Recap of #CyberMarketingCon2020 Talk: Bears, Beets, Best Practices for Digital Nurture Programs in the COVID Era

On September 21-September 24, the smartest minds in cybersecurity marketing came together for CyberMarketing Con 2020, run by the Cybersecurity Marketing Society. Panelists covered a wide span of categories, providing guidance for professionals looking to expand their business and improve their marketing skills.

In the session “Bears, Beets, Best Practices for Digital Nurture Programs in the COVID Era,” Christoper Mitchell shared his best practices for digital nurture programs, especially because COVID has amplified the need for a digital strategy. He is a Demand Generation Manager at Siemplify, a leading security orchestration, automation, and response platform.

Building a Nurture Strategy for Cybersecurity

As Mitchell noted, “The number one challenge is that sales wants the unicorn of both quantity and quality of leads. It’s relatively easy to do one or the other, but it’s challenging to do both.” With no more physical events for the foreseeable future, there are fewer leads, less 1:1 conversations, and less demos, and when there are events, they’re often less engaging. As a result, building a solid digital nurture strategy is essential for success.

Align Your Nurture Strategy with your Company’s Go-to-Market Strategy

He stressed the importance of aligning your nurture strategy with your company’s go-to-market strategy. The nurture program can be based on product offerings, the industry vertical, the size of the companies you’re targeting, and more. Seeing how the company’s sales and marketing teams are structured makes it easy to find a nurture strategy that fits in well.

Content Audit to Assess What You Have – and the Gaps!

Performing a content audit is also important for assessing not only what content you have on hand but what you may need to create in the future. Identifying the existing pieces, such as white papers, webinars, etc. and how it fits into the broader nurture strategy will reveal gaps you will need to close.

Set Goals…then Just Start!

Setting goals is necessary to determine success. Goals can be set on industry benchmarks, your company’s past performance, or from marketing, sales, or company-wide goals.

Mitchell stressed that although nurture is automated, his “number one tip is to start. Don’t over analyze it, don’t overthink it. Start and continue to iterate and iterate. It’s not meant to be set and forget…Strive to provide your customers with the best journey possible.”

Tactics For a Successful Nurture Strategy

Mitchell outlined give pointers for building a successful nurture strategy:

1. Dynamic emails: Once a nurture structure is in place, adopting persona-based messaging can help with personalization. One way is to send emails catered to someone’s position, and subject line, email content, or call to action can be personalized.
2. Skip logic: Adding skip logic to your nurture platform ensures that only relevant content is sent to prospects.
3. Manage communication: Coordinating with the sales and marketing team to understand who else is sending emails to prospects and customers helps in clarifying what to send and when. You don’t want to overload people with too many emails.
4. Fast and slow lanes: Engaging prospects based on their own pace, such as if they’re opening your emails often or not, helps cater to their needs and may help decrease unsubscribe rates.
5. Continuously iterate: Always update emails based on performance and outcome. By paying attention to open rate and click-through rates, you can constantly improve your emails. The nurture strategy should encompass the entire sales funnel from pre-sales to post-sales stages.

Nurture ROI (Metrics)

Mitchell identified several metrics to measure your nurture strategy’s success:

1. Email metrics: open rate, CTR, unsubscribe rate, content consumption
2. Marketing metrics: MQL rate, MQL velocity, MQL → SQL rate
3. Sales metrics: SQL velocity, number of opportunities, pipeline, opportunity velocity, closed won
4. Content metrics: topics, time spent on asset, content format, buyer persona, funnel stage

Advanced Digital Nurture

In a COVID world, extending your nurture strategy to go beyond email and content can be essential in standing out from other vendors. For example, you can send physical gifts to prospects and customers which can promote positive engagement. Based on what platform you use, you can automate the action.

Website personalization is another way to drive engagement. Changing your website to look differently based on certain visitors or funneling to CTA are two ways to use your website to your advantage.

Marketers can also use first and third party intent data. Based on real-time interactions of prospects and customers, you can use this data meet them where they are.

Key Takeaways

As cybersecurity marketers, it’s important to get started on your nurture strategy as soon as possible, and the pandemic has only proven the necessity of digital. Put the customer first and set goals to track and measure your progress. Continuously iterate to improve your performance, and go beyond email to get people’s attention.

If you’re interested in learning more about building a robust nurture strategy, visit https://cybermarketingcon2020.heysummit.com/ to watch the full panel session.