by James Campbell 
Have you recently implemented a Marketing Automation tool but are yet to launch your first nurture campaign? Implementing your first automated campaigns can be a daunting task and often people can’t decide where to start.
Here are a few ideas for nurture campaigns that we have seen work very well…
1. Customer Onboarding / New Sign-up
Customer onboarding campaigns are a great way to educate customers about your products/services after purchasing. Rather than just giving them all the information and leaving them to get on with it, you can use a series of communications to prompt your customers to continue their education and ensure that their knowledge is where it should be throughout their customer journey. As well as improving adoption, it also helps to reduce time spent answering support questions.
Tip: In general, you will see higher engagement levels when the recipients are expecting an email. Using a subject line like ‘Lesson 1 of 6’ in the first email allows you to explain what will be coming in the next 5 emails.
2. Sales Nurture
All salespeople regularly have the ‘I’m not ready to buy just now, call me in 6 months’ conversations with their prospects. Drip-feeding relevant marketing messages during that time is a great way of ensuring your company stays top of mind. If the prospect shows a high level of engagement with your nurture campaigns, this may also be an indication that the prospect is ready to buy earlier than originally indicated and allows you to get in touch before they have the chance to reach out to any of your competitors.
Tip: You will see the best results by setting up different nurture campaigns for different interest topics and timeframes. It is also important to make it as easy as possible for salespeople to drop the prospect into the appropriate campaign in just a couple of clicks.
3. Content Related
The content that a prospect engages with often indicates which of your offerings they are interested in as well as where they are in the sales cycle. Building nurture campaigns around these different content groupings and dropping people into relevant groups is a great way to engage and target the right customers and progress them through the sales cycle.
Tip: Overlaying profile information (e.g. job title, geographical location) with the content your prospects engage with allows you to be even more targeted and will significantly improve conversion rates.
Looking for help with Account Engagement?
Zoe Fisher Principal Marketing Automation Consultant
4. Lapsed / Unengaged Customers
Nurture campaigns can be a great tool for re-engaging customers and prospects who have forgotten about you. They can be triggered automatically after a defined period of ‘un-engagement’ to try and remind people about your company and reduce churn.
Tip: Whether you decide to entice them back with great content or appealing offers is up to you however the most important thing is that the message is relevant.
5. Abandoned Registration Process / Shopping Cart
This is a tried and tested weapon in the digital marketer’s arsenal and that’s because it works. If someone begins a registration/purchasing process but does not complete it, it shows that there is a certain amount of interest and not pursuing this is a wasted opportunity. Use nurture campaigns to try and encourage the person to complete the process that they started as often all they need is a gentle reminder.
Tip: If you get a high percentage of drop-offs during your registration/purchasing process, should also analyse exactly where this is happening and refine the process to optimise your conversion rate.
6. Renewal Notifications
If your company is a subscription business then nurture campaigns can be used to automate a lot of the manual work involved in trying to get your customers to renew.
Tip: These renewal campaigns should start well in advance of your renewal date giving your customers plenty of time to budget for the renewal costs. As part of the process think about notifying key members of your team too, if important dates are reached without renewal.
We hope this has provided you with some food for thought. If you would like help strategising or implementing any of the above, please get in touch.