Two Ways Marketers Ruin Email Nurture Campaigns: How to Avoid Both

November 19, 2014

Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the biggest digital marketing big brains out there, likes to say that marketers ruin everything.

What he’s saying is that a few of us find something new that works and the rest of us flock to it, use it entirely too much, and completely degrade its impact.

But while Vaynerchuk paints broadly, his “ruin everything” line best applies right now to the world of email nurture campaigns, which can have a hugely beneficial impact on the sales and marketing funnel; but it seems like today, there’s nothing more disruptive and, frequently, more useless to a prospect. That’s because most of us are doing it wrong.

Here are the two biggest ways marketers ruin nurture campaigns and how to avoid them:

1. Campaigns that try to qualify too many leads

Because of the amount of effort required to get a nurture campaign up and running, marketers rightly place a lot of pressure on themselves to get a worthy return on their investments. Fair enough; but let’s level set on what that return should be.

Nurture campaigns are great at three things:

  • Keep you in front of a prospect
  • Learn more
  • Build trust

What a nurture campaign isn’t great at, though, is scaling to do that for every single email address that ever enters a database.

Instead, smart marketers running good nurture campaigns are finding out whom in their databases display signs of being most like their best customers. They focus on building trust with those key contacts.

If you do that, too, your prospects will raise their hands, let you know they’re ready for a sales conversation, and give you an opportunity to solve their problems. That’s a far different behavior than using a campaign focused on upping lead scores to force that same person to put his or her hand in the air.

2. Emails that double as another form of broadcasting

Most nurtures are incredibly one-way: you assign someone to the campaign, they receive your emails, and you hope they click.

If all three things happen, that’s a win, right? Wrong.

When was the last time you were completely OK with someone not responding to an email you sent them?

Email isn’t designed to be a broadcast medium and your nurture process shouldn’t treat it that way.

Instead of just having a nurture push content, start pulling feedback from recipients. If someone reads a blog post or downloads an ebook, use triggered email to ask their thoughts. If that person responds, they’ve given you permission to start diving deeper into the larger issues that are motivating them to engage with you. Don’t miss that opportunity.

To borrow again from Vaynerchuck, this approach lets you effectively set up your ask. (Side note: If you haven’t read his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook you should do so after finishing this post.)

Here’s the thing about Gary Vaynerchuk: he’s been right an awful lot of times in his career. Don’t let your nurture campaign be another excuse for him to say “I told you so.”


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