Sucessful Nurturing with ResponseLoop

Lately we have been trying to refine the process we use to nurture leads after initial contact. The success stories from our current strategy have excited our sales team and there is an increased interest in nurturing previously disqualified leads. I hope to start a discussion so that we can learn from our collective experiences.

This all started after we attended a seminar presented by Ken Krogue, President of InsideSales.com and self made marketing guru. Ken presented his strategy of marketing with the acronym of LOSER. The logic behind it is surprisingly simple but we have found it to be a very effective guide.

List We started by creating our list of different types of nurturing groups. The most effective way we found to build these lists is by using the leads' statuses. Instead of just “Unqualified” or “Not Interested” we created lead statuses which indicate how we would like to nurture these leads. This allows our reps to easily create dynamic lists that contain a focused group of leads.

Offer Since our lead statuses provide us with focused groups of leads we can tailor the offer we present to each group. The group who was not interested because of price concerns receives additional information on the ROI of our services or an offer for a discounted rate. The most promising group we contact are the people who expressed interest and saw a need but the time wasn't right. These groups all have different needs and require different types of nurturing to become a customer.

Skill Once we have determined what offer would best fit the groups of leads we work on the delivery of those offers. Most offers can be delivered effectively via email. We have seen the greatest results from emails that look personal yet professional. Extensive HTML code and graphics reduce the personal feel of emails while merge fields allow us to subtly use a lead’s information. For nurturing tasks that require a call or other interaction we automatically create a task for the Sales Rep to complete at the appropriate time.

Effort Part of our process when working on the 'skill' category is determining the timeliness of each marketing piece we send or contact we make. In marketing timing is everything and the ResponseLoop feature in InsideSales allows us to tailor and change the timing on the fly for each nurturing path.

Reporting Determining the effectiveness of a nurturing strategy is by far the most important step. To quote Ken, "Doing the first four steps will ensure that you don't LOSE but failing to track and monitor your success through reporting will make you a LOSER." Using InsideSales and being able to track a lead from initial contact, through the nurturing process and to the close has helped us refine our strategies.

InsideSales ResponseLoop has been key to our success with nurturing. Before, we would get busy and forget to send emails or do followup calls. With ResponseLoop once a nurturing path is set up it continues on without requiring any attention. At least until they call us back wanting to purchase our services!