I’ve written about Lead Nurturing before. In very simple terms, it show you how build a relationship with prospects that are not ready to buy from you – yet. How? But engaging them in an informative dialog. You want to do with irrespective of the normal marketing ‘criteria’ such as budget, authority or timing.
Lead Nurturing is also about Permission Marketing, as Seth Godin would say. You want to just keep in touch with these prospects by informing and educating them so that you are on ‘top of mind’ when they are ready.

But why will they engage with you and more importantly, stay engaged?

Be Relevant

You can be relevant by not being too ‘salesy’ or self promotional, talking about their industry, their issues. If you know that a prospect bought a competitor’s product, but continues reading your content, you know you are being Relevant – it’s just that simple.

So, the three steps to Nurture, and be Relevant are:

1. Sent at least four educational emails – they should evoke a smile and joyful emotion.
2. One one soft promotion like a white paper or a webinar, or a live seminar invitation.
3. One hard sell – free trial if you offer one, or a special limited time offer.

Remember to restrict your hard sell to 1/5 th of all your email communication, otherwise you will see sudden ‘unsubscribers’.

How often?

If you have permission, and your content is highly relevant, with a very little promotion, then you can send emails once a week, sometimes more frequently if you know you are engaging them and they are lapping up your content.

How do you know you are engaging your prospects?

Use the right Marketing Automation Tools. And remember, just because doctors use EMR Software does not make them productive, they have to optimize their workflow, similarly, just by using good marketing automation software you do not see the results. You must produce / seek out great content and must have a good process in place to execute it.