Best practice on nurturing outbound leads

[07994]

Hello,

I'm a B2B marketing manager Lifecycle at a startup that sends marketing emails only to "Marketing Contacts". This means that any lead that was generated via the sales team (purchased from Zoominfo etc) will never receive a marketing email. I was wonderring if this is best practice as we didn't use this filter on the previous startup I worked at. This means that if an SDR email a lead, and the lead is intrested and asked for a demo, turns into an MQL/SQL and finally a customer at no point he will be nurtuted by the marketing team. I was wonderring if this makes sense? Would love to hear any other marketers opinions on that. Thank you so much!

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

This is pretty normal from what I've seen. If an SDR or a sales person finds their own lead, they'll "work the lead" with calls, maybe email sequences, LinkedIn, etc. If they can get those leads to sign up for a demo and that's the SQL threshold, then it works. But when the lead goes cold or isn't ready yet, they could put them into a marketing nurturing workflow and let marketing do its job. 

Then marketing is working the awareness and consideration stage folks, and inbound leads, along with the outbound leads that aren't yet ready. It can be a symbiotic relationship. 

I would definitely put HubSpot tools like lifecycle stages and lead scoring to work to help manage this with automation as much as possible. 

Good luck!

[StjepanGrcic · Accepted solution]

Hi @07994 

It makes sense. Try to have a clear definition who is a MQL and who is a SQL. Then the first step is to understand the buyer's journey and the types of content you need to offer in each stage. I would recommend watching this academy video  and reading this blog post. 

Cheers!

[07994]

Hi Stjepan,

Thank you for the answer!

We do have a clear definition of MQL/SQL. However, the MQLs that are sourced via the cold emails the SDRs are sending are not marked as "Marketing Contacts". I assume the reason is that these leads never provided any consent to receive marketing emails. However, I feel this is a missed opportunity to nurture MQLs who signed for a demo and are interested in our solution. How would you tackle this issue ? Thanks!

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

This is pretty normal from what I've seen. If an SDR or a sales person finds their own lead, they'll "work the lead" with calls, maybe email sequences, LinkedIn, etc. If they can get those leads to sign up for a demo and that's the SQL threshold, then it works. But when the lead goes cold or isn't ready yet, they could put them into a marketing nurturing workflow and let marketing do its job. 

Then marketing is working the awareness and consideration stage folks, and inbound leads, along with the outbound leads that aren't yet ready. It can be a symbiotic relationship. 

I would definitely put HubSpot tools like lifecycle stages and lead scoring to work to help manage this with automation as much as possible. 

Good luck!

[07994]

Hi Dan,

Thank you for the answer!

So just to recap to make sure I understand your answer: An SDR sends a cold email to a lead. Since this lead is outbound (never gave consent to receive email) it's marked as "Non-marketing lead".  the lead is responding to the SDR  and requests a demo. The lead takes the demo and stops responding (The lead goes cold). This is where you think the makrting team should nurture that lead. However this lead is still a "non marketing lead". Would you still nurture this lead? I'm trying to convince my team not to use this "Marketing contact" feild but they keep saying the lead didn't provide consent...
What would be the best practice on that scenario which I'm sure is pretty common..
Thanks! 

[BYona]

The lead did provide consent as long as the lead filled a form. If he did a demo without an hubspot form then you don't have a consent.