Nurturing Prospects with Drip Marketing
By Scott Adams

"When you need a friend, it’s too late to make one."
- Mark Twain

Remember the Good Old Days … just a couple of years ago when business was great? The biggest problem my customers had was being able to recruit, hire, and train qualified sales reps fast enough to match the growing volume of prospects! Oh, the Good Old Days ...

Today I hear a different story. Leads have dried up. In some instances, the lead volume has dropped 70% or more, despite increases in marketing budgets.

Mass email campaigns are not the answer

It seems like most companies are experimenting with new ways to generate leads. Haven’t you noticed the flurry of HTML-based emailed newsletters and product promotions hitting your email Inbox?

I find the recent switch from direct mail campaigns to mass email interesting. Is it inexpensive? Yes. Is it effective? No. How long does it take to delete such email messages? The next wave in hot software might be Spam killers. I just bought a Spam killer myself. Two-thirds of my email was Spam. I hate Spam! While I love Dell computers, I do not love Dell’s unsolicited emailed promotions. Most people that I talk with feel the same. They cannot press the Delete key fast enough.

Why are marketing teams so enamored with mass email programs? I spoke to a company recently that sent out over 40,000 email messages to invite the recipients to a seminar. They paid a large sum for a single-use email list just for this campaign. Still, they had only 30 responses, or a .075% response rate. On a whim, they decided to send out 1,000 letters with the same seminar announcement and received 14 responses, or a 1.4% response rate. They were surprised. I am not.

Unsolicited email newsletters rarely generate quality leads or even a decent quantity of responses.

The puzzle of orphaned inquiries

Even with a great response rate from such campaigns, sadly enough, sales reps rarely follow up on them. Studies show that over 90% of these leads are what some call “D” leads. The “D” does not stand for “Dogs”, but some sales reps think so. These “Dogs” commonly are not ready to buy any product in the next several months. Since sales reps are measured on what they sell now, not a year in the future, they have little interest in developing a relationship with someone who is not in the “buying mode” today, or at least in the next few months.

Most sales reps intend to follow up in a few months, but few do. Having spent a lot of their budget on generating the lead, Marketing gets upset that Sales doesn’t follow up. The lead goes stale, and the marketing investment is lost.

We are not talking about small investments. If you had 200 “suspects” visit your trade show booth and you spent a total of $30,000 for the trade show (including travel expenses, booth amortization, space rental, etc.), your cost per “suspect” would be $150. If only 20 follow-up calls are made, then this cost rises to $1,500 each. You can see why Marketing gets upset.

You must nurture relationships early and patiently

Everyone agrees that sales reps should not spend a large percentage of their time calling contacts that are not ready to buy for another year. Your business needs sales this quarter. But few companies recognize the importance of nurturing a relationship with these “suspects”. Developing a relationship at this stage is critical. It is at this early phase of the “buying cycle” that the buyer is determining their business issues, their objectives, and their strategy. It is at this step that “consultative selling” is most appropriate. The buyer craves information—not product information, but information and proactive listening about how a solution like yours can help them.

You must maintain “top of mind” awareness by communicating frequently with the prospect. One-time mass email blasts or mailing a product brochure once a year miss the point.

Hewlett-Packard and TMS sponsored a research project a few years ago titled Selling to Senior Executive. This study sought to determine how sales reps can better approach senior executives. The study revealed when the senior executive is most involved in the buying cycle. During the first three stages (Understand current issues, Establish objectives, Set strategy), executive involvement was high—80%. Once the buying cycle moved to the next stage (Explore options, Set vendor criteria), executive involvement dropped to 20%. Think about this. Just about the time that your sales rep decides he has a “prospect”, the involvement of the key executive influencers in the sale drop. But when executives want information to help identify their problems and what can be done to solve them, reps usually ignore them. Bad timing!

What are you doing during this phase of the sale to become their “trusted advisor”, to be seen as a solution provider and not a product vendor? What will develop their trust? How will you keep your name at the top of their mind?

With a complex product demanding a selling cycle that can be several months long, the need to develop a trusting relationship during the early stages of the buying cycle is even more important. When you find the prospect in the “ready to buy” stage where they are evaluating vendor solutions, you have little success in influencing their requirements.

Instead, sales reps are responding to Request for Proposals and answering “Can you do this?” questions.

You must nurture the relationship with the prospect long before they are ready to look at vendors. As Stephen Covey, the Dean of 7 Habits, says, you must make some deposits into the relationship bank before you can start attempting withdrawals. It is during the early buying stage that you must maintain consistent communication with the prospect and establish trust, credibility, and value by being there.

Experts say the best time to initiate and cultivate a relationship with any prospect is before the prospect is even close to buying. You must maintain “top of mind” awareness by communicating frequently with the prospect. One-time mass email blasts or mailing a product brochure once a year miss the point.

You must offer the prospect something of value, such as ways to solve a problem. Avoid sending product information at this stage. In short, start making your deposits into the Customer Bank of Trust early so that interest grows normally. When the prospect is ready to look at solutions, most likely they will remember you…fondly enough to call you. Then you have a high-quality prospect that respects you.

Sounds great, but how do you do this? Trying to get your sales rep to call the prospect every month is rarely the answer. Not only is it expensive, but most prospects do not want to speak directly with a sales rep at this time.

The best solution is patient, intelligent, relevant nurture marketing.

Drip Marketing

Nurture marketing is a way to describe an intensive care approach to customer relationship development. A concept evangelized by Jim Cecil, his team has helped firms like Microsoft and AT&T to develop stronger relationships with their prospects, customers, partners, and key influencers. Cecil encourages intentional and intelligent relationship marketing. His gardening metaphor illustrates how nurture marketing works.

Imagine a garden filled with a variety of vegetables. Between the rows of radishes and onions you place a hose with tiny holes through which water will drip. Between the rows of tomatoes and pumpkins you place a hose with larger holes through which nutrients will flow. The radish and onion hose is connected to a timer that turns on the water once per day for five minutes. The tomato and pumpkin hose is connected to a timer that turns on the water twice a day for ten minutes. Once properly set up, this drip irrigation system is totally automatic. It ensures the right amount of water is fed to each crop at the proper intervals.

The right things done for the right people at the right time, every time!

Now consider your own marketing plans. Imagine the marketplace in which you target a variety of prospects with a wide variety of buying values and motives. For example, when selling to operations personnel you use letters that talk about efficiency and the time that will be saved by using your product. When selling to corporate management, you use letters that talk about competitive advantages and bottom-line performance. The operations personnel receive a letter every four weeks for six months, followed up with a personal phone call. Corporate management receives a letter every three weeks for eight months. Once properly set in place, this marketing system (referred to as "drip marketing”) is totally automatic. It ensures the right information is sent to each prospect at the proper intervals.

Acknowledging the drip irrigation metaphor has two objectives. First, keeping your message in front of the prospect professionally, intelligently, and persistently attains the valued "top of mind" awareness. Second, using your message to influence the prospect pre-disposes them to learn to think of your product in a positive light.

Putting your message in front of prospects appropriately is simple. Influencing the prospect is achieved by tailoring each message (each "drip") to the intended audience and by telling your story through the series of drips.

"A relationship is based on a series of positive interactions."
--Rich Bohn, The Denali Group

An Action Plan is a series of letters written specifically for each target identified. The intention of this series is twofold; first, to maintain "top of mind" awareness through repetition and second, to tell your marketing story in such a way as to accomplish the objectives established for the target.

• Unfold Your Story: This is a series of letters, not a single letter. As such, unfold your story slowly. Don't try to say everything in the first letter. Remember, the odds that the prospect perceives a need for your product or service when the first letter arrives is quite slim. For example, if there are four distinct points you want to make about your product or service, make just one point in the first letter, and allude to more that will be forthcoming. Make another point in the second letter and another in the third.
  
  
• Link Your Letters Together by your Image and Values: Each letter should stand alone and be perceived as a spontaneous touch. Your logo will remind the reader that they already know you.
  
  
• Use a Visual Metaphor: Find some every-day metaphor that describes your point. Such a visual metaphor is easier to remember, as it will stand out from your competitors' messages. It also provides a powerful way to link your letters together.
  
  
• Provide Useful Information: Choose for yourself the style of letter you want to write. Several marketing experts suggest giving customers and prospects useful information (such as reprints of pertinent articles) in conjunction with your marketing letter, as a way of "softening" the sales pitch. These enclosures would not promote your product or service, but rather, would help educate your prospect about their own business or industry. A form letter that says, "I came across this article and thought you might find it interesting..." sounds a lot more personal.