HOW TO OPTIMIZE & TEST LEAD NURTURE CAMPAIGNS Library/Whitepapers... · Segment leads into groups to provide the most relevant content at the best time during the buying cycle. You

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HOWTOOPTIMIZE&TESTLEADNURTURECAMPAIGNS

2HOWTOOPTIMIZE&TESTLEADNURTURECAMPAIGNS

ABOUT BRIDGELINE DIGITAL

Bridgeline Digital, The Digital Engagement Company™, helps customers maximize the performance of our complete digital experience – from websites to intranets to online stores and marketing campaigns. Bridgeline’s Unbound platform (formerly iAPPS) deeply integrates Web Content Management, eCommerce, eMarketing, Social Media Management, and Web Analytics to ensure marketers deliver digital experiences that attract, engage, nurture and convert our customers across all channels. Headquartered in Burlington, Mass., Bridgeline has thousands of quality customers that range from small and medium-sized organizations to Fortune 1000 companies. To learn more please visit www.bridgeline.com or call (800) 603-9936.


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SUMMARY

Introduction to Lead Nurturing

Lead Nurturing: The Basics

Phases of a Lead Nurture Campaign

5 Ways to Optimize Lead Nurture Campaigns

The Key to Testing Campaigns

Which Variables Should You Test?

Monitoring Test Results

Conclusion

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Introduction to Lead Nurturing Congratulations! If you’re reading this guide, we assume you are creating or improving upon a lead nurturing program for your organization. This is something worth celebrating! Developing and refining effective Lead Nurturing Campaigns will provide more opportunities for your organization to convert prospects to leads and leads to paying customers, empowering your marketing and sales teams to gain an advantage over your competition.



Companieswithstrongleadnurturingprograms

produce50%moresales-readyleadsatathirdof

thecost.

Forrester

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Lead Nurturing: The Basics Lead Nurturing is the process of strengthening relationships with current and potential customers by providing helpful information as they evaluate your products or services and move closer towards making a purchase decision. What is a Lead Nurture Campaign? A Lead Nurture Campaign is a series of prepared emails scheduled to be sent at specific time intervals, like once per week or at varying time spans after a lead is entered. A Lead Nurture Campaign keeps your organization top-of-mind during the buying process, keeping your customers engaged and helping them determine if your products and services are right for them.



A Lead Nurture Campaign keeps your organization top-of-mind during The Buying Process.

57%ofmarketerssayleadnurturing

isthemostvaluablefeatureofautomationsoftware.

Ascend2

m

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Phases of a Lead Nurture Campaign If done correctly, a lead nurture campaign can work wonders to boost business, send timely messages and close leads. Check out the steps below to see how a visitor on your website evolves from a stranger to a loyal customer throughout the phases of a lead nurture campaign.



A visitor interacts with your content.

They fill out a form and the data is sent to automation software.

Content is personalized based on data variables like industry, location or webpages visited.

Leads are added to lead nurture campaigns based on the form completed and other customizable variables.

Leads engage with the campaign until they make a purchase or transfer to another campaign.

Data is saved to a profile as the lead interacts with your site and campaign.

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Optimizing Lead Nurture Campaigns Now that we’ve covered the basics of lead nurture campaigns, let’s discuss how to make them even better by optimizing them. There are many ways to optimize a lead nurture campaign as we’ve listed below. 5 Ways to Optimize a Lead Nurture Campaign:


Segment Your Leads:

Implement SEO:

Prepare for Omnichannel Engagement:

Personalize Content Based on Actual Data:

Ensure leads are in the right campaign:

Help search engines serve your content to people actively looking for what you offer. Insert your offer keywords in the URL, title, headings, meta description, image alt tags, body and links of your landing pages, forms, thank you pages and uploaded content.


Segment leads into groups to provide the most relevant content at the best time during the buying cycle. You can segment by many variables including industry, level of engagement, budget and price sensitivity all of which are customizable in your automation platform.

Your leads explore the internet on a daily basis. Capture attention on channels most frequented by your audience including email, social media, search engines and paid ads on the web and within apps. Keep a consistent tone, design and branding for experiences they’ll remember when it’s time to complete their purchase.

Your automation platform has been collecting data directly from your leads. Use this data to create variables of your webpages so leads instantly see relevant information when they visit your website. You can personalize content for any data collected from leads.

Automation platforms provide endless capabilities to get your leads the right information. Workflows are directions you set to tell your platform how to respond to lead activity. Set workflows to move leads to other campaigns based on changes in their level of engagement or behavior.

The Key to Testing Campaigns When testing campaigns, you can use different versions of one campaign to see how changing small variables can make a big difference in your conversion results. To identify what works and what doesn’t, you’ll need to compare and measure results, right? The key to testing variables in your lead nurture campaigns lies in setting up A/B testing and tracking results within your analytics. A/B Testing & Lead Nurture Campaigns A/B Testing is the process of serving variables of content to see which variations convert visitors more efficiently. You can A/B test with many variables within your lead nurture campaign including your webpages, forms, landing pages, emails, social media posts and ads.



Narrowingdownthemosteffectiveelementsofa

promotionandthencombiningthemcan

makeyourmarketingefforts

muchmoreprofitableandsuccessful.

Kissmetrics


IMPORTANT:Changeonlyonevariableduringeachtestforbestresults.

Testingmorethanonevariableatatimecouldbeconfusingbecause

youwon’tbeabletotellwhichonemadethe

differenceinconvertingyournewlead.

HOWTOOPTIMIZE&TESTLEADNURTURECAMPAIGNSWhich Variables Should I Test? Focus on testing elements most likely to impact the visitor and stick to testing one element at a time so you know what change made a difference.

!Overall Campaign Variables: Overall campaign calls-to-action (CTA), CTA button colors and text, highlighted text, image used to promote campaign, etc. Webpage and Landing Page Variables: Call-to-action (location, text used, button color, image vs. text CTA), headline, imagery, product descriptions, personalization, copywriting body and length, etc. Email Campaign Variables: Email subject lines, From name, imagery, calls-to-action within the email, CTA button colors or text, highlighted text, sent time, time between emails sent, personalization etc. Social Media Post Variables: Call-to-action (text used, button color), post date and time, post length, imagery, hashtags, mentions within post, copywriting, etc. PPC Advertisement Variables: Headline, link, SEO, quality score, copywriting, word order, ad with or without pricing, keywords, bidding strategy, etc.


Monitoring Test Results Set up A/B testing in your automation software and periodically check the analytics to see which variations are working best. You can also drill down in your analytics to see if certain audience segments respond better to certain variables than others and further refine your campaign.

What metrics should I track? You need to know which metrics to track per channel in order to determine which campaign variations are the most effective. Then, you can make adjustments to improve customer experience and increase conversion rates in the process. See below for a list of metrics per channel to determine effectiveness of your campaign messages.


Metrics of Success Overall Campaign: Revenue generated, conversion rate, cost per lead, return on investment, revenue per sale, customer acquisition cost

Webpage and Landing Page: Conversion rate, page visits, referral source

Email Campaign: Total opens, open rate, click rate, unique clicks and opens, click to open rate

Social Media Post: Referrals sent to website, follower growth, click rates, optimal engagement times, overall reach and engagement

PPC Advertisement: Cost per click, click through rates, quality scores


Conclusion Lead Nurture Campaigns are the best way to strengthen relationships with your organization’s current and potential customers. Staying in touch and demonstrating the benefits of purchasing from your organization is a surefire way to increase revenue and conversions. To get the most out of your Lead Nurture Campaigns, you want to make sure you optimize your campaigns by segmenting your list of leads, implement search engine optimization, syndicating content across multiple media channels, personalizing content and responding to changes in engagement and behavior from your leads. To further refine your campaigns over time, you should test variables within your campaign and monitor metrics of success. Depending on what platforms you are using to publicize your campaign, you’ll want to test overall variables of your campaign, webpage and landing page variables, email campaign variables, social media post variables and paid ad variables and then monitor their metrics of success to take note of what is working and refine your campaigns from there. Follow this guide and implement the optimization and testing procedures for your lead nurture campaigns and you’ll be on your way to dramatic improvements in your sales process and improved customer loyalty.


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This publication has been written in general terms and we recommend that you obtain professional legal and technical advice before acting or refraining from action on any of the contents of this publication. Bridgeline Digital accepts no liability for any loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of any material in this publication. © 2018 Bridgeline Digital. All rights reserved.



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HOW TO OPTIMIZE & TEST LEAD NURTURE CAMPAIGNS Library/Whitepapers... · Segment leads into groups to provide the most relevant content at the best time during the buying cycle. You