1. ADVANCED B2B
LEAD NURTURING
Strategies for getting more out of
your lead nurturing from day one
By Phil Vallender
Director, Blend Marketing Ltd

2. The Reading HubSpot User Group is a community for anyone interested
in HubSpot and inbound marketing.
We hold regular meetings in the Reading area and discuss inbound
topics at our LinkedIn group.
For more information and to sign up to be notified about upcoming
meetings, go to:
rghug.com

3. One of the key benefits of adopting marketing automation
is access to lead nurturing, right?

4. It should be, only…
When you get access to that shiny, new
lead-nurturing toolset, there is:
• Almost no robust guidance
• No time to become an expert
• Limited feedback on which to base
decisions.

5. Which results in:
• Multiple, underperforming workflows
• Lightly personalised, ineffective emails
• A lack of feedback on which to base change.

6. It’s time to change all this
Here are three strategies you can use to get better results from
your lead nurturing from day one.

7. First of all
What is lead nurturing?

8. Lead nurturing is…
A process for:
• Staying in touch, without interrupting
• Maintaining engagement for the duration of the
decision process
• Helping and educating
• Building supplier preference
• Add your own definition here.

9. Why do it?
Lots of reasons, including:
• Most leads aren’t ready to buy
• Nurturing emails get 8% CTR compared to 3% for regular
marketing emails
• Nurturing emails get 4-10x the response of regular marketing
emails
• Nurtured leads spend more (47% more on average)
• Nurturing shortens the sales cycle
• It’s automated, scalable and cost effective.

10. So, what are the three strategies?
1. Use fewer workflows - far fewer, one if possible
2. Send highly personalised emails around bespoke segments
3. Make incremental, data-driven improvements.

11. Use fewer workflows

12. Fewer workflows
Passing leads through multiple workflows dilutes the statistical
significance of all results.
Leads
Workflow
1
Workflow
2
Workflow
3
% % %

13. Fewer workflows
Passing leads through fewer
workflows concentrates your sample
on the variables within them, offering
you statistical significance faster.
Leads
Workflow
1
%!

14. Having fewer workflows means that results point more strongly
and more quickly to what is working and what is not.

15. How to set up your workflow
Keep workflow set-up
simple. If you only
have one, enrol all
leads.
Use ‘First conversion
date’ to control
enrolment – see
section on making
improvements.
Exclude email opt-
outs as they will
negatively skew your
results

16. Workflow set-up cont.
Day 3 Day 5 Day 15
Base workflow design on your best guess initially:
• Number of emails
• Delay between emails
• Length of workflow

17. Send highly
personalised emails

18. Personalisation
Nurturing works best when you send very relevant, timely,
personalised information.

19. Send highly personalised emails
To do this, you need to be able to
segment your audience.
But you can’t segment on default
contact properties like job title or city.
So, you have to create your own
segments.

20. Creating segments
Explicit data
• Data gathered directly from
leads on your forms:
• What’s your greatest X
challenge?
• Do you already use Y?
• What Z best describes you?
Implicit data
• Data inferred from behaviour
• Recent conversion
• First conversion
• Original source
• Browsing device
• Social media accounts
• Third party data – surveys,
webinars, etc.
There are two types of data on which you can create segments

21. Creating segments
To create segments on explicit data:
• add bespoke questions to your forms.
To create segments on implicit data:
• Use automatically completed fields (i.e.
recent conversion)
• Cross reference fields (i.e. industry with
function to define persona)
• Create readable versions of awkward
fields with workflows.

22. Send highly personalised emails
At each stage of your workflow pick a
segment to contextualise around
Write the most relevant, informative or
helpful email you can for each possible
value
Use a combination of smart lists and smart
content to serve the right content to each
recipient.

23. Tips for better results
Subject lines in HubSpot can’t be smart, yet, so:
• Write them carefully to appeal to all segments
• Insert the segment variable in the subject, if you can
• If the segment variable is unusable, create a friendly version
with a workflow – example on next slide.
Relevance and recall improve open rates

24. Example: Using a workflow to set a property

25. Tips for better results cont.
Use the best, most relevant content available:
• Ebooks and whitepapers
• Relevant blog posts
• Videos, demos, events, etc.
Ignore empty segments
- Every smart email needs a default, catch-all version anyway.

26. Make incremental, data-
driven improvements

27. Review your workflow on a regular
schedule, i.e. quarterly:
 Update all emails with latest
content
 Implement winner from previous
experiment
 Identify areas for potential
improvement
 Launch new experiment
Update
emails
Implement
winners
Identify next
experiment
Launch new
experiment
Repeat

28. Review all emails for places to promote newly created content
and resources.
Update
emails

29. Unless this is your first iteration, compare the results of the most
recent experiment with previous time period and implement the
version that performed best. Don’t be afraid to roll back.
Implement
winners

30. With all leads passing through a small number of workflows,
results will point strongly to areas where you can potentially
improve performance.
Identify new
experiment

31. Use the data available in the workflow tool to identify tests to run
in the next quarter.
For example, target the email with the lowest engagement.
Identify new
experiment

32. Things you can try changing:
• Email content
• Segmentation
• Number of emails
• Delay between emails
• Etc.
Launch new
experiment

33. Example: subject line experiment
Workflow performance
• Email 1 – click rate 9.65%
• Email 2 – click rate 3.05%
• Email 3 – click rate 3.13%
Experiment: change Email 2 subject line:
• From ‘Overcome your greatest marketing challenge’
• To ‘The keys to {{ contact.biggest_marketing_challenge }}’
• i.e. The keys to driving more traffic
• i.e. The keys to generating more leads, etc
Results:
82% increase in
Email 2 click rate
from 3.05% to
5.56%!

34. Run your new experiment for the planned period of time and then
repeat the process.
Repeat

35. Looking ahead
Look out for the right time to split one workflow into multiple
workflows aimed at specific segments
• Only do this when the data through each workflow will give you the
statistical significance you need to inform changes.
As workflow performance, lead volume and content library grow:

36. Other things to consider
Do you use smart content on your website to
nurture leads?
Are your CTAs smart?
Are you monitoring social media for your leads’
activity?
Are sales and marketing on the same page?

37. To recap
Use fewer workflows
Send highly personalised emails
Make incremental, data-driven improvements
Get better results

38. THANK YOU
Join the discussion on LinkedIn at:
bit.ly/readinghug