Lead nurturing is a big part of successful marketing in most B2B industries. The B2B sales cycle can be long, and requires numerous touchpoints.

 

This goes double if you’re working with cold contacts. You need to nurture them into your funnel, so you can nurture them further down it.

 

This article will get you started with the basics of B2B lead nurturing, and arm you with some advanced tricks you can do with Clickback as well.

 

B2B Lead Nurturing: How to Warm Up Contacts and Convert Them

 

First, let’s touch on how to convert cold contacts and nurture unconverted ones, then we’ll move on to more general B2B lead nurturing strategies.

 

 

Nurturing Cold Contacts

If you’re using email lead generation (ELG), you’re equipped with some great nurturing tools already. Cold contacts are a different sort of challenge than opted-in ones, because you need to nurture them into your funnel first.

 

That means, first of all, getting yourself on their radar with a targeted email campaign. Clickback’s ELG software is the go-to for that, with leading-edge deliverability and a whole suite of features that go beyond just email – including nurturing.

 

In a nutshell: you get a large, targeted list of cold B2B contacts from a reputable data provider. Then you send to them using Clickback. The ones who convert can be pushed into your MA or CRM, and the unconverted contacts can be further nurtured, thanks to its unique built-in Website Visitor Intelligence™ (WVI) technology.

 

Once you’ve sent some targeted campaigns, you’ll have some new leads going into your funnel – and, most likely, some unconverted ones who got your campaign, clicked through to your landing page, but didn’t fill out your form for some reason.

 

If you’ve got WVI enabled on your website (which you should), you’ll get all kinds of information about how those contacts engage with your site – even if they leave and come back later. Knowing which pages they engage visit, and how they engage with them, you’re armed with solid data you can use to optimize and get more conversions.

 

Here’s a trick for the Clickback users reading this: organize unconverted contacts into new lists based on their website engagement stats. Things like dwell time and which content they’ve looked at tells you a lot about what messaging might be effective in getting them closer to converting.

 

If you bundle the contacts who all bounced off your page quickly, you can create a campaign aimed at solving that issue specifically and increase your ability to nurture those contacts.

 

Same for contacts who’ve all visited your blog post about a given topic. Send them emails with related content!

 

Here’s another trick you might not have realized. If you have Google’s remarketing code on your site, the clicks you generate from Clickback will also end up in your remarketing audience.

 

If you create dedicated audiences for people who visit your ELG campaign landing pages, you can in turn create remarketing campaigns in Google specifically geared to your unconverted ELG contacts. Match the content of those campaigns with your nurturing within Clickback and you’ve got a powerful one-two combo.

 

 

B2B Lead Nurturing Tips and Tricks

On to more general tips for nurturing. These apply to your cold contacts as well as your opted-in ones!

 

Personalization is so commonplace as to be, basically, required nowadays. If I receive a marketing email that doesn’t have my name, it comes off as lazy. It’s funny, because people are generally very aware that it’s just a token that puts their information in that spot – but it works anyway.

 

Don’t skimp on personalization. The most important ones are first name and company name. These are things you’ll have on a cold list as well, provided you got your list from a reputable provider.

 

Addressing people by name and speaking directly to their company’s concerns goes a long way towards building familiarity, even if they logically know there isn’t any familiarity there.

 

One way you can urge unconverted contacts to convert is by providing them with social proof in the form of testimonials and case studies. If you have a case study that involves a business that’s very similar to theirs, even better – it shows that they could very well get great results too.

 

Another thing that helps nurture people is encourage micro-conversions. Rather than going for your ultimate goal, like pushing a purchase or a product demo, get them to take a couple smaller steps first.

 

For example, have your contacts look at a blog post. Then provide them with a case study or white paper with relevant content.

 

Then go for a more concrete conversion.

 

If we’re talking ELG, then your goal is to get them into your funnel. Whether that’s with a product demo or gated content like a white paper, you’ve got them opted in and primed for more nurturing!

 

Making the Most of It

An all-too-common problem is a divide between marketing and sales. As marketers, we’re often not very well aligned with our colleagues over in sales, and that’s an unnecessary hurdle.

 

When you’ve successfully nurtured someone to the point where they’re ready to talk to sales, it’s extremely helpful if the sales rep has all the information that you have about that lead.

 

If the rep can take a couple minutes before the call to familiarize themselves with the prospect, their company, the sort of content they liked, and how they converted, they’ll be much more effective in closing that deal.

 

It’s all about teamwork!