Drip Marketing With Lead Nurturing- The Dynamic Duo

Drip Marketing with Lead Nurturing – Solving the Marketing/Sales Divide    

Does this sound familiar:

“What happened to all those leads we generated for sales?”

How about this:

“Why does marketing keep sending us these junk leads?”

These are complaints plaguing any company struggling to capitalize on its marketing strategies.   Marketing is bound to blame sales and sales is bound to blame marketing, but the reality is that neither is necessarily to blame. The real culprit is the sincere belief that uncultivated, un-nurtured leads are actually prepared to buy anything. Of course, by definition, a lead has shown interest, but in this early stage of the process, the correlation between interest and willingness to buy is very low. In fact, according to Gleanster Research, over 50% of qualified leads are not yet ready to buy. A well-planned, well-timed marketing conversation is necessary to convert that lead into a sale. This process of creating higher quality leads in the hope of increasing sales is called lead nurturing. The best lead nurturing campaigns are usually linked to drip marketing campaigns: automated campaigns (via email, SMS/text, direct mail, or any cross channel combination) that maintain contact with possible consumers according to an organized, pre-scheduled timeframe. The continued contact that drip campaigns offer is great for branding and elevating a product’s visibility. To transition to sales, as soon as a contact becomes a lead (shows interest by opening, clicking, or responding to an ad or marketing piece), the potential customer immediately transitions into a unique lead nurturing campaign. And capitalizing quickly on leads matters: between 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds to a lead first (InsideSales). In this way, lead nurturing campaigns use roughly the same technological premise as drip marketing campaigns, although lead nurturing content is focused only on enhancing lead quality and drip content is geared toward establishing contact.

Drip Marketing with Lead Nurturing Work Together

This marketing match made in heaven started out in the B2B world, where combining drip marketing with lead nurturing has quickly taken off. Since much of large B2B marketing revolves around connecting good salespeople with highly qualified leads, this fully automated system of lead enhancement has been a big hit. While large businesses have jumped on the trend of integrated drip marketing with lead nurturing platforms, until recently, the high costs have kept these marketing capabilities out of SMB’s hands. However, with the recent emergence of lightweight marketing automation, SMBs and the agencies that support them now have access to drip marketing with lead nurturing platforms that are affordable and easy to use. The most effective campaigns have proven to be those that use two or three channels: 73% of SMBs using cross channel marketing have seen increased customer engagement (eMarketer “Small Businesses, Non-Profits Stretch Dollars with Multichannel Marketing”). And additional complexity is often not wanted. Agencies catering to SMBs as well as the SMBs handling marketing themselves want above all cost effective, uncomplicated campaigns that show results. Lightweight marketing automation provides just that, as well as the ability to personalize content to the individual consumer. 70% of businesses reported increased response rates and 67% reported increased sales thanks to personalization, (eMarketer, “Content Personalization Roundup” July 2014). Agencies and SMBs using cost effective, user-friendly drip marketing and lead nurturing software have the opportunity to revolutionize the sales process for SMBs.

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A Sample Campaign with Drip Marketing with Lead Nurturing

The Baggins Compact Cars dealership is looking to increase revenue, and notifies its agency that it would like to attract new customers with a new campaign. The agency decides to run a cross channel campaign using a combination of drip marketing and lead nurturing. To best engage potential buyers in an unobtrusive way, Baggins’ agency decides to open the campaign with a content marketing piece. The creative team puts together an attractive direct mail piece with a short but fascinating article about why compact cars are the most fuel-efficient cars on the road. The article hints at some interesting data, but leaves the consumer wanting more. For that reason, the agency places a pURL containing the consumer’s full name at the bottom of every direct mail piece alongside a “Keep Reading” header. This will drive many consumers to log into their pURL without any pressure to buy, where they will find a microsite continuing the article and then introducing Baggins Compact Cars. The next step is completely automated, as individuals who view their pURL will automatically receive a carefully planned, triggered lead nurturing email campaign. This campaign will consist of a string of emails over time based each lead’s unique behavior, culminating in a more sales-oriented pitch. For non-openers, the agency will run for Baggins a drip email campaign in the hope of drawing out more leads over time. As soon as a potential customer shows interest in a drip email, his or her response will immediately trigger the aforementioned lead nurturing campaign. As these campaigns continue to run, Baggins Compact Cars will have many new leads ready for a salesperson to contact, and its showrooms will start to fill up once again with customers looking to purchase the newest compact car. To learn more about how marketing agencies can transform the automotive marketing world, click here.

Boingnet’s Role The Boingnet Solution: Drip Nurture Campaigns

And this is where Boingnet comes in. Boingnet is the leading lightweight marketing automation software provider to both agencies and SMBs. Our software combines drip marketing with lead nurturing into one easy to use platform.   Boingnet gives agencies and SMBs the ability to run highly effective, responsive, and personalized campaigns without any help from IT. To learn more about Boingnet’s drip campaigns click here, and lead nurturing click here. Scheduled drips, triggered lead nurturing campaigns, and much more are all part of the extremely affordable package, and we are confident that our product is the superior marketing platform for SMBs and their marketing agencies. We invite you to try our free 60 day trial below.

Check out Boingnet’s Drip Nurturing Automation –  Register for a 60 Day Free Trial!

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