Segmenting Email With Web Analytics

mediapost – TRADITIONALLY, WEB ANALYTICS OF ON-SITE behavior and email metrics have peacefully co-existed in separate silos. Once a message gets its audience to a site, many email marketers believe their work is done. Stefan Pollard, director of email marketing best practices, and Dan Miller, manager of professional services, both of Lyris, Inc. argue for a real marriage of the two disciplines. Lyris, a combination of several recent acquisitions, tries to bring some of these metrics together in its own Lyris HQ dashboard. Pollard and Miller walked us through how email clickthroughs need to be followed and understood after users get to the site.

Behavioral Insider: How are email and Web analytics different?

Stefan Pollard: Segmentation from an email standpoint is really around identifying what group of consumers a particular message should be delivered to, and then what action you want that group to take. The only action from an email is to click through to the Web site. But the other half of that is getting the right message to the right audience. Often the information available to an email marketer is very restricted to information the consumer gives at the point of acquisition. With the addition of Web analytics, you get more in terms of the behavior that a person is taking. You sent them an email, you put them in a target audience and sent them a piece of creative that directed them to take an action with your Web site. Now they are performing a series of behaviors. Not only is one of their behaviors to not go at all, but another behavior is to visit and to not take the action you want — but to look at other things within the Web site.

Dan Miller: So Web analytics historically is based on server performance, quantity of traffic, and basic numbers like that. Basically visitors are a series of clicks. Web analytics currently is really taking all this data and session-izing it, looking across all the sessions and visitors to determine which clicks go together to form a session. And then we can start drawing some conclusions from that. We really parallel email without usually crossing paths. In email terms, segmentation means people having in common similar attributes when they signed up. In Web terms, it can be exhibiting similar behaviors. Let’s look at customers who reach a certain point in a conversion process but didn’t actually purchase.

Pollard: The opportunity is people who have visited the Web site taking a behavior and you feeding that information into your email application to trigger an event-based message. Someone downloaded a white paper. You want to pass that information back and send a transactional response message, and might want to use it as part of a drip campaign. People who downloaded this are also interested in that. And maybe three days later you follow up with them based on whether they clicked on any of those categories people click on. And you may see they haven’t responded to them, so you can present them with a different set of articles.

BI: How many site and publisher are actually integrating Web analytics and email?

Miller: The two separate pieces are common. Tying them together, I found, is rare. Traditionally, the Web analytics side works with blinders, focusing on one or two metrics that are common for that marketing channel. Customers who manage Google AdWords PPC campaigns focus on CTRs, and once the visitor reaches the site they might hope to tie a conversion rate back to that and at least know what percentage bought something. But they really don’t pay attention to what happens in between.

Likewise, email marketers are used to email metrics — open rates and CTRs. They judge success by how many people click through. But if a lot of them immediately leave the Web site then it is a false indicator of success. We are advocating tying these two tools together. Between those stated preferences [email] and implied preferences through behavior [on-site] we can fine tune a more targeted message.

BI: Do particular kinds of metrics come naturally from this marriage? Like users not staying long?

Miller: We call it a “short visit,” someone who views one page and doesn’t click on any links. That would be the starting point, at least finding out whether the landing page they were directed to from the email was a consistent enough message and a compelling enough call to action that the visitor felt they wanted to invest in clicking deeper.

Another common practice in Web analytics world is to assemble what we refer to as a funnel report. Often the data will take a shape similar to a funnel, in that you are assembling a series of pages or groups of pages that you would like the visitor to proceed towards conversion, and analyzing how many of them actually make it there and at what point they fall off.

To apply segmentation — to only look at email visitors from particular campaigns — can help tie these applications together. We can go back to the concept of follow-up messaging, possibly targeting specific visitors based on the point where they fell away from the process. A classic example would be, I added an item to my shopping cart, shipping was calculated, and I stopped. You might infer that I objected to the shipping prices. So maybe you follow up with a free shipping message.

BI: What are the challenges for implementing integration in the organization?

Pollard: It becomes a different way of thinking about your market. Often you have a marketing department with five to 10 people each responsible for a small piece.

Miller: Not only do you have this siloed approach, but Web analytics historically has been looked at more as a technical application. So IT is running the tools. Even if the marketing people are consumers of the reports. they don’t have a real interactivity with the reports. They get numbers spit out with some pie charts. They don’t really use it to evaluate the individual campaigns — much less to potentially extract certain visitors based on their behaviors.

BI: With that in mind, who can best make use of the integrated data?

Pollard: Hopefully it starts more at the senior level, and you have someone who can at least wrap their head around the concept of a truly integrated campaign. It is not just gauging the success of the email on how many clicks it drove — but how the landing page converted, how we re-messaged people who didn’t do what we wanted them to do. I think the opportunity cost of not doing segmentation is starting to catch up with email marketers. Marketers who are still trying to focus on list size and one-message-fits-all strategies are having all sorts of problems. Those programs are not as successful as they were several years ago.

What’s the Best Frequency? Who Cares

mediapost.com – ONE QUESTION THAT EMAIL MARKETERS continue to ask all the time is “How often should I email my subscribers?”

If you are a publisher, this is still a reasonable question. But for most other businesses, it’s so last-century, so old-school, so Web-1.0, so… you get the picture.

The better, though more complicated, question might be: “What demographics, preferences and behaviors can I use to drive a continuous program that maximizes the lifetime value of my customers?”

In the old, direct mail world, you sent to a list until it didn’t make money anymore. With email, consumers tell you when you’ve gone postal on them by opting out or hitting the “This is Spam” button. But this paradigm is driven by sending regular, non-personalized “broadcast” emails.

If you can move to a system of emails fine-tuned to your customer relationships, you can likely email less often without sacrificing ROI, or even send more frequently and you won’t be penalized by ISPs. Most importantly, you’ll become even more valuable and relevant to your customers.

Email is the Swiss Army knife of marketing, giving you multiple tools to communicate with prospects and customers. I thought of 30 different kinds of email messaging that can be sent while I was listening to a session at the Email Evolution Conference recently: everything from welcomes to trigger-based messages to one-offs to confirmations to cross-sell/up-sell messages.

This vast array comprises “lifecycle marketing,” where the impetus for sending a message isn’t just the product or service you want to sell but a trigger, event, need or other factor of your customer’s, combined with your organization’s offerings and goals. Further, many of these messages can be automated (see David Baker’s MediaPost column on triggers http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/?p=595), meaning you create the email, set the parameters, and let the technology take over. When you shift to this kind of customer-focused marketing, you turn the concept of frequency on its head.

How One Multichannel Marketer Missed the Boat

A few months ago, I bought a refrigerated wine cellar from a multichannel retailer whose catalogs I have been receiving for 15 years and emails for one or two years. This cataloger sells only wine-related items, from books to glassware to custom wine cellars. A wine unit like mine is one of the most expensive items it offers. Previously, I had made only a minor purchase. Now, I’ve vaulted myself into a high-value customer segment.

You wouldn’t know it from my inbox, though. After I purchased the cellar, I received a basic order confirmation along with an average nine emails a month, none of which acknowledged this significant purchase. At least one promoted the exact cellar unit I bought!

My purchase should have put me, and other high-end cellar buyers, into a lifecycle program. I was easily able to envision at least two dozen individual emails, all related to my purchase, persona and behavior, and all potentially able to drive more sales. Here are just seven types:

1. Order Follow Up/Customer Support: Besides the confirmation, send “It was shipped” and “Did you receive it/have any problems?” emails. Each could also include some upsell message for extended warranty, etc.

2. Cross-selling/up-selling: Next, a series of emails promoting related products such as Riedel glasses, decanters, wine inventory software, premium openers, books, or tasting kits.

3. Product replenishment: The filter should be replaced every 12 months. Remind me early and around my purchase anniversary to change it with a link to the filter page on the Web site.

4. Special programs/offers: Send me a birthday reminder and gift-certificate program for my wine-loving friends. How about a special VIP invitation or discount to your regional wine-tastings and magazine?

5. Refer a friend, receive a gift: Most wine drinkers don’t do it in private. Some of my friends spend more than I do, too.

6. Check up: “How are we doing?” surveys, reminders to update preferences, post comments on the product.

7. Behavior-based: Where I click on the Web site or in the regular emails should trigger messages, especially if I abandon a cart.

Yours truly is a motivated buyer. But the nine-a-month, one-size-fits-all approach is not prompting me to pull out my credit card again. In fact, on average, I open only one or two out of the nine. Send me an email promoting the inventory software, and I’d likely pull the trigger.

So, the next time you are waiting for a plane or riding the train home from work, list all the email messages your company could be sending to add value to your customer relationships. I guarantee you can come up with 15 different ones, or I’ll eat this column!

When To Write Long Emails

mediapost.com – LONG COPY HAS BEEN THE stock-in-trade of advertising writers since Gutenberg first made type move. Like top salespeople, writers know that given a chance to flex their verbal muscles, they can mesmerize their prospects and close many a deal. “The more you tell, the more you sell” was a mantra of the direct marketers of yore.

Email marketing tends to be focused on the top 300 pixels, giving little play to a longer message. We all know why — attention spans today are so short, we feel we have to hit the consumer with a short, sharp shock in order to be noticed, never mind read.

That being said, there are still times when longer emails can outperform short ones, especially when you want to secure the understanding, engagement and loyalty of customers with your emails.

Making a complex or expensive sale. When you are promoting a high-end or very technical product or service, follow up your riveting headline or offer with a story that explains the product’s attributes and advantages. Draw in the prospect with problem-solving propositions. Present persuasive facts about your offering in sufficient detail to overcome objections. Be sure to keep your brand positioning in mind as you write.

Sample applications: luxury goods, expensive travel packages, high-end technology. Why? Long copy can help justify higher prices and convincingly point up superior differences in raw materials, manufacturing, service, user experience or longevity.

Building relationships. Email is a letter written from one human being to another. Keep this in mind when addressing fans and customers who have displayed an interest in your organization. Woo them with friendly email communications, which they will read when they have the time, because they like you and want to know your news.

Sample applications: membership communities, entertainment products, cause marketing. Once they have opted in, these highly aligned consumers will enjoy getting to know you and will become more informed and engaged with every newsy communication you send. You can write quite extensive emails to them, such as Christopher Kimball’s Letter from Vermont — it’s chatty, it’s personal, and it leads the reader seamlessly from his latest hometown experiences back to the kitchens of Cook’s Illustrated. Hook, line and sinker, and his readers love it.

Introducing new concepts. Sometimes urgency has to take a back seat to education in email marketing. Bearing in mind that your target audience probably doesn’t have time to read every email you send, it’s a good practice to repeat your message and explain your benefits more than once. If you are introducing a product or service whose full attributes won’t be intuitively grasped by a casual reader, or would require an extraordinary commitment to buy in to, spend time telling them about it. It might require a series of emails to cover the subject adequately and create the conversion response you seek. Be sure that customers know where to find any information they might have missed along the line by providing contextual links to your Web site in each email.

Sample applications: product and service innovations, new financial or investment offerings, or products with a long term of use, such as a retirement community. Long copy can help your target audience better understand your offering, and give them a chance to picture themselves being transformed by it.

Reselling your product. What better way to get a customer to buy more of a product than by demonstrating new ways to use it? Next time you plan to send a coupon by email, spend some time firing up the readers’ imaginations with alternative uses as well.

Sample applications: consumer products from avocadoes to laundry detergent can benefit from (reasonably) long copy emails. Be inventive, invite engagement, walk a mile in the consumer’s shoes and show you care about making their life better.

In email as in other forms of marketing, let your approach fit the product and the audience, and support your goals. You can leverage email effectively to build brands, change minds, and sell more, both long-term and in the moment.

Best Practices For Unsubscribing

mediapost.com – JOHN ENGLER OF UNSUBCENTRAL HAD some great comments based on my article last week and the problems I was having unsubscribing from a newsletter. I’m providing them verbatim with his permission:

1. Marketers should make it clear and easy for people to unsubscribe. The only truly acceptable method for unsubscribing is to offer a link to a Web page with this text: “Click Here to Unsubscribe.” Anything else puts too much onus on the recipient and will likely compel the recipient to hit the “report spam” button in his or her email client. Also, recipients should not need to log in, recall an account number, or type in a password in order to unsubscribe. One best practice to reduce recipient pain is to include the email address in the unsubscribe link, allowing the unsubscribe form to automatically accept the request with one click. Another alternative is to offer just one form item on the unsubscribe page, and allow users to enter their email address and click a button to unsubscribe. I understand per your fellow columnist Loren McDonald’s recent best practice story, some recipients are simply trying to change their preferences. It’s a good point, so put that link on the unsubscribe page. This response is tailored around the folks that truly wish to end communications with the sender.

2. Process the unsubscribe request instantly. CAN-SPAM may allow marketers to fulfill unsubscribe requests within 10 days, but users expect it to happen faster, aren’t likely to know about the 10-day rule and, quite frankly, don’t care — why should they? So, wait if you must but understand that you do so at the expense of your fine brand and will likely upset quite a few members that might just return if you treat them well. Our experience is that consumers who continue to receive mail after they’ve unsubscribed, even if that unsubscribe was yesterday or the day before, just don’t accept that. If you send mail to someone who doesn’t want it, they’ll rightfully perceive you as a spammer. This may compel them to simply hit the “report spam” button — which could affect your deliverability in the future or worse, lead to escalated action.

3. Offer options. Some companies only offer an email-based unsubscribe options (for example, “Reply to this message with ‘Unsubscribe’ in the subject line”) and some only offer Web-based unsubscribes (example: “click here to unsubscribe”). The best marketers offers users both methods, and they test each method to make sure they work reliably. Users that are on mobile devices may only be able to reply to your email. Users that have email forwarded from another account may only be able to click a link to a Web page. Marketers should allow both options all the time.

4. Link to your privacy policy in your email. The best marketers will also include a link to their privacy policy and, if practical, include a phone number to call to unsubscribe if all other methods are failing for the user. A physical address is required by CAN-SPAM, so make sure you’re checking that physical address for unsubscribe requests too.

5. Respect the unsubscribe request. CAN-SPAM requires you to opt out users from all commercial email when they request it. So, if bob@yahoo.com unsubscribes from your newsletter, there’s a good chance that he doesn’t want to receive an unsolicited email from your sales reps, or another department. The law requires you to honor that request. A best practice would be to offer multiple options on the opt-out page (like MediaPost does on its account management page), so you can make sure you’re respecting your users’ wishes. If you don’t offer multiple options, then the smartest thing to do is just accept the request across your entire company until you get another request for communication from that user.

To summarize: Make it easy for people to unsubscribe instantly using whatever method they want, and tell them where to go if they just can’t unsubscribe. Doing that will help you with the law, as well as help you build your brand’s credibility with your users.

Leverage Your Unsubscribes

mediapost.com – A recent In-Box Insiders discussion was whether a click on the unsubscribe link in an email should be included in the response rate calculation, as would a click on a product link. While most agreed that this negative action should not be counted as a positive, Stephanie Miller, vice president of strategic services for Return Path, made this excellent point: “I don’t think unsubscribes are negative. They are simply feedback — and as such, are positive in that they are actionable for marketers who care about creating solid subscriber experiences. There are lots of reasons why someone wants off the list, and usually it’s an indication of relevancy.”

This raises two important aspects of leveraging unsubcribes: learning from the data, and working to mitigate them.

The Email Diva’s first-ever article for MediaPost was on a new way to calculate the unsubscribe rate: unsubs/responders, which measures those who clicked on your email for the sole purpose of getting off your list. Try it and you’ll see greater variances from cell to cell and campaign to campaign. When you look at the data over time, and sort from high to low, you’ll see which content had the most or least resonance with your customers. As Stephanie points out, it will help you understand relevance in the eyes of your readers.

Your opt-out process provides an excellent opportunity to gather feedback and preferences. Address these four aspects:

1. Content Preferences — Give subscribers the options to indicate their preferences to improve relevance. These can either be positive “I am interested in silent sports” or negative “I am not interested in articles on camping.”

2. Frequency Preferences — Allow subscribers to reduce the volume of communication: “Send me email only once per week/month/quarter/year” (depending on your sending frequency). According to Stephanie, “offering even simple frequency options at the point of unsubscribe helps preserve up to 50% of those ‘exiting’ subscribers.”

3. Feedback – Ask unsubscribers to tell you why they’re leaving. This will give you useful information to improve your program overall. Ask open-ended questions as well as closed. While closed questions are easier to quantify, they only yield the results you anticipate.

4. User Experience — You’re saying good-bye to a customer, but you can still make the parting positive and keep the door open. The opt-out option should be prominent and easy to exercise, particularly if you are offering other options, e.g., “Click to opt-out” and “Click to update your preferences and tailor messages to your needs.” Say thank you for the time and space you were granted in your customer’s inbox. Use language that is consistent with your brand/email voice. A good example from Daily Candy asks, “Are we breaking up? Want to leave us for good? If you don’t mind us asking, why don’t you love us anymore?”

To leverage your unsubscribes, learn from your customers and learn from your data. Good Luck!

Tracking Email Campaigns Using Google Analytics

mediapost.com – GOOGLE ANALYTICS IS A free Web analytics tool that can be integrated with your email marketing campaigns to gain valuable information about the subscriber activity on your site. This data can be used to increase the effectiveness of future campaigns, and thus boost sales conversions, subscribers, or other campaign goals. In fact, according to a 2005 JupiterResearch report, using Web analytics to target email campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits compared to regular mass email campaigns.

Today I am going to talk about how you can easily tag your email links in Google Analytics so you can better track your email marketing campaigns. Before we begin, make sure you have a Google Analytics account for your Web site, and verify that it is set up to track conversions. This involves placing a piece of code on every page you want to track on your site, including each conversion or order confirmation page.

What is Link Tagging?
Link tagging involves adding additional information (i.e., variables) to the destination URLs used in your online ads so Google Analytics can detect and associate each link with a specific campaign.
You can tag any number of online activities, including banner ads, paid search ads, or emails. Once a visitor responds to the ad, Google stores a cookie on his or her machine and is able to connect her ongoing actions with the original ad.

How to Tag Your Links
Tagging your links is very easy using Google’s  URL Builder.You merely need to identify the proper information to place into each of the following variables:

·    Source

·    Medium

·    Term

·    Content

·    Campaign

Source
The source identifies who is delivering your message to the customer. It also defines the origin of your message. Examples include Google, Yahoo, a Web site you are advertising with, or the name of your newsletter.

Medium
The medium is the means that is used to deliver the message to the recipient (i.e., CPC, banner, email). For an email marketing campaign, you will use “email.”

Term
This is the term or keyword you purchased and is only used in paid search tracking. Therefore, it will not be included in an email marketing campaign.

Content
The content variable can be used to perform A/B testing on two versions of an ad. For instance, you can send out two email newsletters and determine which one performs better for you by tracking them separately. You can also assign different content attributes to different parts of a single email. For instance, you may want to tag your header, special offer, footer, and product links. When you use a different content variable for each specific link in your creative, you are able to determine the effectiveness of each part of your email.

Campaign
This is the name of your campaign. You can be running one campaign on several different mediums. Use a descriptive term or slogan like “February Promotions” or “Get in Shape for Spring.”

Once you have identified your specific campaign variables, simply enter them into the Google URL Builder, and click on “Generate URL.” Then replace the original URL of the link in your email with the new one. You’ll need to repeat this for each link in the message you’re working on, as well as every future email broadcast you send.

How Is My Email Performing?
Now that you’re successfully tracking email campaigns, it’s important to know how to access the data. To begin, log into Google Analytics and click the “Traffic Sources” tab. Then click “Campaigns.” All of your campaigns will be listed here for the time period you selected. You can click on a specific campaign (i.e., February Promotions) to see the full campaign summary. The “Segment” drop-down box has a long list of options, including “Source,” “Medium,” and “Content.” You can use this feature to track the origin of your traffic, the specific email it’s coming from, and the call-to-action that’s generating the traffic.

Spend some time exploring Google Analytics and learning how to use the technology. The program’s full capabilities surpass the scope of this article.

Integrating Google Analytics with your current email marketing reporting tools helps you understand how customers and prospects respond to your ads and interact with your web site. You will have instant access to all of the clickstream data users generate as they move from page to page across your site. This means you can find out who left your site after previewing your landing page, and who started the process of purchasing a product but strayed to another part of the site. You can see who reviewed product or service information, and who didn’t. Essentially, this will allow you to identify what is working in your campaigns and what is not. Then you can tweak future campaigns to see an improvement in performance and ultimately, an increase in sales conversions.

Testing: What Do You Really Learn?

mediapost.com – IN THE WORLD OF EMAIL marketing and marketing in general, everyone loves to discuss testing.  It’s usually the second thing out of a marketer’s mouth when discussing email, outside of how often to send email.  On the surface it seems quite straightforward: test a subject line here and there, maybe a different creative, maybe different offers to different segments.  In actuality it is likely the most misunderstood practice in email marketing and the most poorly administered.

Here’s my view of testing, how to break it down and how to develop a testing strategy.

Testing starts with developing a hypothesis and a log.  Why?  You can’t optimize without a hypothesis of what you hope to achieve and a planned action behind it.  Without storing a history of your tests or what worked and what didn’t, you will likely recycle the same tests over and over again.

So, what are the things you can test, and why are they important?

-    Targeting – Which segments will perform best to existing promotions. Could be based on past purchase, customer state, value, product affinity, site behavior or simply cohorts that you’ve established.   This is the best area to test cadence, pull out a few customer segments and hold out a group; you’ll see incremental effects of frequency on different customer segments.

-    Promotion -  This can be reward or incentive, but testing variances in promotions is probably the most typical method of testing today.  20%, 30% off, free shipping, multiple purchase discounts.  Many test this in simple fashion A/B style, primarily due to the complexity this can cause on different value segments and cadence.

-    Design – Obviously this is talked about a lot in the email world.  Short versions, long versions, use of product images, text links, layout.  This type of testing is best to do in a multivariate scenario, as it will save you a lot of time during the production crunch. The difficulty is isolating it to a few key elements that you can take forward into all your email communication streams. If you test a promotional email, will the learnings pass to your newsletter and triggered messaging?  Depends on your hypothesis.

-    Subject Lines – As we all know, subject lines are the “context” for which the receiver decides to open the message (although the from address/name is important to “scanners” as much as “poll position” is).  What do you test?  There are essentially three main elements you can test: Brand-specific subject lines, action-oriented subject lines and benefit-driven subject lines, which can be combined to test infinite combinations. Add personalization to this and placement (front, middle, end) and you get an interesting testing matrix.  It’s critical that you log these types of tests, as they are often done very adhoc, which means that at the end of a year, no one can tell you the top winning subject lines, tests or approaches.

-    Landing Pages – Don’t forget the destination!   Just because they clicked through doesn’t mean they will do what you want.  Landing page tests are best suited for multivariate testing as well. There are simply too many variables to test, frrm abandonment, form layout, sequencing of pages, and all the creative variables.  Small changes can have dramatic impact on performance.

Testing isn’t just about finding a winning solution, it’s a process of trying to find the greatest variance in tactics and validating your hypothesis.

Most companies I know have tested A/B methods, some have tested multivariate, and very, very few even think about doing more sophisticated methods like Taguchi.  Just remember, adding complexity to the test doesn’t make it valuable, it just makes it a bit more efficient — so if you have limited bandwidth, it may make sense to do less frequent, but more in-depth, testing a few times a year.

As I’ve preached for years, we don’t test unless there is a prescribed action associated with the winning hypothesis; this includes even simple things like subject lines.  Ask yourself, if “Your bonus offer is ready to view” performs better than “Get your bonus offer today” as a subject line test, what action will you take in response? Does it mean your audience is averse to directive statements, and you’ll sequence the next few messages with more passive language?

Testing can be fun, it can be a lot of work, but your job as a marketer is to find the most efficient methods to build learnings about your customers and their behaviors with email.

ENurturing For An Efficient Sales Pipeline

mediapost.com – YEARS AGO, I FOLLOWED UP on a failed lead generation program by speaking to the salespeople who called the leads. They told me, “I called and asked if they wanted the product, but they weren’t interested.”

When I approached their manager to diplomatically question their sales skills, I was told, “Well, we had other priorities, so we couldn’t pay much attention to your program.”

If you’ve ever heard statements like these before, you know that creating a lead generation program the sales team will support is a challenge. This is where email can be a real hero. An eNurturing program, where leads are warmed up with a series of email communications, can help prequalify and target the best leads for sales — creating an efficient sales pipeline. A good eNurturing program can even help identify topics for sales to open a conversation with.

Successful eNurturing programs have three key components: sales buy-in, clearly defined goals, and specific success metrics.

1. Sales buy-in. Including your sales team in the planning can help you identify the right targets and topics to address. If sales feels included, they’re much more likely to make your program a priority.
2. Clearly defined goals. Ask the sales team to help define what a good lead would look like. This can help you define questions you need to ask, along with needs you should attempt to uncover through your eNurturing messages.
3. Specific success metrics. How many leads need to turn into sales for this program to be considered a success? What is the target gross sales goal? Communicating those metrics upfront can give the sales team a goal to shoot for, and help them sing your program’s praise when they meet that goal.

I originally thought my first lead generation program failed due to lack of sales support. It wasn’t quite that simple. Months later, I found out that the sales team had abandoned the program after the first calls proved they had embarrassingly bad leads.

An eNurturing program, using a series of emails to warm the leads and solicit additional information, could have sorted through respondents and flagged good leads. This would have resulted in a more efficient sales pipeline.

So how do you create an eNurturing program? Start by deciding whether you need multi-part eNurturing or long-term eNurturing.

Multi-part eNurturing

• Leads are sent a series of two to six emails over a set period of time.
• The number of emails depend on how many distinct message points you need to communicate.
• Calls-to-action are used to identify interests; click-throughs on specific topics or points are communicated to the sales team to aide follow up calls.

Long-term eNurturing

• Leads are sent a periodic newsletter, generally monthly.
• Emails continue indefinitely, as long as the lead doesn’t opt-out.
• Click-throughs on specific topics may be used to identify areas of interest and aid the sales team with follow up calls.

The type of program you run depends on your goals. If your product has a long sales cycle, combine a multipart program with a long-term program. That way, you can quickly validate leads for hand-off to your sales team, and then keep those leads engaged over time with your newsletter.

If your product has a short sales cycle, focus on a multipart eNurturing program with polls or other actions that generate the information you need to validate your leads. Share that information with your sales team, and you’ll be better positioned for success.