How modern B2B marketers can nurture effectively and how Pipeline360’s new solution makes it easier than ever
B2B marketers have always known that lead nurture is important. But in today’s B2B landscape with longer buying cycles, more decision-makers, and most buyers not immediately sales-ready, nurture is critical.
In our Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing, we explored how nurture drives pipeline and why it’s essential for marketers. But for many teams, knowing the strategy and doing it right are two very different things.
That’s exactly why we built our new nurture solutions, Branded Nurture and Nurture360, to help you turn strategy into action, and leads into opportunities.
Nurture 101: A Recap on Why Nurture Matters (and Now More Than Ever)
For those who haven’t read the guide here’s the ‘too long; didn’t read (TL;DR) ’😊:
- Buyers move on their own timeline. They’re researching anonymously and at their own pace. They now complete up to 70% of their research independently before contacting sales, making traditional outreach less effective. This means you need to stay top-of-mind throughout their journey, not just after a form fill or a content download.
- Most leads aren’t sales-ready. In fact, only a small percentage of buyers want to talk to sales right away. This leaves the majority needing to be educated, guided, and reminded you exist.
- Sales cycles are longer. 75% of B2B marketers say their sales cycles have grown and nearly 20% report extensions of 4+ months. That’s plenty of time for buyers to forget about you.
- Nurtured leads convert better. Our research found that nurture programs can increase pipeline performance by up to 20% and improve ROI by nearly 40% when done right.
- The best programs run continuously. Nurture isn’t a one-and-done email campaign (or even a few). It should be an always-on strategy that educates buyers at any stage and can re-engage those that go cold.
If you want to actually build pipeline, nurture is table stakes.
Nurture 201: Moving from Theory to Action
Knowing that you should nurture is easy. Doing it right can be the hard part. Here are three practical ways to ensure you are nurturing effectively, and how Pipeline360 helps you make each one happen with no sweat:
1. Commit to Always-On Nurture (Not One-and-Done): Many programs treat nurture like a campaign, not a continuous strategy. But prospects don’t buy on your timeline. They buy when they are ready. So, set up an evergreen nurture stream that adapts to buyer stage and activity, with the right content that builds trust and advances their knowledge of you over time.
How Pipeline360 Helps: We do the heavy lifting. Our nurture programs can run continuously with content support and multichannel delivery across email and display. We help you stay in front of your leads with consistent, relevant follow-up at scale. And if you run out of assets or content, we can fill that gap too with our Content & Creative Services.
2. Nurture What You’ve Already Paid For: Net-new demand is expensive. If you’ve already captured a qualified lead, don’t let it go cold (i.e. to waste). Instead of focusing budget on solely new acquisition, make sure you’re making the most of your existing database and continuing to water those seeds. It’s like the old saying: it’s more expensive to get a new customer than to keep one; the same goes for leads.
How Pipeline360 Helps: We help you activate ‘old leads’ with nurture flows that can warm them back up. So whether they came in last week or last year, we help wake them back up from the ‘dead’.
3. Use Nurture for Marketing and Sales Alignment: Marketing and sales alignment has always been a challenge. Even though they’re part of the same business, they often work in silos and gaps in the handoff process can make or break a deal. Sales may not know why they’re getting a lead, how to prioritize it, or what activity the lead has already taken so they can have the right initial conversation. That first impression matters and context makes all the difference.
How Pipeline360 Helps: Our nurture programs come with integrated lead scoring, engagement signals, and reporting, to help you help sales prioritize outreach and personalize conversations so reps can show up prepared and make the best first impression.
The Problem: Most Teams Can’t Do Nurture Alone or Well
Even with the right intent, most marketers face the same challenges:
- No bandwidth to plan or manage ongoing nurture
- Disconnected tools and inconsistent execution
- Disparate reporting or limited visibility into who’s ‘sales-ready’
As a result, good leads go cold. Sales gets frustrated. And pipeline suffers.
However, companies that do run effective nurture programs:
- See 20% more sales generated through nurtured leads
- Generate 50% more sales with 33% lower cost expenses
- Have 47% larger purchases made by nurtured leads as compared to non-nurtured
How Pipeline360 Solves the Problem
We created our nurture solutions to make effective lead nurturing easy without needing to add new partners or tech, doing more work, or adding more human resources. With us, you get:
- Multichannel nurture programs aligned to buyer stage and intent
- Consistent follow-up for your leads we generate
- Integrated insights that show who’s ready for outreach
- Full-service strategy, content, targeting, and reporting
It’s essentially nurture-as-a-service and it’s built to turn your warm leads into hot pipeline.
Final Thought
If you’re in the demand gen game, don’t just stop when you get the right leads. Nurture is the key next step that builds relationships, lets you stay visible, and converts interest into pipeline- no matter when the buyer is ready. And now, with Pipeline360, it’s easier than ever to do it, and do it right.
