Lead Nurturing - How to Be There When the Buyer is Ready to Buy

As many as 70% of the leads pursued by sales people are not really ready to buy.  But 80% of prospects who respond to marketing campaigns do buy eventually, within 24 months. So it’s absolutely imperative for marketers to establish a process for staying in touch with unqualified leads until they are ready to engage with a sales person. This is the job of the critically important marketing function called lead nurturing.

In this session, you will learn:

• How companies that use lead nurturing experience higher revenues, better campaign response rates and larger average order sizes
• The business case for lead nurturing
• How changing B2B buying behavior makes lead nurturing more important than ever
• How to decide who should be in charge of the nurturing function at your company
• The 5 steps involved in successful lead nurturing programs
• How to determine which leads need nurturing
• Segmenting your nurturing program for maximum relevance
• Examples of productive nurturing programs that quadruple lead generation campaign results
• The importance of marketing automation to successful lead nurturing today
• The top nurturing tactics, and how to build a nurturing communications flow
• 3 best practices that will take your nurturing program to the next level

RUTH STEVENS
President
eMarketing Strategy

Ruth consults on customer acquisition and retention, teaches marketing at Columbia Business School and is a guest blogger at HBR.org and Biznology.  She is past Chair of The DMA Business-to-Business Council, and past President of The Direct Marketing Club of New York. Crain’s BtoB Magazine named Ruth one of The 100 Most Influential People in Business Marketing.  She is the author of Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers, and Trade Show and Event Marketing.  Ruth serves as a Director of Edmund Optics, Inc., and The Business Information Industry Association.   She has held senior marketing positions at Time Warner, Ziff-Davis, and IBM and holds an MBA from Columbia University.