Context Trumps Content For Lead Nurturing

“Hope and Pray” is not a strategy

Traditional marketing automation solutions are designed to deliver marketing content triggered by web site contact registration and downloads, demo requests or via a fixed schedule of content delivery in nurture tracks. The effectiveness of nurture campaigns (often called drip campaigns) is dependent upon the quality and type of content delivered, and the pace and delivery schedule of that content within the marketing funnel without any regard for the interests of the prospect. It’s what I call a ‘hope and pray’ strategy without any regard to the “voice of the prospect” or “understanding of the lead” or “type of content they would really cherish”. How can you re-engineer this process to know more about the leads and engage them with content they truly need?

Understand the ‘Interests’ of the Prospect

I believe there is a better and easier way to understand (geek word: “analyze”) your leads ‘at scale’. The digital and social footprints left by your prospects or leads on public channels, provide valuable insights into their needs, wants and interests. Analyzing these interactions and measuring them against a behavioral and also demographic framework; and further augmenting with existing information in Marketing Automation and CRM systems is the key to driving these insights.

Example of Lead Analytics

In my previous blogs I have written quite extensively about ‘hyper personalization’ at scale. “Context” is in fact the key to personalization of “content” at scale.

Technology and an Organizational Challenge

There is little argument that context is the next level of refinement for content. However, for this to work, there remain challenges in both technology and process that we must address. I personally think that the technological challenge is nearly solved and we are already seeing solutions emerge. The organizational challenge is more daunting – Primarily, most organizations have created processes that work with content but have almost entirely missed the context part of this new marketing equation.

Early Results

So how compelling is this potent combination of leveraging lead level analytics and contextual data? Results of A/B testing done by IT World Canada indicated an increase in lead velocity of 500% and CTR of 2.5x compared to traditional methods such as email. You be the judge.

Would love to hear your thoughts and perspectives.

Context Trumps Content For Lead Nurturing