Executing High-Impact Long-term Nurture Workflows

Every company generates thousands of leads and routinely works through them to convert them. However, in this process, many of these leads get lost and are eventually forgotten. MarketingSherpa reports that a staggering 79% of leads never convert on first interaction. Keeping track of lost leads is a challenging task as they keep piling up year after year. However, if you have an automated, scalable system, you can still take advantage of it and increase your revenue with less effort and expenditure. That is what we call a long-term nurture workflow.

For several reasons, like budget, immature handling, or attractive competing products a lead may be lost at the beginning of the marketing and sales process. However, none of these means you can't pursue them again after a particular time. Implementing a long-term nurture workflow can help with that with automation services.

How to Execute Long-term Nurture Workflows

While the database setup requires planning, long-term nurture workflows can be surprisingly manageable. The workload will largely depend on your marketing automation platform and CRMs, such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and Marketo. But, before you automate the process, you will first need to align your sales and marketing teams. 

Together, both teams will need to establish lead-scoring guidelines and define the lifecycle stages. Then, the leads should be assigned to the company's leads database. Following this step, it's advisable to divide the leads into four categories to handle them accordingly.

Closed-Lost Leads

Closed-lost leads are the ones that were moved down to the sales team, but the lead didn't want to purchase. As discussed before, there can be many reasons for that, and depending on them, these leads can be revisited. 

How to handle:

• The first step would be for the sales team to mark a lead as closed or lost and mention the reason why the lead was lost in notes.
• Since the lead was already approached unsuccessfully once, it would be advisable to steer clear of traditional outreach methods and go for a more personalized approach.
• If the conversation went poorly the first time, try to assign the lead to a different sales rep and carefully outline your strategy before establishing contact.
• If you decide to follow up on a closed-lost lead, a six-month gap should be good enough. However, the decision should be taken by a company's sales team after considering all factors. 
• Lastly, set up a notification system in your marketing automation platform to alert the assigned sales reps that they can now revisit the lead.

Dormant SQLs

Dormant Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) are leads that reached the sales teams but could not be converted. The sales teams can primarily define these, but generally, if an SQL has been inactive for three months, it can be considered dormant. 

How to handle:

• An automated long-term nurture workflow incorporated with routine manual check-ins will work best for these. 
• The lead could receive a bi-weekly automated email containing content offers, press releases, blog posts, sales flyers, or other materials.
• These emails could be followed by monthly emails manually sent by the assigned sales reps.
• If the dormant SQL takes any action, like clicking through the email links or replying, the leads can be removed from the dormant list, and the sales reps can contact them manually.

Dormant MQLs

Dormant Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are leads who respond to a company's marketing efforts. However, in terms of short-term workflows, they become lost if the MQLs do not progress to the sales teams as SQLs. Like SQLs, three months of inactivity from an MQL can be considered dormant.

How to handle:

• Unlike dormant SQLs, dormant MQLs should be handled with an automated system. For example, send them links to the resources and blog sections to invite them to check out content offers and favorable blog posts.
• Send invitations to follow the company or join a group on social media, and offer some incentives, like free samples, trial offers, or more. You can even nudge them with product information or request a quote.
• If the dormant MQL takes an action following these steps, they should be moved to the list of SQLs. However, if they still don't respond, they should be listed again for the next set of emails.

Dormant Non-Qualified Leads

These leads are the ones that have not been qualified as either sales-ready or marketing-ready. Generally, your HubSpot database is where you store your dormant non-qualified leads without including them in any automated long-term nurture workflows.

How to handle:

• First, the sales and marketing teams must decide whether these leads should be in the database. If not, they should be listed as ‘unqualified leads’, and neither team should revisit them.
• There may be times when some of these leads belong to an industry that might become the company's target in the future. In that case, these leads will have long-term value and should still be emailed about major company updates or news.

So…

Long-term nurture workflows allow marketers and sales teams to nurture leads at their own pace, ensuring that the leads receive personalized communication at key touch points. This strategy enables marketers and sales teams to effectively engage with potential customers at all stages of the buyer's journey. As a result, it becomes easier to maintain a line of branded communication and stay top-of-mind for prospects in the market.