What’s the Secret to Successful Lead Nurturing Campaigns?

One marketing expert shares their tips and tricks for cultivating prospect relationships that can stand the test of time.
Written by Isaac Feldberg
January 20, 2022Updated: January 20, 2022

Think of lead nurturing as planting seeds and watering them daily so that a beautiful garden can eventually start to take hold in an otherwise unremarkable patch of dirt. In the digital marketing world, this process — one of attention in service of growth — is an essential component of most sales strategies. 

Through lead nurturing, business-to-business (B2B) marketers endeavor to cultivate relationships with prospects long before they’re ready to become clients. Listening to what they want, providing the information and answers they need, and earning trust are all facets of lead nurturing, which typically involves establishing a marketing and communications route that can keep your brand front and center as prospects gradually become ready to make a buying decision.

Lead nurturing is an all-important stage in any client relationship, but it requires a steady and sensitive hand. At LiveControl, which specializes in remote video production and live streaming, director of marketing Jarell Cardoza knows that every client wants something a little different — and that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach that will convince all of them to sign on the dotted line. 

“The key is that you can’t solve for everyone at once, and so you shouldn’t try to,” Cardoza says. “Focus each touch in your lead nurturing sequence on one to two core value propositions, which will help you identify how each individually resonates with different clients. If you’re lucky, patterns will emerge, and you’ll be able to create more targeted campaigns that drive more leads more predictably.”

Below, Cardoza shares tips and tricks for kicking off, maintaining, and optimizing a successful lead nurturing campaign.

 

Jarell Cardoza
Director of Marketing • LiveControl

 

LiveControl aims to democratize professional video production, keeping high-quality video and live streaming affordable to various venues and content creators through an innovative technology that allows its professional camera operators to remotely control onsite cameras. 

 

From your experience, what’s the secret to a successful lead nurturing campaign?

In my experience, successful nurture campaigns start with a healthy dose of realism. There is no smoking gun when it comes to a nurture campaign: no single email that’s going to miraculously convert those dormant leads, no single subject line so good that it quadruples your open rates reliably, no product video you can guarantee a given prospect is going to click on and watch to completion.

Instead, you should be honest with yourself that nurture is a numbers game that rewards variety. Some prospects will be completely uninterested in your pricing value propositions, while others are going to latch onto them. Some prospects will be moved by how you differentiate from a market-leading competitor, while others won’t care at all. Some are almost singularly interested in seeing testimonials from reputable clients of yours in their industry.

 

How has this strategy improved the success or efficacy of your lead nurturing campaigns? 

This strategy is huge in driving successful nurture campaigns because it lessens the burden on any one message, instead giving prospects five or seven or nine different reasons to believe in you over the course of a multi-touch sequence.

My background is in product marketing, and a product marketing manager’s best friend is a nurture campaign. Why? Because nurture audiences are full of prospects who may or may not have shown some interest at some point in the past but for some reason weren’t compelled to move forward. 

But each product launch, each feature enhancement, and each new pricing bundle is an opportunity to circle back and to re-engage those prospects who already know who you are, may have some idea what you do, and are just waiting for a reason to re-engage.

This has led to what on former teams we called “spontaneous resurrection.” A prospect who hasn’t engaged for weeks, months, or even years suddenly sees that a feature that was previously a dealbreaker is now more available to them, and they jump at the opportunity to re-engage.

 

With digital marketing evolving so rapidly, how do you stay on top of best practices when it comes to nurturing leads? And what steps have you taken to continue evolving and optimizing your approach?

The biggest thing I do is keep in touch with former marketing colleagues and make a habit of sharing my learnings and wins with them, which in turn leads to them reciprocating. Some of the best advice I’ve ever received is that the way to get something of value from someone is to first offer them something of value yourself.

Oftentimes, networking can seem so cold and transactional, but it doesn’t have to be that way. When you surround yourself with sharp people and lead with a willingness to share your experiences, you’ll never be short on tips and tricks that may work for you and your team.

Additionally — and this may sound a bit silly — but read the marketing emails you receive! They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but I truthfully learn so much from the nurture campaigns I am personally a part of.

If a certain set of emails catch my attention, I’m curious as to why and want to know what my team could do to replicate that sentiment amongst our prospects. And if they don’t catch my attention, I wonder why not and how I might ensure we don't repeat those same mistakes.

 

 

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