Lead nurturing has traditionally been about email marketing.
Even so-called marketing automation platforms are really just fancy email marketing platforms. They’re automated email tools. That’s it.
Email marketing is great. We’ve done webinars on email marketing. We utilize email marketing. But email isn’t the Alpha and Omega of marketing. There are other ways to nurture leads. Get creative.
But, there are other ways to move leads throught your funnel. Email isn’t all you can do to nurture.
Twitter is an under-utilized lead nurturing tool. When a lead enters your email marketing platform, a sales rep–or even the the corporate Twitter account–needs to follow that person. Then DM the lead or mention them in a Tweet. Stay in front of the lead–nurture them–on Twitter.
One of the best ways to nurture leads is to engage them via LinkedIn. When a lead downloads a White Paper, someone on your sales team should immediately connect with the lead on LinkedIn. A few days later the sales rep should send the lead another White Paper or a webinar invitation. If the sales rep is posting updates regularly on their LinkedIn profile–which they should be–the lead will see every update.
At Convirza, LinkedIn is one of our most effective lead gen and lead nurturing tools.
LinkedIn is a powerful lead nurturing tool.
For some reason the focus on email nurture campaigns has made sales teams leery of picking up the phone and calling leads. This shouldn’t be the case.
I talked to a well-known content marketer recently who argued that sales teams shouldn’t ‘strike until the iron is hot.’ His argument is, of course, that email nurturing should be used until the lead is ready for sales. Sales, he says, should not call a lead until they have been sufficiently nurtured. I agree….to a point. Instead of waiting until the ‘iron is hot’ to strike, how about using a sales call as a way to make the iron hot! Make the iron hot with a phone call.
Phone calls don’t replace email nurturing, but they can be another component in a well-rounded nurture process.
