As we acquire new leads and market to them we quickly see leads move into smaller, more segmented groups. Some take the hook you’ve put out there and ask for more, there’s some that act interested but don’t commit to anything, and there’s those that are radio silent and give you no indication of real life.

Each group now needs a different kind of follow up. The first group is ready for another targeted marketing program offering them another opportunity to engage. And those that didn’t respond might be ready for a slower moving nurture program. Maybe your message missed with these people, a nurture program is a good place to test messaging. Or maybe you are targeting the wrong person and they don’t care what you have to say or what we you are offering. (You’re wasting your time with these people but you don’t know it yet. )

Here are a few tips to building and measuring segmented lead nurturing programs.

(If you’re lost, don’t worry there’s marketing automation folks like Vtrenz, Eloqua, Marketo and Manticore that can help you automate the execution of all of these different programs.)

1. Make sure Marketing and Sales have a clear understanding of what a lead is and what a sales-ready lead is. You have to start here. Marketing needs to know what they are looking for and Sales wants to know what they are getting.
2. Divide your marketing database into 2 initial groups, active leads (people who have responded or engaged in the past) and inactive leads (people that have never responded to any outreach communication from your company). If you are an Eloqua customer, they have a report that will give you this information. Understand if there are any patterns among those that are active, if so, be sure to consider this when building out your nurture programs. Remember the goal of nurturing is to move currently active leads to the top of the sales funnel and move inactive leads to an active status.
3. Measure and track movement in the nurturing cycles. As leads/prospects respond, use this data to determine next steps. You can confirm interest by reaching out to them again with a similar message and different offer or call to action. If they respond again, they might be ready for the next step in your nurturing cycle. If they don’t respond, continue to try different offers or messaging.
4. Develop a scoring system that enables you to determine when leads are sales ready. Assign different values to each kind of touch. For example, a conversation had by telemarketing that better qualifies a lead might get a score of 10 while an opened email might get a 3. Once a lead reaches a score agreed upon by Sales, then the lead is ready to be passed on.
5. Don’t forget about the ones that have moved on. Sometimes a prospect gives off all the right signals that they are ready to engage on a different level but once handed over to Sales they clam up. Make sure these people don’t get lost in the shuffle. It’s ok for a lead/prospect to move back and forth between Sales and Marketing.
6. Determine when it’s time to throw in the towel. There are people in every marketing database that continue to hang around for no reason. What are we holding on to here? Before completely throwing these people out, try and determine why they aren’t responding to you.

• Are they the right buyer for your product or service?
• How long ago was this lead created? Has the person possibly moved up or on?
• Are they not a good fit for your offering?

Remember - keeping your nurturing programs focused on the most suitable prospects will help to ensure the success of your program.