. It’s on compelling copy that reads quickly, is heavily related to the images that
a critical factor in a subscriber’s decision and has a clear call-to-action and value • Always provide a plain-text version for you include in your email. Today, as a
to open versus delete your email. If a proposition (“what’s in it for me?”). buyers who don’t like or accept HTML security precaution, most email clients
subscriber doesn’t recognize you or trust versions.
block images by default, so users need
To check if you deliver this experience,
you, they are far less likely to open your In the example below, our nurture to choose to unblock images if they
run it by the 30-second summary
email, and may even mark it as spam. email has two very clear call to actions. want to see them. Ideally, your buyer
rule. Can you get through the email
The reader easily understands how to trusts you enough to always allow your
There are a few options that you can in 30 seconds and know what value
download The Definitive Guide to Social images, or actively chooses to unblock
experiment with: it provides? This test helps you make
Media Marketing and register for our them each time. Regardless, there will
sure that your call-to-action and value
• Company or brand name: Apple, Top Trends in Video Marketing webinar. still be a percentage of recipients who
Marketo, Banana Republic proposition are clear and that your copy,
see your emails without images.
whether it’s in bullets or paragraph form,
• Product or service: “Mileage Plus” by
is not too dense. There are a few ways you can prepare
United Airlines is used as a from name
for this and make your communication
• Personal name: A specific employee Now that you have a buyer’s attention
easier to read.
at your company (e.g., the sales on the body of your email, there are a
account executive who owns account) few more things to consider: • Create bulletproof buttons: These
buttons look like images but are
• Campaign-based: Marketo • Think about the width of your email— actually cleverly formatted HTML. The
sometimes sends nurturing emails most common is 600 pixels. buttons ensure that subscribers will
from “Marketo Engage Nurturing” or
• Remember that rich media, like Flash, see the most important points of your
“Marketo Engage Events,” so buyers
JavaScript, and video won’t work in an email, regardless of whether or not
know exactly what to expect before
HTML email. they have blocked images.
opening.
• Focus on what will and will not appear • Use image alt tags: These tags let
Email body copy users who have blocked images know
above the fold for a user on their
You got your buyer to open your nurture display, whether that’s desktop, laptop, what they are missing.
or mobile.

34
PART 5: CONTENT
In the example below, we use alt tags Calls-to-action Tip: Not every email needs a CTA. Lead There are a few different ways to
that clearly show the reader what Calls-to-action, or CTA's, live in the nurture should educate, entertain, and develop a mobile-friendly email, and
images they are missing out on. We've body of an email and draw the buyers’ keep in touch with buyers. Consider that we’ll cover them briefly here:
also formatted the HTML to look like attention to the action that you want a portion of your content mix should
• Scalable design: Good for beginners
buttons—note the “Download now” them to take. Some experts say that just add value and not include a CTA. and teams with limited resources—it’s
and “Learn more about...” you should only include one CTA in a design that works across desktop
your email, to not divert your buyer’s and mobile and doesn’t require code
to adjust image and text sizes.
attention, while others maintain that
having two CTA's ensures that there is • Fluid design: This design works
something for everyone. We believe best with text-heavy layouts that
flow. It requires some CSS knowledge
there is no right answer—it depends on
because of width limitations, but
your organization’s audience, the offer, it still works for teams with limited
and what you have learned via testing. resources.
CTA's can be a button, hyperlinked text, • Responsive design: This design

an image, and so on—essentially, it is includes everything from the two
Mobile optimization styles above and then adds control
an element of your email that you can with more CSS media queries,
Unfortunately, despite the landslide of
edit and test, similar to subject line and allowing you to design for specific
In addition to ensuring images can be evidence that supports the necessity screen sizes. It offers the most control,
sender. Your CTA's should always be
viewed on all devices, your email design for marketers to adapt and be mobile but also requires more resources.
bold and obvious. In communication
should also be clean. Too much clutter friendly, many haven’t.
with a CTA, you want to ensure that the
Ultimately, you need to consider your
causes reader confusion and risks your buyer takes your recommended action. As you develop a successful lead audience and your resources when you
email being sent to spam. Your emails
nurturing program, be sure that you decide which level of mobile-optimized
should always be clean and concise. Take a look at the following email
build this capability into your program, design is best for your organization.
They should have a header, a hero example to download our Definitive
as it will only become more and more
image, and include a short block of copy. Guide to Engaging Content Marketing.
important over time.
The reader knows what the email is
about and what they should do.

35
PART VI
Basic lead nurture
segmentation

36
PART 6: BASIC LEAD NURTURE SEGMENTATION
Why do you need segmentation?

Segmenting your audience, the act of dividing your leads into definable and actionable parts, is
essential to your marketing success—particularly with lead nurturing. The more you segment,
the more relevant your lead nurture programs will be. If you fail to remain relevant, your
audience simply won’t pay attention.
According to our proprietary

engagement score (which tracks how
engaging an email is in Marketo Engage),
23% of how engaging an email is can
be explained by segmentation. Smaller,
more segmented sends in your lead
nurturing yield better results.

37
The two dimensions of segmentation

We recommend that your basic lead nurturing programs use two dimensions of segmentation— buying
stage crossed with another measurement variable that is important to your business. The reason for two
is because it creates a happy balance: one is not enough, and each dimension beyond two creates an
exponentially more complex framework. Think of it as segments and subsegments.
At Marketo, an Adobe Company,t, we focus mostly on buying stage and buying We break our funnel into three parts—top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of
profile as our two main dimensions. Here's an example of how we think about a basic funnel. We know where someone is in the process through lead scoring.
nurturing segmentation:
1. Buying stages 2. Buying profiles Sample multichannel lead nurture program: Buying stages
• Early: Be a better marketer • Marketing • Touch 1: Early-stage email—Ebook: What is Marketing Automation?
• Mid: Why marketing automation? • Sales
• Touch 2: Early-stage website offer—Persona-based personalization for Workbook:
• Late: Why Marketo Engage? • Executive Sales and Marketing Alignment
• Customer: Success
• Touch 3: Mid-stage retargeting ad—Ebook: Choosing Your Marketing Automation
Solution
• Touch 4: Mid-stage email—Report: Marketing Automation Vendor Comparison

Dimension 1: Buying stages
Typically, you want to nurture leads based on where they are in their buyer’s journey. • Touch 5: Late-stage sales call
Content that is relevant to a lead that has just learned about your company is probably
• Touch 6: Post-sale customer welcome email with link to onboarding ebook
not relevant to a lead who is in the final stages of the decision-making process. And
remember, relevance is key!

38
Early stage: Late stage:

Top of the funnel (TOFU) Bottom of the funnel (BOFU) Sample multichannel nurture program: Buyer persona CMO
A person in this buying phase is at the This buying phase occurs at the bottom
• Touch 1: Early-stage website offer—Persona-based personalization for white paper:
beginning of your sales and marketing of your sales funnel, and indicates The Changing Buyer and the CMO
cycle. They are aware of your product or that your lead is close to becoming a
service, but not ready to buy. Individuals customer. Your offers for BOFU leads are • Touch 2: Early-stage email—Report: Marketing Maturity Curve
in the TOFU stage should be primarily very specific to your product or service • Touch 3: Mid-stage social interaction—Sent tweet for report: Marketing Automation
offered educational materials. area in order to support the buyer Buying Trends
during the purchase process.
Example content offers include ebooks, • Touch 4: Mid-stage sales call
blog posts, research data, funny videos, Example content offers include pricing,
• Touch 5: Late-stage email—Case study: Sales and Marketing Alignment with
curated lists, and infographics. demos, third-party reviews, and Marketing Automation
customer case studies.
Mid-stage: • Touch 6: Late-stage sales call—Demo request
Middle of the funnel (MOFU) Dimension 2: Buying profiles
This buying phase occurs in the middle In addition to buying stage as your
of your sales and marketing cycle. A first dimension, you can also choose
a second dimension for your lead Buyer profiles are quite relevant to lead audience that would help provide you
person arrives here after they have
nurturing. Choosing a second dimension nurturing—they help your campaigns with greater insight into how to best
displayed buying behavior, engaged with
enables you to be even more relevant target your most qualified segments build a relationship with them. For
your content, and is potentially a sales
to the leads in your database. and also add a human element to the instance, how do they prefer to receive
lead. Your offers for MOFU leads are still
relationship-building process. communications from you (email,
educational, but they will be more geared Buying profiles and personas
mobile phone, Twitter, etc.)?
toward your product or service. As you’re developing your personas,
A good place to start when you think
about buying profiles is the buying keep in mind that they must work for Finally, identify which profile or role
Example content offers include buying
committee—the group of individuals the specific purpose of lead nurturing. should apply to each new lead. You can
guides, RFP templates, ROI calculators,
involved in the purchasing decision. Think about the characteristics of your use online forms or data augmentation
and analyst reports.

39
to find out this information, especially if segments, such as small business

you use techniques such as progressive (corporate), mid-market, and enterprise.
profiling (e.g., the practice of modifying
Competitors
the fields on your forms to augment
the information you already have). You You can also segment your leads based
can also observe where your prospects on competitors. You can create lead
spend the majority of their time on your nurturing tracks that are specific to
website. Together, these techniques will whether or not a lead uses one of your
help you match the right role-based competitor’s products or services. This
content with each prospect. type of segmentation can be used for
new leads or churned customers who
Company size went to a competitor. Lead Lizard calls
this type of competitor lead nurturing a
Many companies segment based on
“win-back track.”
company size. This works particularly
well if you are selling to different market

40
PART VII
Advanced lead
nurture segmentation

41
PART 7: ADVANCED LEAD NURTURE SEGMENTATION
Behavioral segmentation
Adding behavioral segmentation and targeting to your lead nurture campaigns increases relevance and
engagement cross-channel. To speak to your leads in a truly relevant manner, you can segment your lead
nurturing programs in a way that combines transactional data, like the data discussed in the previous
section, with online body language like web traffic, search behavior, email response, and so on.
Behavioral segmentation can be used marketers need to design transition You can see the transition rules for Topic-of-interest lead nurturing
in addition to segmenting based on the rules. Transition rules tell your marketing this track in the screenshot below. We Create even more relevance by
more traditional dimensions. Behavioral automation system what to “listen” for in determine when to accelerate a lead instituting a topic-of-interest nurturing
segmentation and targeting listens to order to send the most relevant content. based on lead score change, lead status, track. You might have one lead who is
behavioral cues and creates triggered and other behavioral triggers. interested in one topic, and another lead
Marketo Engage can pull a lead
interactions that feel like a conversation.
backward or forward, according to what
When behavioral cues aren't considered, it hears.
nurturing can be experienced as
You can determine transition rules
dissonant interruption. What the sender
based on behavioral triggers—such as
considers a coordinated “drip campaign”
a change in a lead score. These rules
might feel more like a water torture to
can be as sophisticated or as simple as
the receiver.
you want. For instance, if someone visits
Behavioral segmentation with your pricing page three times within a
Marketo Engage week, they should be transitioned to
Let’s take a look at this in action. an accelerated, more aggressive lead
Rather than anticipate every move nurture track, where they move through
that a prospect or customer might take, the funnel more quickly.

42
who is interested in another topic altogether. track, they receive a set of social marketing- tracks, resulting in a huge lift. Our open rates
By lumping your topics together in one focused nurture touches. We do this had a 57% lift, our click-to-open rates had a
track, you risk a lead becoming disengaged. effectively listening to our potential buyer’s 59% lift, and our click rates had a 147% lift.
behaviors through Marketo Engage’s This is the power of behavioral segmentation.
Choosing your tracks
customer engagement engine.
So, how does this work? Create nurture Product interest
tracks based on the topics your customers Testing and proving your topics of An additional type of behavioral
interest
are interested in. At Marketo, an Adobe segmentation you can implement is product
Company, we created a track for leads You have to test and optimize your topic-of- interest. Nurture paths can be created for
interested in email marketing, social interest tracks to ensure that they are, in fact, each of your major product families, so
marketing, marketing automation, and the topics that interest your leads the most. they are relevant to the prospects. This
Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Let’s take a look at what we found when works particularly well if you work at a
we tested and measured the success of our multiproduct or multiservice company
For example, if a person attends a webinar
topic-of-interest lead nurturing programs. where upsell and cross-sell are important.
on social marketing, we assign them to the
social marketing nurture We found that our topic-of-interest tracks
track. Once they are in that interest-based performed better than our standard nurture
Sample multichannel nurturing program: Topic-of-interest social media
• Touch 1: Early-stage social interaction—Sent tweet for ebook: Social Media for Lead Generation
• Touch 2: Early-stage email—Ebook: Tactical Social Media Plan
• Touch 3: Mid-stage website offer—Persona-based personalization for ebook: Social Marketing and Marketing Automation
• Touch 4: Mid-stage email—Transition asset: The Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation

43
Specialized campaigns
In addition to including behavioral segmentation in your lead nurturing campaigns, you
can also create specialized campaigns to serve different purposes. Whether it’s creating a
lead nurture campaign around an event or a season, don’t be afraid to get creative with
your lead nurturing efforts.
Specialized tracks can be created in

addition to your two dimensions. These
types of campaigns are great because
they are highly relevant and targeted to
a specific moment in time, or help move
a lead through your sales funnel at an
accelerated pace.
Create special interest campaigns, such as:
• Event nurture campaigns

• Seasonal campaigns
• Accelerator campaigns

44
Late-stage lead nurture campaigns

Late-stage lead nurture campaigns maximize marketing’s investment in lead nurturing by ensuring
that leads never grow stagnant or get lost. As a general lead nurturing rule, there should be no place
in the buying process where leads just sit.
Late-stage lead nurture campaigns system, or by sending an alert over are manually recycled by sales. The emails, but also opportunities for
ensure movement and interaction with email or SMS. goal of the recycling campaign is to customers to interact on social media
prospects throughout the customer reassign—and track—leads that cannot and your website.
Lead recycling
lifecycle, even if they are not ready to be pursued by sales in a timely manner.
As you’ll recall, lead scoring is used Customer campaigns should be used for
buy or sales does not engage.
to determine if a lead is sales-ready Customer campaigns onboarding and lifetime engagement.
Here are three important categories of according to agreed-upon criteria from When an opportunity is closed and You can help guarantee success early on
lead lifecycle campaigns: your marketing and sales teams. But won, it’s a chance to put all associated by educating your customers after their
what happens if sales-ready leads are contacts into a new lead nurture track first purchase. You can enable them
1. Lead hand-off
2. Lead recycling not contacted or a rep decides that better optimized for customers. This can to get the most out of your product
3. Customer campaigns some of these leads are still not ready include marking them as customers in or service and extend their customer
to engage? your database, sending a welcome note, lifetime value.
Lead hand-off
and launching a series of customer- Customer nurturing is often an area
When a lead becomes sales-ready, an The importance of lead recycling
centric emails. overlooked in lead nurturing. However,
automated campaign to pass the lead to becomes even more apparent when
sales can make the difference between we consider how commonly leads are These campaigns are designed to first it is a fantastic way to keep your
timely follow-up and no response. There lost or ignored by sales upon entering introduce customers to your products customers interested and engaged over
are many ways to let sales know when the sales pipeline. In general, there are and services, and then over time help time. Plus, you can use lead nurturing
a lead is ready for them to engage: two types of lead recycling scenarios— upsell/cross-sell additional products and as an opportunity to tell your customers
by loading it into the CRM system, one in which leads are automatically retain them for life. about the latest and greatest new
changing the lead’s status field, changing recycled according to a set of business features, products, or services.
Customer campaigns should not only
the owner or creating a task in the CRM rules, and the other in which leads
include introduction and advocacy
45
Worksheet
The goal of this lead nuturingmatrix is to provide you with a resource for structuring your nurture
streams and tracks. Segmentation ultimately depends on your organization, but we provide a few
different options. We have broken up your early, mid, and late stages to be more detailed—so that
you can think about every step in your buyer’s journey.
ROLE
Exploring possible
Stages Loosening the status quo Committing to change Committing to a solution Making the selection
solutions
CEO
CMO
Director
Practitioner

46
COMPANY SIZE
Exploring possible
solutions
Small
Mid-sized
Enterprise

47
GEOGRAPHY
Exploring possible
solutions
Europe, the Middle East,

and Africa (EMEA)
Japan
South America
United States

48
TOPIC OF INTEREST
Stages Email 1 Email 2 Email 3 Email 4 Email 5
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3
Topic 4

49
PART VIII
Testing and optimization

50
PART 8: TESTING AND OPTIMIZATION
Why you must test

Almost every marketer knows that their lead nurture is a living program; nurture tracks and streams
need to be tested regularly to maintain their health and effectiveness and increase performance.
Testing gives the marketer insight into the aspects of a nurture track that could be optimized—how
many touches within a specific period of time, the types of messages, the time of day, and so on.
There are no golden rules for how to Optimization choose which path they will participate 3. Lead nurturing content and creative
run your campaigns—and that can in by using online behavior to determine optimization—The content included
Using the results of your testing to
be frustrating—but rules don’t exist in each nurture communication
optimize your lead nurturing ensures whether they should be moved to the
needs to be updated and improved
because what works for one audience its successful evolution and continued accelerated nurturing path. on a regular basis.
won’t necessarily work for another. relevance for your buyers. 2. Lead nurturing path optimization—
Testing is your ally and a critical part of This includes using A/B testing to
Path optimization helps adjust the
your long-term lead nurturing success. Here are three common ways you can order in which a buyer sees your find out which email content, social
Your lead nurturing strategy needs to optimize your lead nurturing: nurture messages. You can do this messaging, website offers, and more,
continually evolve. Testing will give you with a simple A/B test, altering the should be used. This also includes trying
1. Lead nurturing frequency order of the messages in
the insight you need to ensure that you optimization—Each buyer is likely to different types of content, like videos or
the nurturing campaign and
are providing an experience that fits your research your product and industry in implementing those changes based audio, as part of the message.
audiences’ preferences. a different way. on your results.
Improving your content mix
But don’t test just to test. Make sure you Because of this, the frequency with Continue altering messages on a regular To identify which messages and related
are focusing on decisions that improve which they receive your messages basis until you discover the best path for content assets are ripe for testing, look at
desired outcomes by setting goals and must be tailored to their needs. To your buyers. It’s especially important to performance reports and engagement
specifying measurement criteria. accommodate your buyer, we test the order of new content that you scores of the different assets. When
recommend that you allow them to add to a nurture track. you’re running nurture, look at how the

51
PART 8: TESTING AND OPTIMIZATION
touches are performing and then see Additionally, you should test the effects Seven tips for testing:
if there are discrepancies. A quick way The Golden Test
of frequency and timing.
1. Start simple. Test subject lines and
to evaluate your program is to rank headers first. It doesn’t take much
Test the day of the week that your To prove ROI of your lead
your communications based on their time to come up with a few variants
nurture campaign launches, the nurturing efforts, run a test that
performance and engagement scores. and the return can be significant.
looks at nurtured buyers versus
cadence of your contact (e.g., two times
Look at the bottom quarter, and decide non-nurtured buyers. Doing 2. Have a control group and be sure to
per month versus one time per week) this creates a benchmark and a
if you want to remove or improve them. limit the number of variants to one.
and the time of day. control group that you can use
to show the effectiveness of your 3. Keep a log of all your tests. Be sure to
This is also a great way to identify future
Quick tip: Before starting new tests to lead nurturing program over time. record your findings for reference
tests. Each organization needs to define
find the best time of day, consider what and sharing with others.
its benchmark for success and removal.
you already know about your audience.
If a piece falls below the benchmark, it’s Email testing basics 4. Make sure testing is a part of your
For example, when your audience day-to-day process. Testing doesn’t
up to the lead nurture track owner to
prefers to receive communication. Since email is such an integral part have to be daunting, and it shouldn’t
remove and replace, or retool.
of your lead nurture strategy, testing be something you put off because
Maybe you have pinpointed a range that your emails is essential for success. of a lack of resources. Make it routine.
Testing your tracks and streams
is successful, for example between 6 a.m. There are no golden rules for how to
A lead nurturing program is 5. Run tests on groups that are small,
and 9 a.m. Since you already have that structure your emails. What works for but large enough to make sure your
fundamentally a repeatable process: information, run your test within that one audience may not work for another, results are statistically significant. The
The same communications launch day time frame (e.g., test 6:30 a.m. against 9 winning variables should then be
which is why testing is so critical.
after day, week after week, to a relatively a.m.) instead of starting over and testing incorporated into your other nurture
consistent audience profile. The lessons Here are five elements to consider track emails.
large time ranges throughout the day,
learned from testing the key elements in like morning versus afternoon. testing for your lead nurturing emails: 6. Don’t forget that small differences
your lead nurturing program can have a can be significant. This is especially
significant, long-term impact compared When developing your campaigns, use 1. Subject line true if your sample sizes are large.
to a standard outbound campaign. For the waiting period—the period between 2. Offer
7. Listen to what your tests tell you.
example, if you learn that one email triggers and actions—as a test element 3. Frequency
Testing doesn’t matter if you don’t
subject line increases responses by 10%, to see if and how conversion rates are 4. Design modify your emails accordingly.
you can impact all emails going forward. impacted by time period changes. 5. Copy length

52
PART IX
Calculating the ROI
of lead nurturing

53
PART 9: CALCULATING THE ROI OF LEAD NURTURING
Basic lead nurturing email measurements

Here are the seven most common email Marketo, an Adobe Company, defines Opens/Open rate The Marketo Engage benchmark on
metrics: delivered as the number of contacts We define opens as the number of email performance found that top
whom are successfully delivered at least contacts who opened the email at least performers had significantly higher open
1. Sent
one message. once, and the open rate as the number rates, showing the value of trust and
2. Delivered
of opens divided by the number of leads quality targeting:
3. Bounced Bounced
delivered.
4. Opens/Open rate Bounced email is the opposite of • Average companies: 10% to 15%
5. Clicks/Click-to-open rate (CTO) delivered email. There are two types: Opens are tracked by adding a small, • Top performers: 16% to 20%
6. Unsubscribe rate personalized image (“pixel”) to the email.
1. Hard bounces are permanently Clicks/Click-to-open rate
7. Marked as spam As soon as the image renders, your
rejected messages (emails denied
When a subscriber clicks on a link,
due to an invalid email address or marketing platform will register that the
Sent button, or image within your message, a
because the recipient’s server has email has been opened. Note that this
Your sent metric is the number of emails blocked the sender’s server). click is recorded.
means opens is a difficult metric to track,
that actually moved through your
2. Soft bounces are messages that and there is also no guarantee that an We define total clicks as the number
marketing automation platform. have been temporarily rejected opened email was actually read. of people who click at least one link
because the recipient’s mailbox is full,
Delivered in the email. In other words, like the
the server is down, or the message As we mentioned earlier, most email
Delivered refers to the number of exceeds the size limit set by the open rate, no matter how many times
clients block images by default.
emails that were sent and not rejected recipient. Too many soft bounces to a recipient clicks on the link(s), only one
one address can eventually result in The bottom line is, the open rate is click is recorded. Counting in this way
by the receiving server. It’s important
a permanent hard bounce. not 100% accurate, but it does serve as provides a better measure of how many
to understand that delivered does not
mean it landed in the recipient’s inbox. a good proxy for whether emails are subscribers are truly engaged. This also
In both cases, bounced is defined as
being read, and as a relative measure to ensures the click rate cannot be greater
the number of people who were sent a
compare emails against each other. than 100%.
message that was rejected.

54
Click rate equals the total number of Unsubscribe rate

clicks divided by the total number of We define this as the number of
emails delivered (or, depending on contacts who click the unsubscribe link
the measure used, sent). The click-to- in an email and then follow through to
open (CTO) rate is the total number of successfully opt out.
clicks (per subscriber) divided by the
total number of opens. This means The Marketo Engage benchmark
that the click rate equals the open rate on email performance found that
multiplied by the click-to-open rate. top performers had lower overall
unsubscribe rates:
Marketers often pay more attention to
• Average companies: 0.11% to 0.20%
the CTO than the click rate, since the • Top performers: < 0.10%
CTO rate helps to separate the reasons
for opening from the reasons for clicking. Marked as spam
In the Marketo benchmark on email We define this as the number of
performance, top performers had better subscribers who reported your email as
click rates and click-to-open rates: spam, divided by the number delivered.
Click rate: You want to do whatever you can

• Average companies: 2.1% to 5.0% to bring the marked-as-spam rate to
• Top performers: 5.1% to 10% the lowest number possible—ideally,
zero. The more engaging you are, the
Click-to-open rate:
fewer spam complaints you’ll receive.
• Average companies: 11% to 15% Remember your goal: Send timely,
• Top performers: 16% to 20% targeted, valuable, human content to
people who have requested it.

55
Advanced measurements
Once you get the basic measurements down, take a closer look at your lead nurturing programs with more
advanced metrics, such as engagement, lead acceleration, and revenue impact.
By moving away from traditional vanity to accurately measure engagement, accomplish the following: also compare nurtured and non-nurtured
metrics with your lead nurturing, you you need a way to combine multiple leads. Is there an acceleration pattern?
• Fine-tune to continuously improve the
can tie your efforts closely to moving important metrics. engagement of campaigns.
We compared lead acceleration with
leads down your sales funnel to
Engagement metric • See how the changes you make nurtured leads to lead acceleration with
eventually become customers. Basic
improve engagement over time. non-nurtured leads to see which yielded
metrics are a great start, but they The Marketo Engage engagement score
is a proprietary algorithm that our data • Test different messages and content more marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
don’t really tell you what is driving
science team created to determine streams against each other to find to be sent to sales. We found that,
engagement and revenue cross-channel.
which are the most engaging. especially with “slow leads” that take
exactly how engaging each message
Engagement is. It combines multiple data points— over a month to be qualified, nurturing
This metric takes the guesswork out of
Engagement is more than an idea clicks, opens, conversions, unsubscribes, accelerated these leads 20% faster than
your marketing metrics and applies a
or a buzzword; it’s a tangible way of program successes, among others—and without nurturing. We also had more
tangible number that you can use when
interacting with consumers one-to-one then applies a statistical algorithm to MQLs at a 33% lower cost per lead.
making future marketing decisions—not
across channels by listening, acting, and create a single measure of engagement. just decisions regarding lead nurturing, You can also use Marketo Engage’s
analyzing. but your entire multichannel strategy. success path analyzer to measure
Our engagement score provides
With the right tools, engagement can a standard way to measure the performance metrics for each stage of
Lead acceleration
be measured, managed, and increased. engagement of your messages over the revenue cycle. You can see how fast
Measure how long it takes to move your leads are moving to each stage and
Operational metrics, such as opens time as opposed to isolated, stand-
your leads between nurturing stages where there are bottlenecks.
and clicks, are not ideal for measuring alone incidents. With this new level
and tracks, and also how long it takes to
multichannel engagement. In order of measurement, you can better
move nurtured leads to sales. You should

56
Revenue impact to purchasing, they spent time in an But modern marketing automation
To become more strategic about email, on your Facebook page, and on solutions can do this right out of the box.
measuring financial metrics in lead your Twitter feed. When collecting all
With Marketo Engage’s opportunity
nurturing, start by recognizing that your your touches, be sure to only count
influence analyzer, you can track how all
buyer rarely makes a purchase as a those that occurred before the action
of your programs affected a closed deal
result of a single campaign. was taken—those that led to the action.
throughout the entire lead lifecycle.
Conventional marketing wisdom 2. Assign value to the final action.
proposes that at least seven successful You might use a transactional system, or
cross-channel touches (forms of CRM, as the system of record for how
engagement) are needed in order to much the action is worth. A marketing
convert a cold prospect into a buyer. automation tool makes it easier for you.
Sometimes companies attempt to tie 3. Distribute that value across your

revenue to either a customer’s first successful touches.
touch or their last. A better strategy is to In a multi-touch attribution scenario
allocate the value of every engagement (multiple marketing activities with a
across all of the marketing efforts that a lead over time), you assign a value to
customer touched. each successful touch. Often, this is best
Here’s how: done with simple distribution: If a lead
touched five marketing programs, each
1. Count all the successful touches. touchpoint gets one-fifth of the credit
In a multichannel scenario, successful for the ultimate value. As simple as that
touches can happen across numerous seems, it’s often easier said than done,
channels. Perhaps the customer’s last because most email platforms don’t
touchpoint was your website, but prior support such sophisticated analysis.

57
Conclusion

58
Conclusion
Lead nurturing is defined as the process of building relationships with buyers regardless of
their timing to buy. The old batch-and-blast model of email marketing is in the distant past—
forward-thinking marketers are looking for ways to engage their buyers with personal, relevant
communication throughout the buyer lifecycle and across multiple channels.
With the help of a marketing thoughtful exercises, worksheets, When you invest in lead nurturing,
automation solution, marketers and tips to develop your own lead you make the most out of every
can create these flexible, adaptive nurturing strategy. These worksheets dollar your organization spends on
communications at scale by and information will help you define demand generation, and you can
implementing a lead nurturing strategy the team you will need to deploy lead rekindle once-stagnant opportunities
and program. nurturing and how to calculate its return from your existing database. By using
on investment (ROI). lead nurturing campaigns to interact
Not only does lead nurturing help you
with your buyers and understand their
develop and maintain a long-term This definitive guide was created to help
interest and behavior, you gain deeper
relationship with your buyers, but lead novices as well as seasoned practitioners
insight into their buying intent, increase
nurturing helps companies generate develop and refine their skills and
the relevancy of future lead nurturing
over 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% thinking. Now that you have read this
campaigns, and ultimately benefit from
lower cost per lead. guide, you have a good understanding
more and higher quality sales leads—
of how to build a trusted relationship
In The Definitive Guide to Lead increasing conversion rates and driving
with your buyer by holding a consistent
Nurturing, we outline the importance of explosive revenue growth.
conversation, full of personal and
multichannel lead nurturing as a part of
relevant information, across all of your
a modern marketing mix, and provide
buyers’ channels.

59
Adobe Marketo Engage offers the solution of choice for lead management and
B2B marketing professionals seeking to transform customer experiences by
engaging across every stage of complex buying journeys. Natively supporting
both lead and account-based marketing strategies, Marketo Engage, as
part of Adobe Experience Cloud, brings together marketing and sales in a
comprehensive solution designed to orchestrate personalized experiences,
optimize content, and measure business impact across every channel, from
consideration to conversion and beyond. To learn more about the Marketo
Engage software, Marketo's robust partner ecosystem, and the vast community
of passionate marketers in the Marketing Nation, visit www.marketo.com

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The Definitive Guide to

Part I: What is lead nurturing?

Part II: Lead nurturing strategy

Part III: Who to nurture

Part IV: Multichannel lead nurturing

Part VI: Basic lead nurture segmentation

Why should I read The Definitive

© Copyright 2020, Adobe, Inc. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2020, Adobe, Inc. All rights reserved.

Defining lead nurturing

According to our benchmark study, on Sophisticated technology like marketing

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Why does my business need lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing facilitates your buyer

79% 50% 47%

© Copyright 2020, Adobe, Inc. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2020, Adobe, Inc. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2020, Adobe, Inc. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2020, Adobe, Inc. All rights reserved.

• Simplify content management. For

• The system should be intelligent

• It should be smart enough to know if

• For limited-time events and special

• The system can intelligently help

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Nurture as part of your overall marketing strategy

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A marketing calendar, like the one to the

We use our solution’s marketing

With this holistic view, you can see

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Marketo Engage customer case study: Comvita

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Sales and marketing lead alignment Square-Full Create service-level agreements

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Marketo Engage customer case study: Oktopost

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Nurturing in a multichannel world

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A comprehensive strategy should be Creation of content can be more

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Align content formats to customer buying cycle

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The types of nurture content

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Curation Content curation for social is particularly

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The anatomy of a lead nurture email

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Email creation best practices

Subject line subject lines, a very helpful abbreviation

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