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Your nurturing content should mainly seek to establish your company’s expertise, not sell its product(s). In developing nurturing e-mails to your prospects, it’s very tempting to give them nothing but in-depth information on your products/services. After all, it’s your product that they’re prospects for, right? Well, yes ...but that doesn’t mean that’s all they’re interested in. And they’re likely to be in your pipeline for 12 months, give or take; so there’s no rush to give them all of your product info all at once. (Also, when it’s time to really sell them on your product, you have salespeople for just that purpose.) Your prospects also want to know that you understand... - their industry and its drivers; and
- the dynamics of the broader business/technology context that your product fits into.
In short, they’d like to see evidence of thought leadership, which over time will make them become more comfortable with a decision to purchase your product. Sending them an email that’s nothing but a commercial for your product isn’t going to provide that evidence, and risks becoming a candidate for disposal via the “Delete” key. When your prospects are ready to complete their research, chances are they’ll be able to learn about the convertible frammis feature of your widget by mining your website, anyway. Try the softer sell... So it’s generally better to take a more soft-sell approach, and focus on establishing your company’s credibility in the relevant knowledge domains. Instead of an article simply glorifying your convertible frammis feature, how about one that discusses the vital importance of the convertible frammis in (say) financial services. Quoting external expert analysis/opinion that’s consistent with your world-view also helps, of course. In fact, nothing says that your content needs to be 100% original with you. We already know that you and your prospects share an interest in at least one area of knowledge; so “packaging” an outside expert’s article (with proper credit and avoiding plagiarism, of course) that your prospects may have missed will be viewed as a valuable service. For many B-to-B's, this type of writing may not come naturally; and there’s always the issue of the staff time consumed by writing/editing a weekly email series. eMagine’s professional writers do a lot of this, both for our own prospect-nurturing and on behalf of our clients. So why not just... Call on the experts... ask eMagine to do your next e-mail campaign for you. We think you’ll like both the results and the time it will free up for your other tasks.
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