Marketing Research Chart: Messaging tactics for effective lead nurturing

In order to create an engaging experience with your audience, you must be attentive to their preferences. What content do they want or need? What subject matter is in demand, and in what format do they want to receive it?

Therefore, we asked respondents …

Q: Which of the following have been the most effective for nurturing your leads?

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Despite the interest in new messaging tactics, such as infographics and podcasts, email newsletters have been rated as the most effective channel for nurturing leads, with 57% of respondents indicating as such.

Comparatively, infographics (8%) and podcasts (6%) were not widely selected by our respondents.

This is perhaps due to how email newsletters present marketers with a great deal of testing capabilities, allowing them to collect data on the most effective content to pinpoint precise times their audience wants to receive it.

Tactics, such as whitepapers (35%), thought leadership articles (35%) and webinars (30%) — all tactics highly geared for a B2B market — performed strongly, as well.

This is likely due to the general nature of B2B purchasing. B2B buyers typically take longer to buy, spend more on their purchases and involve more people in their purchasing decisions than everyday consumers. This creates a greater need for informative materials to satisfy their needs, and evaluate the various features of available solutions.

Points to consider

Has your organization tried new messaging tactics for lead nurturing? How have these tactics performed when compared to more "tried and true" tactics like whitepapers and email? Have email newsletters maintained the same effectiveness in nurturing leads toward conversion?

For more information about lead generation, download the free excerpt from the 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report. And, be sure to share your own analysis of this chart in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group for a chance to be published in a future blog post.

Useful links related to this research

Lead Nurturing: Pilot campaign increases conversion 32.6% with automated emails

Email Marketing: The importance of lead nurturing in the complex B2B sale

Lead Nurturing: How much content is enough?

Lead Nurturing: Fewer emails yield 225% more sales leads