How Lead Nurturing Automation is Getting Smarter
If you're in marketing or sales, you've probably heard about lead nurturing. Stay in touch with prospects through targeted content to move them down the sales funnel. It's Marketing 101 these days.
But here's the thing: Most companies still do lead nurturing the old-fashioned way – manually sending emails or making phone calls. And that takes a lot of time and effort.
Meanwhile, technology is advancing at warp speed. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, marketing automation... you've heard the buzzwords.
So why are most businesses still stuck in the past regarding lead nurturing?
It's time to step into the future. AI-powered lead nurturing automation is here and is set to revolutionise how you attract, engage and convert leads.
Table of Contents
The Problem with Manual Lead Nurturing
Let's start by looking at some of the issues with traditional lead nurturing:
It's Time Consuming
Manually nurturing leads sucks up time. You have to segment your lists, craft tailored messages, and get them sent out. And that's before you even think about follow-up.
It Doesn't Scale
It's tough to scale your efforts when emailing and calling leads by hand. There are only so many hours in the day, and you can realistically only nurture a finite number of leads simultaneously.
Relevance is Low
Manual outreach makes it hard to ensure that each message is highly relevant to that particular lead. You end up sending batch emails that aren't tailored.
Touchpoints Are Limited
Phone calls and emails make up the bulk of traditional nurturing. But modern buyers want more – targeted web content, text messages, social media outreach. Most companies struggle to do this manually.
Data is Hard to Track
Understanding what content resonates with leads and what actions they take is critical. However, gathering these insights is difficult without automation.
Traditional nurturing strategies are high effort low reward. But technology can flip this on its head…
Lead Nurturing Automation – The Smarter Solution
AI-powered lead nurturing automation takes over many of the manual tasks:
- Identifying sales-ready leads
- Crafting personalised messages
- Delivering omnichannel outreach
- Optimising based on lead behaviour
This allows your sales and marketing teams to focus on higher-value activities. And generate better results with less effort.
Let's look at some of the key capabilities:
Lead Scoring
Sophisticated algorithms analyse dozens of data points to determine sales readiness—actions like visiting key pages, downloading content and frequency of engagement all factor in.
Lead scoring ensures that the most sales-ready prospects are prioritised for outreach. While less qualified leads receive more nurturing to move them down the funnel.
Personalisation
Generic email blasts are annoying, and they go straight to the trash. Dynamic personalisation solves this by customising messages for each lead.
Their first name, company, interests, and more can be seamlessly integrated to boost relevance. Chatbots take it a step further with conversational dialogue.
Omni-Channel Orchestration
One-off emails are quickly forgotten. But orchestrating touches across multiple channels makes you omnipresent.
Automation coordinates everything from emails, web push notifications and text messages to direct mail and chatbots. Leads get a unified experience.
Event-Based Triggers
Understanding lead behaviour is the key to great nurturing. Triggers monitor for actions like visiting a pricing page, clicking a link or opening an email.
These real-time events dictate the following best outreach. A customised pricing page might be served after visiting pricing. Or an SMS coupon code when abandoning their cart.
The result? Hyper-relevant conversations that evolve with the lead.
Optimisation
With automation, it's easy to test variations in content and cadence to see what resonates. Subject lines, calls-to-action and offers can all be A/B tested and optimised for each campaign.
Continuous optimisation ensures messaging only gets smarter over time.
Insights
Who's engaging with what content? What messages prompt responses? Where are leads dropping out? Lead nurturing software reveals these insights and more.
Dashboards make it easy to tweak campaigns and strategies based on complex data. No more flying blind.
Lead nurturing automation takes the guesswork out of driving engagement and conversions. Let's look at some examples of it in action…
Lead Nurturing Automation Use Cases
AI-driven lead nurturing flexes its muscles across a variety of business needs:
Welcome Series
Make a stellar first impression with a customised welcome series. New contacts are automatically enrolled in a pre-defined workflow that delivers value.
eBooks, demos, event invites, and more all build rapport and move leads down the funnel. It's an ideal way to onboard new subscribers.
Cart Abandonment
When a lead abandons their cart, speedy outreach can win them back. Carts and browsers are tracked to trigger real-time follow-up when they stray.
Text messages with coupon codes, personalised emails and chatbots prevent sticker shock and offer incentives to complete the purchase.
Event Promotion
Getting leads to show up to your webinar or conference is critical. Workflows nurture registrants with reminders, prep material, introductions and logistics.
During the event, live Q&As and surveys collect data to inform follow-up.
Sales Alignment
The handoff from marketing to sales is critical but often disjointed. Shared visibility on lead engagement helps align the teams.
Sales are notified when priority leads hit targeted scoring thresholds, are marked sales-ready, or request a call—no more cold calls.
The beauty of automation is that these workflows and triggers are configurable. Any use case or scenario can be addressed at scale without engineering resources.
Now, let's dive into what to look for when evaluating lead nurturing automation tools.
Buying Criteria – How to Choose Lead Nurturing Software
Marketing automation has been around for a while, but AI-powered capabilities take it to the next level. Here are some key features to look for:
Data and CRM Integration
Robust bi-directional sync with your CRM and CMS keeps data aligned across systems. APIs and connectors make this seamless.
Intelligence
Look for statistical modelling, machine learning and predictive analytics to inform orchestration. The software should automatically adapt based on data and results.
Trigger-Based
Event and behavioural monitoring allows for real-time, contextually-aware nurturing. Web and email activity, SMS, calendaring, and more can dictate workflows.
Testing and Optimisation
A/B testing, multi-variate testing and other optimisation capabilities let you continually improve performance.
Analytics
Dashboards with campaign insights, lead lifecycle analytics and ROI reporting allow data-driven optimisation—access real-time stats and summaries.
Omni-Channel
Orchestrating campaigns across email, mobile, web, direct mail, chat, and more creates an integrated experience. APIs make it easy to plug new channels in.
Personalisation
Look for dynamic content, personalised messaging and custom calls-to-action tailored for each lead. Chatbots take it a step further for natural conversations.
Ease of Use
Consumer-grade interfaces, drag-and-drop workflow builders and templates enable your team to create and manage campaigns without relying on IT.
With the right tool stack, lead nurturing can transform from a tedious chore into a scalable advantage for your business.
Now, let's tackle some common questions about implementing these solutions…
FAQ
What are some tips for creating effective lead-nurturing campaigns?
Focus on delivering real value – not just sales pitches – through your content and outreach. Education and help build authority.
Ensure messaging is hyper-relevant by dynamically personalising content with each lead's details and interests.
Test different formats like video or interactive content – not just static assets. Mix up channels, too.
Time your send cadence based on buyer stage. For colder leads, space out more. Get more frequent for sales-ready contacts.
Follow the principles of good storytelling and design. Compelling narratives and aesthetics boost engagement.
How do you track the ROI of lead nurturing campaigns?
Look at sales pipeline influenced and marketing-generated revenue. How much can be tied back to your nurturing programs?
Analyse the lift in conversions from leads enrolled in workflows versus those who are not.
Factor in sales team productivity. Nurtured leads require less work to convert. Quantify the time savings.
Consider the impact on customer retention. Existing buyers who are nurtured convert again at higher rates.
Compare costs of automation software versus manual nurturing efforts. The former should provide greater efficiency.
What are some lead nurturing metrics to track?
Open, clickthrough and response rates.
Assisted conversion rates
Net-new customer acquisition costs
Cost per lead
How often should you communicate with leads via nurturing campaigns?
Buyer persona – some want more frequent touches than others
Lead stage – increase frequency for sales-ready leads
Type of campaign – promotions warrant more urgency than educational outreach
Response cues – if leads engage, accelerate; if they go quiet, pull back
What's more effective – automated or personalised outreach?
The best approach combines both. Leverage automation for scalability but customise messaging to each lead for relevance.
Use their name, company, interests and behaviour to craft targeted content. Chatbots also blend automation with natural conversation.
The future is hyper-personalised, automated engagement. Lead nurturing platforms make this possible.
Time to Reimagine Lead Nurturing
It's an exciting time for leveraging technology to transform outdated lead nurturing practices.
AI-powered automation enables:
- Hyper-relevant, 1:1 conversations
- Omni-channel, multi-touch outreach
- Continuous optimisation
- Deeper buyer insights
- Increased sales productivity
The result? You nurture more leads at higher quality, with better outcomes.
Now is the time to reimagine lead nurturing. Will you lead the way with smart automation? Or fall behind with manual drudgery? The choice is yours.
Choose wisely.
