7 Types of Lead Nurturing Campaigns

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December 2010
About the Pie Chart
The data presented in the pie chart is
derived from the Q4 2010 Gleansight
benchmark report on Lead Nurturing
(n= 289). The data serves as the
basis for this Gleansight Deep Dive,
which provides analyst commentary
related to a particular aspect of the
topic. The objective is to provide
additional perspective and illuminate
certain key considerations regarding
the implementation of the related
technology-enabled business initiative.
To learn more about Gleanster’s
research methodology, please click
here or email research@gleanster.com.
Deep Dive
The Seven Types of Lead
Nurturing Campaigns
In Q3 2010, Gleanster surveyed 279 business-to-business organizations
on the topic of lead nurturing. Top Performing organizations were
identified by segmenting respondents that reported the highest revenue,
return on marketing investments and average click-through rates in
email campaigns. While far more likely to use lead nurturing than
Everyone Else, Top Performers also are early adopters of nurture-
marketing techniques. What has become increasingly obvious from
surveying and talking to industry practitioners is that there are a finite
number of lead-nurturing campaigns that actually produce results.
43%
Percentage of Top Performers that regard “Generate
mer Insights” as a top reason to monitor Social Media
68%
Percentage of Top Performers that regard “increase the relevance of marketing
communications” as a top reason to implement a lead nurturing initiative
Identifying which types of campaigns
will have the most significant impact on
revenue will help focus limited resources
on activi¬ties that drive success. After
all, increasing revenue was the number
one reason cited by all companies
for using—or planning to use—lead-
nurturing techniques.
Top Performers indicated a primary
driver behind lead nurturing efforts was
a desire to increase the relevance of
marketing communi¬cations (43%). This
suggests Top Performers are experienc-
ing discernible benefits from more
personalized, relevant communica¬tions
with prospects and customers. In fact,
respondents conducting personalized
and segmented email campaigns
reported an average click-through rate
of 5% to 8%, almost double the perfor-
mance from companies that indicated
they only personalized the salutation of
a generic email message.
But personalization can be a double-

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The Seven Types of Lead Nurturing Campaigns 2
Top Performers Defined
Gleanster uses 2-3 key performance
indicators (KPIs) to distinguish “Top
Performers” from all other companies
(“Everyone Else”) within a given data
set, thereby establishing a basis
for benchmarking best practices.
By definition, Top Performers are
comprised of the top quartile of
qualified survey respondents (QSRs).
The KPIs used for distinguishing Top
Performers focus on performance
metrics that speak to year-over-
year improvement in relevant,
measurable areas. Not all KPIs
are weighted equally. The KPIs
used for this Gleansight are:
• 12-month change in revenue
• 12-month chane in lead-
to-sales ratio
edged sword. We also know that
there are diminish¬ing returns on
personalized initiatives; at some point,
click-through rates hit a ceiling, even
with higher degrees of personalization
and segmentation. But the effort and
time it takes to develop personalized
marketing content has left a dark cloud
over lead-nurturing initiatives for many
organizations. Marketing leaders often
say they do not nurture leads or use
segmentation because they do not have
the resources to develop lead-nurturing
content. Since lead nurturing results
in positive return on investments for
Top Performers, it is possible to tease
out some finite milestones and best
practices for Everyone Else.
Personalized content is not, by itself, the
answer. The success of lead nurturing
campaigns comes from relevance. If
one delivers the right content at the right
stage in the buying cycle, one drives
a much deeper level of understanding
about products and services. Therefore,
existing content may be more effective,
if delivered at the right time.
Seven Types of Lead
Nurturing Campaigns
The most common lead nurturing
question from industry practitioners
relates to content devel-opment. “How
much content do we need to develop
and how do we distribute it across our
nurturing campaigns?” The answer is
two-fold:
1. Go through the exercise of mapping
the existing marketing content to
the different stages of the buying
cycle (See Gleanster Deep Dive:
Mapping Content to the Buying
Cycle). Chances are good there is
already some content that will be
appropriate for starting one or more
lead-nurturing campaigns. Measur-
able benefits from lead nurturing
can be realized with very little effort
when the goal is to deliver the right
content at the right stage in the
buying cycle.
2. It depends on the types of lead
nurturing campaigns that are most
appropriate to the sales cycle.
These will vary by company size,
target audience, buying cycle and
industry. Since content maps to
prospect needs, delivering content
is contingent on the type of lead-
nurturing campaign.
In fact, there are seven different types
of lead nurturing campaigns, and each
accom¬plishes very different results and
captures different prospects at different
stages of the buying and sales cycle.
(See Table 1.)
Taleo, a leading provider of employee
capital management solutions, runs
more than 30 lead nurturing campaigns
in any given day (See the Taleo
Success Story “Seeding and Cultivat-
ing the Taleo Revenue Engine with
Lead Nurturing”). In reality, Taleo is
repur¬posing content within different
types of lead nurturing campaigns and
triggering these campaigns according
to prospect behavior or drip-marketing
techniques. Essentially, Taleo is sorting
leads like automated coin machines
sort handfuls of change and placing
them into appropriate campaigns. This
doesn’t necessarily require 30 different
marketing messages, as one can re-use
marketing copy and resources across
different campaigns. At Taleo, marketers
are compensated for their impact
on the pipeline. Those 30 nurturing
campaigns help ensure bookings are 4x
revenue objectives for the next quarter,
3x revenue objectives for the quarter
after that, and 1x revenue objectives
for the next two quarters. That leaves

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Figure 1: The Seven Types of Lead Nurturing Campaigns
marketers directly tied to a forward-
looking 12-month pipeline.
Table continued on next page...

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A good rule of thumb for getting started
is to consolidate campaigns in terms of
functional objectives, and pick at least
one type of campaign for each function.
(See Table 2.) That way, nurturing
campaigns will capture new customer
acquisition, retention and up-selling
revenue.
Top Performers typically engage in a
handful of these campaigns at any given
time or in some cases run a handful
of identical campaigns with different
messaging (by product, industry, role,
etc.). When used in conjunction with
automated scoring and prioritization
provided by lead management technol-
ogy, prospects can be routed into
different campaigns automatically. In
fact, it’s simply not possible to manually
nurture leads across all of these
scenarios. This is the beauty of lead
manage¬ment technologies. The tools
allow marketers to create a series of
rules for each campaign that determine
how to route prospects appropriately to
maximize conversion.
Figure 2: Choose One Lead Nurturing Campaign for Each Function
Deep Dive Talking Points
• Respondents that personalized and segmented email campaigns reported
an average click-through rate of 5-8%, almost double the performance from
companies that indicated they only personalized the salutation of a generic
email message.
• There are seven types of lead nurturing campaigns
• Get started with lead nurturing by choosing one type of lead nurturing
campaign for each function. Develop these three campaigns first and
measure the impact on the pipeline

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Integrated CRM
Marketing Automation
Lead Prioritization
Social Media Engagement
Mobile Marketing
Lead Nurturing
Email Marketing Personalization
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7 Types of Lead Nurturing Campaigns

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