The 3 Questions You Should be Asking About Your Autoresponder Campaign

So if you want to know exactly how effective your autoresponder series could be, ask yourself what you’re sending out as part of your campaign.Related Articles

1. Getting Social with Benchmark Email Marketers
2. Affiliate Marketing: How to Set Up an Email Course
3. Permission Based Email Marketing: The Magic of the Welcome Email

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The Two Types of Programmatic Advertising and Why Programmatic Matters

Before we get to the topic at hand, a definition of programmatic advertising. We define it simply as “Automated advertising buying coupled with machine learning.” Digiday defines it as "ad buying what typically refers to the use of software to purchase digital advertising, as opposed to the traditional process that involves RFPs, human negotiations and manual insertion orders. It’s using machines to buy ads, basically.” 

Marketing Land, on the other hand, says programmatic advertising "helps automate the decision-making process of media buying by targeting specific audiences and demographics.” 

In terms of the different types of programmatic advertising, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)—which is an industry organization geared toward ensuring standards across the advertising ecosystem—there are two types of programmatic buying (the process in which you’re buying advertising):

1. Programmatic Direct
Also known as Premium Programmatic Advertising, this is an automated technology-driven method used for buying, selling, or fulfilling advertising. It provides for an Automated Guarantee Systematic automation of sales process. No insertion order (IO) or master services agreement (MSA) covered within the partnership.

2. Programmatic Real Time Bidding (RTB)
Two types of RTBs are Open Auction (audience targeting) and Private Marketplace Deals—which require a private marketplace and allow for fixed pricing and data overlays. We are beginning to see more and more of this type of programmatic advertising being used every day. 

Why does programmatic matter?

The shift to programmatic tactics means a few things for marketers and the industry as a whole. In essence, it has validated and delivered against the need for data- driven, and accountable ROI-based media delivery. Additionally, it has enabled an efficient method for publishers to monetize core inventory.

That said, some advertisers have struggled with premium inventory falling outside of the standard programmatic categories and are still being required to fulfill unique and exclusive campaign needs.

Regardless, the entire programmatic category is seeing increased spending across the board due to its predictive yield and ROI for marketers and publishers alike, not to mention easy insertion processes and lower barriers to entry for most advertisers. 

In a nutshell, programmatic advertising aligns media with brand lift metrics for real ROI and only spends money where it will be effective. 

Download The Programmatic Guide For Modern Marketers, Publishers, And Media Planners to get the basics of using programmatic advertising and a lot more including the other questions marketers need to ask themselves as well as the needs agencies need to address. 

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25 Proven Steps to Achieve Email Marketing Magic

If you’ve left email marketing out of the promotional mix for your business, you’re missing out on a method that has been shown to generate as much in revenue as all other types of digital advertising combined. Just how much revenue does email drive? Research last year found that such campaigns produce an average ROI of $38 for each dollar spent. To add to that, Econsultancy found email marketing was rated effective by more companies and agencies than any other channel.

If you haven’t been giving email marketing the focus it deserves, not to worry, this post is for you.

Here are 25 proven steps you can start taking today to begin reaping magical rewards in no time.

1. Build Your List

Start by gathering email addresses from current and potential customers. Building your list can seem difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worth your while to limit it to those who choose to engage. Buying lists is a bad idea, since emailing anonymous contacts can seem invasive and often results in complaints, bounced addresses and unsubscribes. Gain trust by not sharing subscribers’ info with other companies, and by creating emails with useful or exclusive information and valuable offers, not just sales pitches. The options for growing your list are only bounded by your imagination. Some of the best ideas can be found here and here.

2. Segment Your List

Segment your audience so you can create targeted messages for different groups, leading to better open rates, lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates and improved deliverability. Check out our 2016 Complete Guide to List Segmentation. Segmenting allows you to separate your list according to geographic region, customer behavior patterns (buyers vs non-buyers, openers vs non-openers), age, area code, and more, so you can create content and offers most likely to generate responses.

3. Plan Your Content

Decide what range of content you’ll offer. Possible subject matter includes:

• Tutorials
• Recommendations
• Reports on industry trends or research
• Explanations of company functions
• Comments on current events
• FAQs
• Profiles of your clients or employees
• Surveys
• Contests
• Previews of coming events
• Descriptions/photos of new products
• Inspiring quotes
• Blogs
• News articles or humor

The medium might include copy, photos, infographics or videos. If you don’t want to generate the content yourself, source it from social media, business partners, online sources or content agencies.

In general, experts advise using a likable voice; employing sharp design; being different from competitors; incorporating snappy subject lines and offering discounts. A common mistake? Looking to your own preferences to determine what your audience would like. Perhaps most importantly, strive for a mix of 80 percent informational and 20 percent promotional content. Messages that aren’t sales-oriented may seem counterintuitive, but they work to develop brand awareness and customer relationships, paving the way for future purchases. Do recipients a favor by helping them solve a problem, providing inspiration, giving them direction toward a goal or quickly expanding their knowledge.

4. Analyze Your Competition

Study what competitors are doing. Sign up for other email campaigns and newsletters to compare your efforts with those of competitors and industry leaders. It’s OK to put your own spin on their ideas and techniques but always strive for original content that’s hard for your readers to find elsewhere.

5. Plan Your Email Campaigns

Devise a year-long email marketing plan that projects multiple messages, tying your content into holidays, special events, pop-culture happenings and current events when applicable. Work backward from preferred launch dates to set writing or sourcing deadlines. Shoot for three to five emails monthly.

6. Design with Mobile in Mind

Ensure your emails are mobile-friendly in design and content, since two-thirds of such messages are now read on mobile devices. That means limiting copy to 750 words or less.

7. Develop a Welcome Email Program

Create a series of follow-up emails to new subscribers introducing them to your company, products and website. Avoid the hard sell; start with a warm welcome for subscribing and follow with a reminder of the benefits, a thank you offer, helpful information about your products or services and links to your website and social media sites.

8. Implement Autoresponders

Use autoresponders that automatically trigger welcome emails, resend messages that were never opened, and send newsletters at regular intervals. Such a practice can increase your open rates by 30 to 40 percent. Other uses might include thank yous for purchases; reminders; polls; contests; or requests for comments, reviews or content submissions. Autoresponders are fairly crucial if you’re too busy to regularly monitor your email account.

9. Personalize Your Emails

Implement as much personalization as possible, using analytics and customer surveys to your advantage by recognizing birthdays and anniversaries, referring to previous purchases and shopping patterns, and otherwise making readers feel valued. Experts predict we’ll eventually have capability for highly optimized 1:1 emails within a single broadcast.

10. Track Performance

Track open and click rates, revenue and conversion, unsubscribes and bounces, and use your website’s analytics tools to gauge post-click through behavior. Note that services are available to fix bad data — incorrect or problematic addresses that increase bounce-backs.

11. Test and Optimize Your Campaigns

Continually test your campaign, and use the results to tweak further strategy. Consider a schedule for the testing of one campaign variable each month, such as copy length and content, time and day of the week, frequency, call to action, design and other elements.

12. Gather Customer Feedback

Listen closely to customer feedback about content, format and frequency, and respond quickly. To avoid being perceived as a spammer, be gracious and quick with those who ask to unsubscribe.

13.  Monitor Industry Trends

Email marketing is evolving so swiftly that business owners must be proactive to keep on top of important features and best practices. VerticalResponse helps you stay at the top of your email marketing game with its free and easy-to-use email marketing tool.

Get a Free VerticalResponse Account Send responsive newsletters, invitations, promotions, and more. Email 1,000 contacts, up to 4,000 emails per month for free. Sign Up Now

Once you’re on a roll with your campaign, consider elements that can improve your responses even more. Here are some ideas:

14. Use Visual Content

Gifs and videos can be powerful additions, since visuals are processed by the human brain in about one-tenth of a second.

15. Maintain Brand Voice

Develop a consistent voice, experimenting to determine which writing style and topics most appeal to your readers. An example of a defined voice is the tone of the informal and somewhat irreverent blogs posted on Groove HQ. “(The writer) addresses the recipient like human beings,” writes Jimmy Dala on Marketingland.com. “It sounds simple, but so many people lose the human touch when they are blasting bulk emails about Presidents’ Day sales.”

16. Use Humor When Appropriate

Devise fun and entertaining polls related to your industry, then record some of the best responses online. Cottonelle once staged a fun email survey asking consumers whether they rolled toilet paper over or under, incorporating results into video demonstrations, a U.S. map, social media and a website.

17. Socialize

Make sure widgets are installed into your emails allowing readers to instantly share your content on their social media sites.

18. Test Timing of Campaigns

Fine tune the timing of your email campaigns. Some report the highest open rates (leading to the highest conversions) are achieved in the evenings after the dinner hour. Others say those working are more likely to open an email sent just prior to the lunch hour. Experiment to find out what works best for you and your audience.

19. Use Email Sign Up Forms

In order to fuel continued and sustained list growth, it’s a no-brainer to have an email sign up form on your website, blog, and other digital properties like social media sites. Check out these three golden rules for sign up forms.

20. Give Incentives

Offer prizes as part of a contest on social media requiring entrants’ email addresses. Check out Social Sweepstakes to engage fans on Facebook and grow your email list.

21. Leverage Social Channels

Ask your social audience to stay connect via email. If Twitter is your primary channel, use a Twitter Ads account to glean more email addresses via Twitter lead-generation cards sent to Twitter users.

22. Incorporate Inspiration

Examine competitors’ emails more closely with the free tool Scope; it creates a web-based version, HTML source code and a view of how it appears on mobile, desktop and plain text.

23. Avoid the Spam Filter

Pre-empt being relegated to spam bins by running your emails through the Email Spam Test. A number of other tactics can also help you dodge the spam filter, which reportedly snags some 21 percent of all emails. Some have to do with coding, content and formatting, but you must also limit the repetition of seemingly benign words like “guaranteed” and “free.”

24. Test Your Subject Lines

Use SubjectLine.com to get viability scores on the subject lines of your email. The first query is free. Here are 50 all-time great retail subject lines for more inspiration.

25. Use Clear Calls to Action

One of the most important elements to your email campaign is the call to action (CTA). Subscribers typically read the first line, notice any images, and glance at your CTA. Eliminate any confusion by making your CTA obvious and compelling. Some are better than others, and here’s why.

Ready to get your email marketing program started? Sign up now and grow your business with our free email marketing tool that allows you to send newsletters, invitations, promotions, and more. Send to 1,000 email contacts, up to 4,000 emails per month for free and track results. Start for Free

© 2016, Linzi Breckenridge. All rights reserved.

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The Art of Finding Ideas

Every writer who has ever lived has lusted after ideas.

Where are they, how do I get them, and how do I keep them coming?

If you’ve been writing long enough, you know that — like Solomon — there is nothing new under the sun.

Try as you might to sweat them out of your head or pull them gently from the stars above, there are no new ideas.

So, relax.

But the page is not going to write itself, is it? Where then do we turn for ideas that work, ideas that move, ideas that persuade?

In short, we “steal” them.

The moment you free yourself from The Cult of Originality, you realize that original ideas do not come from within.

They are given to us, from without.

A writer should not look inside, but outside, at external sources, stories, events, and emotions.

If you’re offended that I’d suggest you “steal” ideas, please get over it. You’re already a thief — you just don’t know it.

Here are two of the most significant idea repositories on Earth …

1. The modern media is a torrent of ideas

In this information age, you have absolutely no reason to “draw a blank.”

Ever.

What used to take days and weeks to research and learn, can take us mere moments.

In fact, the only problem we have now is one of finding trusted curators. We need to develop self-discipline and discernment in seeking out correct information from reliable sources.

There is no drought of ideas.

Brian Clark once wrote:

“You have more computing power in your pocket than it took to send men to the moon. What are you doing with it?”

Indeed.

Are you wasting it or harnessing it? You don’t need to go to the moon; the crossroads will do just fine.

Research. Read. Compile.

Product manuals, literature, interviews, talk radio, podcasts, magazines, newspapers, television, Twitter, Google Trends, movies, Wikipedia, and on and on and on …

It’s all there, right in your pocket, waiting to be compiled and analysed. And it’s actually more than you’ll ever need.

So use it. Don’t let it use you.

2. People will give you exactly what you’re looking for

Ideas are walking around everywhere out there.

Eugene Schwartz once told a story about a copywriting job he was working on.

He met with the client and asked him to start talking about the product. They ended up sitting together for four hours — the client talking, and Schwartz simply listening and taking notes.

Later that night, while he was waiting for his wife to get ready for a night out in Manhattan, Schwartz sat down and wrote the ad.

The entire ad.

He said about 70 percent of the finished copy was composed of his client’s own words.

The headline itself was a phrase the client had hit on, word for word.

He waited two weeks, mailed the ad to the client, and they both made a lot of money.

You might think this was some kind of dirty trick on Schwartz’s part, but you’d be wrong.

Schwartz knew how to write a powerful direct response ad. The client didn’t.

Schwartz was smart enough to know that the client knew (in this case) his own product better than he ever could, and simply translated that knowledge and passion onto paper.

The ideas were sitting in the client’s head and Schwartz knew exactly what to do with them.

It goes further …

For better or worse, a writer is working all the time.

Phone calls with friends, the plumber, your spouse, your child, your boss, your client, your neighbor — they are all constantly giving you ideas.

They are all constantly telling you what they — and the entire world — truly want.

It’s all grist for the mill.

All you need to do is … listen.

Steal this post

Eugene Schwartz summed this up for me perfectly:

“You don’t have to have great ideas if you can hear great ideas.”

I stole this post from him, and he stole it from many others.

Listen more. Talk less.

Read less. Read better.

The Art of Finding Ideas is then … the act of going out and finding ideas.

Originality? That’ll come from using your own voice, and your voice develops from writing more. And more. And more.

Where have you been getting your ideas?

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on October 18, 2011.

Image source: Jamie Street via Unsplash.

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What the Drama Film Genre Can Teach us About the Types of Autoresponder Messages You Should be Sending over 6 Days

Keeping with the first point of contact theme that is carried across six days, we’re going to focus on what your first set of messages look like.Related Articles

1. The Love Songs of J. Alfred Weekly Wrap
2. Hugo’s Tacos Woes: A Broken Autoresponder = Customer Disconnect
3. Walgreens’ Autoresponder Campaign Has My Order Backwards

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How to Idiot Proof Your Ad Campaigns

Marketing promotion sucks when you treat people the same.

That goes for conversions, and it goes for advertising too.

But the minute things start to go awry, people start messing with their landing page headline or ad descriptions.

As if those tiny, miniscule elements are the primary reason traffic’s not comin’ or visits aren’t convertin’.

The best landing page, optimized 100% correctly, can’t make up for the wrong audience seeing that message.

Ad campaigns are already difficult. But the good news is that you don’t need to possess ninja PPC skillz.

Instead, here is a dead simple way you can isolate where problem areas might pop up and stop them dead in their tracks.

When ‘Best Practices’ are Good Enough

Commonly accepted best practices are a starting point. The tip of a metaphorical iceberg.

They get all the attention and ink online. But there’s a mountain below just waiting to sink your campaign.

On a GREAT day, landing pages convert around 10% of visitors (and those are the ‘uncommon’, special ones that vastly outperform all the rest). That means the majority of page visitors are doing, well, anything else besides converting.

Slapping on a different ad-description isn’t going to budge that number. It won’t change the fact that those people simply aren’t ready to buy. It might get you from 6-7%. Which is great!

But in a world where over 50% of all customers interactions follow a ‘multi-event, multi-channel’ journey that takes various touch points prior to converting, we should look beyond tactical ‘best practices’ to make sure the entire funnel aligns to deliver the best conversions for our buck.

Managing the growing complexity is a top priority for marketers, with most juggling anywhere from 5 – 31 separate tools to manage messaging in a multi-channel marketing environment.

This can be best illustrated with the help of Google’s Customer Journey to Online Purchase, which shows how a typical customer’s journey might look (including which channels influence which parts) for most industries. Yay visuals!

The point is, there are many things involved in a single conversion. Whether we’re talking about a product purchased or lead generated.

Unfortunately, ad campaigns today can’t be simple, static paths from New Visitor -> Conversion. Not in a world where it takes a minimum of 6-8 customer touch points prior to conversion. Or when your most profitable customers are NOT the ones who visit your site 1-3 times, but 14-20 before signing up.

Today’s ad campaigns are more like a delicate system of variables that depend on each other for success. (Enter your best ’synergistic’ MBA speak here.)

Making sure those things come together harmoniously is the best way to boost conversion rates for the long-term.

Here’s how.

1. Create Different Ad Campaigns for Each Customer Journey Stage

Ad campaigns should align with an appropriate stage of the sales funnel. Same as any inbound deliverable like an infographic, offline tradeshow, or other campaign.

You know, that whole Awareness, Consideration, Decision bit?

(If you have NO idea what I’m talking about, read about the buying cycle and triggers from David Skok. And then spend another 20 minutes reading everything else he writes – it’s worth it.)

Ad channels (and even different campaigns on the same channel) can then be used for different purposes, whether that’s driving new sales to generating leads or simply boosting awareness. The opportunities are vast, but the execution needs to be precise.

Let’s start with generating initial awareness to see how this works.

Demand Generation

The goal here is to bring in new, targeted visitors. Obviously.

Problem? Nobody knows who you are. And frankly, they don’t really care. They haven’t yet become aware that they have a need for you yet.

So help them. Literally.

Start with their daily life. What issues pop up, take too long, or cause them frustration (that can also possibly tie back into your widgets)?

Listen:

Consumers ignore 86% of display ads. And those average banner ad click through rates are a dismal 0.1%. It ain’t easy out there.

Botching this jeopardizes everything else. So your value proposition needs to be awesome. Not good, or great. But, “Holy s$*% I need to [click this link / read this post] right now”.

Typical display ads, AdWords, and Facebook are well tread options. So let’s look at new, fresh examples like Twitter and Instagram. Less competition typically = less expensive = higher return on ad spend. And the principles are the same, regardless of channel.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to get the attention on Twitter. Instead of simply promoting your account (and making it all about you), solving a huge pain point or even providing a fun distraction can be enough to start introducing your brand to consumers.

The best social ads at this stage also ‘blend’ in with the content people are already consuming. You know, like that whole native advertising thing. For example, this one from I.D. Sarrieri is very Instagram-ish – selling a mood or theme featuring their products.

Find this one, and many more great Instagram ad examples here.

Last but certainly not least, is your headline.

The best headlines are a crystallized version of your value proposition, and they tap into some deeper primal motivation to grab maximum attention. Bnonn’s SHINE headline formula is a great way to get started, giving you the ‘essential’ ingredients like Specificity and Immediacy that are critical to getting people to take action.

You can also study the masters like BuzzFeed, who crank out brilliant headlines day-after-day that can be templated for re-using later. For example:

This one might look like:

• # + [Perfect Adjective] + [Noun/Keyphrase Solution] + [To/For/Like] + [Fix Your Undesirable Thing]

Lead Generation

Once you’ve captured attention, the next step is to get them interested.

You do that by constructing a ‘bridge’ between their problems or pain points, and your widget which can ultimately solve those things for them.

One of the most popular techniques here is some kind of ‘lead magnet’ to generate a micro-conversion like a basic email address. Chances are, you’re familiar with all the usual suspects like eBooks, webinars, checklists, and more.

But ‘content’ based offers can mean much more.

For example, most designers are starved for stock photos, especially with the exorbitant costs at the well known sources.

Here, Bigstock is providing 35 free!

(Here are a few more Twitter ad examples to browse for inspiration.)

Even something as simple as a recipe could work wonders because it blends (pun intended) an offer to get attention with the products they’ll need (and can purchase from you).

Smirnoff’s example below is a perfect example of bridging the gap between those two worlds.

Closing Customers

By this point, prospects should know who you are and at least have some interest in your product.

Otherwise, we run into that original problem of trying to convert cold, unaware leads (which all of the best tactical practices in the world can’t help).

The key? Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Especially if switching costs are an issue.

For example, MailChimp executes brilliantly by running a competitive offer to Constant Contact peeps with a free three month offer. That should help soften the blow of having to move all email templates and contact records, while also giving those people enough time to settle in with the service.

(The actual content and CTA looks a little sloppy, but the overall offer is great.)

Admittedly, selling on Instagram is a, well, tough sell. It’s still early days, and the channel is mostly known for brand awareness.

But still, the Cromwell in Las Vegas does as good a job as any, highlighting their attractive property in a multi-ad set with an appropriate CTA.

If you’ve done all the hard work up to this point (like getting awareness, building interest, and developing trust), the sales offer should be simple and straightforward.

A great offer or promotion can help, but shouldn’t be required to get people to open up their wallets.

But if it is still difficult or damn near impossible, this next section can help.

2. Pinpoint & Upgrade Underperforming Stages

Creating different ad campaigns for specific sales funnel stages can help illustrate potential gaps, making it easier to break down exactly where you’re excelling (or falling short).

That way instead of overreacting and making rash conclusions, you can start measuring those micro-conversions between stages or steps to find leading indicators of success.

For example, experiencing low sales but demand seems to be there? Insert more lead gen and nurturing campaigns into the mix to bridge that gap. The end result, should resemble a complete ‘customer journey’ that seamlessly moves people from one step to the next.

But what if those things check out, and still nothing. You’ve got ad campaigns targeting each step, and they seem to be performing well. Except for that whole sales thing.

Break your ad campaigns down even further into the individual variables that dictate success.

Google AdWord’s Quality Score is kinda the gold standard for using algorithms to award and set pricing in an auction based ad system. Facebook has also been testing different algorithms that act similarly.

What’s unique, is that these algorithms use factors like ad relevancy from the ads you’re running, to the keyphrases or audiences, and even through the landing pages. They factor all of these details, and then create a holistic score that dictates (a) how often your ads show and (b) what you’re going to pay.

Algorithms like these force advertisers to consider how every single ad campaign element works together to produce the best ROI (instead of simply focusing on the single ad creative you’re working on).

So let’s start with the tactics, and work backwards to see if we can get any quick wins.

Addressing or changing elements like the ad creative and landing page are far easier than ripping up the offer and starting from scratch. You can A/B test these elements according to commonly accepted best practices (which take all of 5 minutes Googling).

And it’s the easiest, ‘low hanging fruit’ to quickly improve your Quality Score (or similar relevancy scores in other social ad platforms) that deliver fast results.

If issues still persist, take another step back to address the audience you’re targeting (or keyphrases in AdWords which inherently have a certain type of audience searching). Chances are, improving audience targeting could give you that breakthrough.

For example, custom audiences on Facebook help you get more specific by targeting segments of past customers, retargeting website visits, or even the individual product page visited. Target saw a “20% increase in conversion [using Facebook’s Dynamic Product Ads] compared to other Facebook ads”, according to Senior Vice President Kristi Argyilan.

Assuming your offer or value proposition is sound and that the channel is appropriate, iterating on the audience, ad creative, and landing pages should deliver something at the end of the day.

Otherwise, you have bigger issues (beyond advertising) that are holding you back.

Conclusion

The tactical best practices you read about all over the interwebs are important.

But only to a point.

Breaking things down by sales funnel stages can help you determine where you’re excelling or falling short in key categories. They alert you to gaps in the customer journey that can cause breakdowns in driving new sales.

Once that’s completed, you can get even more granular by looking at each independent variable within a single ad campaign to see where further bottlenecks are choking results. Working backwards from the ad creative and landing pages to your audience will give your campaigns a quick lift (assuming your offer or value proposition + channel selection check out).

Big conversion increases don’t happen overnight by swapping out your headline or button color. They come from iterating on these tiny details along the way, making small improvements at each little step.

And best of all, isolating different variables helps assign priority, keeping execution focused and simple in an increasingly complex world.

About the Author: Brad Smith is a founding partner at Codeless Interactive, a digital agency specializing in creating personalized customer experiences. Brad’s blog also features more marketing thoughts, opinions and the occasional insight.

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6 Examples of Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Sometimes our impression of marketing tactics is more monolithic than the reality. Setting up a lead nurturing campaign in your marketing automation platform is usually about contacting prospects early in their journey and building a relationship with them as they come closer to purchase.

The expectation is that we learn more about our prospects through their actions, which lets marketers provide content that is more in line with their interests and expectations. Nurture means to care for, and a good nurture campaign can show that you care about prospects.

Nurture campaigns can actually serve different audiences with different goals, provided you set them up to maintain contact with the right profiles. The six examples below follow along as prospects become more connected to your company and the buying process, and ultimately become customers.

1. Welcome Campaign

It is a good practice to welcome new subscribers with a simple campaign. You can introduce the brand and let them know the benefits of subscribing to your list. You can also let them know what they can expect as next steps. Think of this as the top of your nurture funnel. Prospects have signed up for a list, or responded to an offer, and now it is up to you to learn more about them so they can opt-in to something else. That could be another offer or a more specific list. Again, this nurture is about learning more about them.

2. Education Campaign

This is a pretty standard nurture campaign and what most of us think about when we think about nurtures. The goal is to get the prospect ready to talk to sales. You need to engage prospects to learn more about them, while at the same time educate them about your products or services. Your value proposition can start to play a role here. Sharing relevant, educational content is the heart of this campaign. You can build this relationship by providing value.

3. Why Us Campaign

As you learn more about your prospects and their needs, you want to start making the case for how your solution can support those needs. Competitive differentiation points are a big part of this kind of nurture campaign. You want to reiterate your value proposition to make sure they understand “why us.” Case studies and testimonials are the perfect content to make these points for you.

4. Accelerate Campaign

As prospects continue to move through the buyer’s process/journey/path, you reach a point where the process slows down. You can create a nurture campaign that removes roadblocks and can speed the purchase decision. These are the kinds of campaigns that need to be set up in conjunction with sales, as you want to make sure efforts are coordinated. Decision tools like ROI calculators are the kinds of things you want to send in this campaign.

You should have lots of information in a prospect’s profile by this point, so you should have good sense of the resources that can help move this along. Maybe they keep going to the pricing page, or the support page. You want to help prospects get comfortable with their decision.

5 .New Customer Onboarding Campaign

An often-overlooked use of nurture campaigns is the ability to manage your customer onboarding. Welcome your new customers and thank them for their decision. No matter the type of product or service you offer, there is an identified path to success in onboarding. Provide these steps in a series of email. You can also provide answers to commonly asked questions and support options.

6. Customer Loyalty or Retention Campaign

Once you have a customer, you want to keep them happy. Set up an ongoing nurture campaign to support their retention. While you do want to continue to reiterate the benefits of their purchase, but you also still want to provide tips and tricks so they can continue to get the most out of your products or services. By running this campaign through your marketing automation platform, you have the ability to capture more activity data than you would otherwise. This could help alert you to a lack of activity that indicates they are an at risk customer.

These basic campaigns can help you think about how nurturing can be expanded beyond the simple “move them to sales” campaign. For lots more details, download our Lead Nurturing Guide.

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