Imagine this: You’ve got a lot of plants. So, so many plants.
The vines are growing up your stairs, the orchids cascading from the mirrors, the succulents dotting your kitchen table—and your oxygen levels are legendary.
But several weeks later, things are dying. Leaves are shriveling, and flowers are wilting. The vibrant jungle has succumbed to an arid desert vibe.
What happened? You forgot to water the plants.
But we’re in sales—not botany—so really, what happened?
You forgot to nurture them.
Maybe you’ve done a great job generating new leads, but they aren’t converting, or many are going dormant. They are dying on the vine, as it were.
And what you need to do is water—er, nurture—those leads back to life, and prune the ones that are dead-dead. So, pull on your gloves—let’s get to work. 🌱
The right lead nurturing approach builds trust and creates that ‘wow, this company knows their stuff!’ factor to keep them engaged. To do that, you’ll need cooperation and coordination between your sales and marketing teams.
Marketing nurtures lower-intent leads at scale; sales nurtures high-intent deals 1:1—and the handoff is defined by lead scoring and timing.
Marketing handles the low-intent leads—the ones who signed up for a newsletter—the cold-cold leads. These are the folks just entering the sales funnel—who may or may not be qualified—and display few signs of purchase intent, at least for the near future.
Why marketing? Marketing—especially email marketing—can scale. It can output generalized messaging that will pull leads down the funnel without draining time and resources.
Then, when those leads start to engage (and/or get qualified)...
Sales focuses on high-intent, near-term-purchase leads. The folks that downloaded a resource on "how to implement a CRM"—and you are a CRM. Or who started your 14-day free trial? Or, have been opening your nurturing emails for months and appear ready for the sales side.
Why sales? Sales doesn’t scale so well. You’ll need to get hyper-personalized and engage to get the quantity—and quality—of responses you want. So, leads should only reach sales nurturing when you think they’ll buy—and soon.
What happens if the lead doesn’t respond to sales? If it’s been several months, maybe they weren’t ready to buy. So? You send them back to marketing for some more TLC.
In sum, which team nurtures which lead depends on intent and timeframe. Are they going to buy now (sales) or in the future (marketing)?
Both are important—just at different spots in the buyer’s journey.
Why do you need lead nurturing, anyway? Many small and medium-sized businesses work very hard at lead generation. But without proper nurturing, those efforts are wasted on un-converted leads.
Tell me, do you suffer from:
Did you know that 80 percent of new leads never purchase anything or that nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads? Those are big numbers.
If you want higher conversion rates, lower CAC, and more upsell, get serious about a repeatable lead nurturing strategy.
Here’s how you do it.
Timing is everything. Your lead nurturing strategy must revolve around delivering value that’s relevant to each specific stage in the sales funnel. There are six stages, which can be grouped into three general sections:
Every company’s funnel—and customers—will behave differently. But the same general rules, and even lead nurturing tactics, often apply.
At the top of your funnel, you have awareness and interest. Here, leads become aware of their needs—and demonstrate interest in your solution while searching for answers.
Your goal is to attract attention and provide valuable information to address their pain points and concerns. Also, get that contact information!
Lead nurturing strategies you can use at the TOFU:
In the middle, you’ve got consideration and intent. Prospects will now consider your solution more carefully and (hopefully) demonstrate intent via engagement. Lead scoring comes into play when you segment for more accurate targeting.
This is where you really need to sell your value as they review alternatives.
Lead nurturing strategies you can use at the MOFU:
I’ll say it again—make sure you are delivering value. That’s what will keep ‘em engaged.
And at the bottom of your funnel, we have purchase and retention. By now, your prospects are well-informed and prepared to make a purchase decision. Retention is where you continue to provide exceptional service—securing their loyalty, as well as referrals.
Lead nurturing strategies you can use at the BOFU:
Now you can see the lead nurturing process as applied throughout your sales funnel.
With relevant CTAs, effective marketing-sales cooperation, and diligent iteration of your entire lead nurturing program—conversion rates will respond. Pretty nifty, right?
Next, let’s cover seven tips and best practices to help you build that lead-nurturing machine.
Every nurturing campaign—even the best—can get better. The right lead nurturing tactics and tips will get your strategies up and thriving.
First things first: Know your leads. It’s obvious—we talk about it a lot—but it’s central to successful lead nurturing campaigns.
If you haven’t already, work out your ideal customer profile (ICP) or buyer persona. Do this with marketing, to get on the same page about who you are bringing into the funnel—and who you want to nurture.
Then, bucket those leads into segments. This allows you to deliver relevant content (next tip) and amplify lead scoring (tip four).
And once you know who you're nurturing, get serious about your objectives for nurturing. Via nurturing, do you want to:
Know your leads—and what you set out to do before you set out to do it. That way, you can track progress and adjust accordingly.
Perfect lead 🤝, perfect content 🤝, perfect solution.
Once you know your leads, deliver relevant content to them—specifically.
Imagine you sell cars. You don’t need to convince customers that they need a car. They know that already. You need to convince them why they (specifically) need your car (specifically).
Targeted content speaks to where a lead is at with their problem—and provides a solution. (That’s you.)
Of course, you’ll need more than one type of targeted content. Why? Your leads are at different stages, encounter different problems, and have different product interest areas. (This is where the lead buckets come in.)
But the more you target? The more you sell.
It takes an average of eight touches to make a sale. And the more channels? The better.
Effective lead nurturing begins with gentle outreach, and increases in pressure as they move through your sales funnel. Multiple touch points, multiple channels. It may look like:
Including multiple channels in your lead nurture campaigns is now critical, with research showing that B2B buyers regularly use an average of 10 or more channels to communicate with suppliers.
Want synchronized communication across multiple channels? Close has you covered.
Workflows allow you to easily nurture leads—across a variety of channels.
They contain a series of steps that can assign leads to your sales reps for specific outbound communication, send or organize outreach attempts (via email, call, or SMS), and create follow-up tasks. (It’s like a drip campaign—but better.)
The Workflow will run until each step is completed or until the lead responds.
Workflows (associated triggers and templates) can be customized to work for you, your sales process, and your sales team.
Why does that matter? It’s important to be touch-heavy with high-quality, highly-scored leads that deserve extra attention. So, measure their revenue potential and engagement and respond according to intent.
With low-value leads? Be a little less "touchy." Or at least, don’t waste your time with hyper-personalized, time-intensive touchpoints.
With Workflows, you can tailor multi-channel outreach to your needs—and leads’ needs—to maximize efficiency and get the timing right. It’s kind of the best. ✌️
Lead scoring allows you to prioritize leads. It tells you where prospects are in your sales funnel, who’s ready for a more assertive approach, and who needs more time to convert.
It focuses your nurturing energy on the appropriate leads by ranking them against a scale of perceived value to your company. It also helps to keep marketing and sales aligned. 🤞
So, how do you score your leads?
Stress test and refine that process until you have the best criteria and approach. It’ll pay off in conversion rates and rep productivity. Guaranteed.
Did you know that 80 percent of sales require five follow-ups, but 44 percent of sales reps give up after just one attempt? Yikes.
So, in lead nurturing, be tenacious and keep following up until you hear a flat "no."
Whether via email, LinkedIn, or wherever you chat with prospects, maintain a regular follow-up schedule that’s easy to follow, designed to deliver more value, and that keeps you top of mind.
Automation (via a CRM, for example) helps alleviate the pressure on your team to track this outreach and leaves them prepared to close the deal—once that response comes in.
And the right follow-up templates can make it easier, too.
The right metrics will track your progress and build the foundation for iterating and optimizing your lead nurturing approach.
To start easy, track the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs)—however, that’s defined for your business. The goal here is for a smooth transition from MQL ➡️ SQL ➡️ customer.
And track net new leads. That is, how many brand-new leads have you contacted each month?
That number should increase as you expand the new leads you connect with. (Then, take a step back and compare across months to ensure there’s a general upward trend throughout the year.)
Leads are great … but what about customers? New leads should bring in new customers. So, track that, too.
Finally, monitor conversion rates at each stage of your sales funnel. This can provide insight into what’s working and what’s not with your lead nurturing strategy. (A/B testing works great here.)
How do you track all this stuff? Close, of course.
Or any other CRM that can visualize the data and generate reports.
Practice makes progress, and if you want to build a successful lead nurturing strategy, you’ll want to experiment—and adjust.
Backed by the data, explore new outreach methods. Take big steps, like "publish X expert guides per month," or smaller ones, like "invest energy in click-worthy email subject lines."
Keep your original objectives in mind, and continue to evaluate your market and approach.
Increased revenue will follow proper lead nurturing. Take it seriously to get results. 💪
Lead nurturing is an undertaking. It has many aspects, many angles, and many potential pitfalls.
But the right software can (and will) support you through the process—from lead scoring to content distribution—from lead management to get-the-damn-ducks-in-a-row marketing and sales alignment.
Now that you understand how to nurture your plants—er, leads—what tools will crank up the water pressure?
… and so many others.
We can’t offer free trials of all these awesome tools. But we can (and do) offer a 14-day free trial of Close—no credit card required.
Why? Because we know we’re a strong candidate to help you in your lead nurture journey, but you’ll only see that power once you try it out for yourself.
So, what are you waiting for?