nurturing campaign is an ongoing marketing effort that proactively guides contacts through a process of awareness, interest and preference. It then identifies those contacts ready to purchase a product or service.

Timing is integral to successful marketing. Some prospects need to learn more about a product or service before they are ready to buy. Others aren’t aware of the product. Still other prospects might not have identified a need. Finally, some prospects have recently made a purchase of a competitor’s product or service and it may be some time before they’re ready to go through buying process again. Traditional “one-and-done” marketing efforts cast an offer out to a population of prospects, collecting the responses and discarding the rest. However, just because a prospect doesn’t respond at that time, doesn’t mean they won’t have a need down the line.

1:YOU marketing technology platform, sends offers and messages on a periodic basis, even to contacts that may not be ready to make a buying decision right now. Rather than discarding the contacts who have essentially said “no thanks, not now,” a nurturing campaign offers them third-party content and thought leadership that arms contacts with information so that when they’re ready to make a decision, they’ve been feeding on a steady stream of information to help them. Associating this information with the sponsor of the information strengthens the organization’s brand.

A nurturing campaign also identifies when contacts change from an inactive status to an active status. Well-designed campaigns allow marketers to begin to understand what is on the mind of contacts. For example, a typical nurturing campaign sends an offer to contacts every four to six weeks. The offer points to a microsite where each piece of content is coded and organized. If a contact downloads content, the action begins to tell a story about what that contact’s interests and needs are. This information can fuel the sales process, by revealing a contact’s interest and providing insights how to communicate effectively with that contact.