A good lead-nurturing solution today includes capabilities to listen to your sales lead and respond across several different channels. Why? Your buyers circulate in multiple places. Whether they visit your website, go to one of your social channels, attend an event, or listen to a webinar, you need to be with them at every level.
Imagine that a lead first enters your system by downloading an e-book about Twitter. Then imagine that you meet him at an in-person event where you conduct a demo and have an entire conversation with him. How would it look if the next week your company sends him an email asking if he would like a demo?
It doesn't look very good, and it makes the lead feel unimportant and think that you weren't listening. By embracing engagement marketing through nurturing, you can know that your lead already viewed a demo at an event and send a more appropriate and relevant email triggered by an interaction.
When thinking about multichannel engagement, consider the following:
Always listen and then respond: Listen carefully to and respond to leads both online and off in a consistent way.
Be aware of how often you communicate: Many marketers have problems with lead nurturing because they don't have a holistic view of what they send and how often. Many advanced lead-nurturing solutions enable you to set communications limits so leads don't get blasted.
Know what content your lead has seen: There is nothing worse than receiving duplicate content from a vendor. Leads easily become annoyed if you aren't listening. Make sure you have a lead-nurturing solution that lets you track and alerts you when you have already sent a particular piece of content to a lead.
Have an easy lead-nurture solution: Don't lean on IT every time you need to set up a new lead-nurturing program. There are plenty of marketing automation solutions out there that offer ease of use and simplicity.