What is Lead Nurturing?

An important lead management practice, often called drip-marketing or lead incubation, lead nurturing provides additional periodic communications to help keep your name and brand in front of potential buyers until they’re your customers. An often-overlooked step is ongoing post-sale communications to continue building relationships with the goal of making your customers "customers for life."

How Does Lead Nurturing Work?

Traditional lead nurturing practices include labor-intensive chores such as:

• Sending out paper brochures, print birthday and holiday cards, special offer letters, etc. via direct mail,
• developing and mailing monthly print newsletters,
• making periodic phone calls to unqualified leads,
• and similar activities designed to keep your name in front of potential buyers.

SoftVu transforms traditional hit-and-miss lead nurturing chores into automated lead nurturing strategies built around proven best-practice-based marketing campaigns that:

• Identify and present your most compelling messages
• Blend media and marketing channels to strategically increase contact rates (for example, non-viewers of digital media might receive print postcards directing them to information on-line)
• Automate Lead Nurturing chores with SoftVu’s automated marketing software delivery platform
• Provide complete business intelligence reporting, including view notifications and robust message tracking

SoftVu clients automatically can incubate and reach out to prospects, turning them into qualified leads by cultivating their interest over time in a direct, personal way that other marketing campaigns can’t.

"Lead nurturing... will move from a good idea to common practice during the next two to five years. Forrester expects [successful marketers] to focus on process and technology investments that move marketing’s responsibilities further along the purchasing process and tie marketing efforts to sales results."
— Forrester Research, Inc., Oct. 2006

Companies who are not nurturing leads automatically could be leaving leads on the table. And once you automate leads, how do you know they are rendered and delivered correctly? If Internet communications are poorly written, or poorly coded and executed, you’re missing out on conversions. What if your email gets snapped by ISP filters before they even make it to the inbox?

Rely on Best Practices for Email Communications

From testing opt-in processes, to CAN-SPAM compliance checks, and correct email marketing frequency evaluations, SoftVu continually assesses lead nurturing programs to ensure the best possible ROI.

Other examples of SoftVu lead nurturing touch points include:

• eNewsletters
• Case Studies & Research Articles
• Coupons & Special Offers
• Holiday eGreetings
• Internet Commercials
• Rich Media Brochures
• eDemos
• Online Surveys
• Video Updates