Learning to nurture

摘要

What if you could access a large pool of potential customers that were already aware of your company and its products, open to being educated and agreeable to receiving e-mails and other communications straight from your marketing team? And, if you could reach them at no additional acquisition cost, would you be interested? Look no further than your existing lead database, say b-to-b marketers, agencies and lead management providers. All that's required is a little bit of nurturing, lead nurturing that is. The first step is to make a clear distinction between generating leads and nurturing them-even though some of the same practices and marketing platforms can be used for each type. "Lead generation is primarily about outbound campaigns-the e-mail blast, the landing page," said David Raab, an analyst at Raab Associates, which recently completed a detailed evaluation of lead management platforms. "Lead nurturing, on the other hand, starts after you get a lead into your database."