Multi-Channel Nurturing: Textbook Strategies and Proven Results from the Pros

2. Multi-Channel Nurturing:
Results from the Pros
Introduction
When it comes to the B2B buyer’s journey, no two paths are ever the same. Some
prospects can be 90 percent of the way through the purchase process before reaching
out to sales.1
While others are not yet even aware that they have a business pain point
ahead of them—one that your product or service can potentially solve down the road.
In both cases—and every instance in between—there are tremendous opportunities
for marketers to help influence the purchasing decision by nurturing prospects in
informative and engaging ways.
What was once considered the primary workhorse of nurturing—email marketing—is
now only once piece of the puzzle when it comes to engaging with B2B prospects
online. With the increasing length and complexity of today’s buying process, it is
no longer sufficient for marketers to wait until they have an email address to begin
building meaningful relationships with potential customers. Instead, they must reach
prospects both early and often during the buyer’s journey, sometimes even before
prospects are aware they have a business need. What’s more, marketers need to
optimize the right messaging and content to the right audience, based on who they
are and wherever they might be in the buying process. To achieve this, today’s savviest
digital marketers are tapping into the power of other digital channels to:
 Reach new audiences with precision
 Nurture and convert anonymous website visitors into known contacts
 Engage known prospects across multiple channels to prepare them for a sales
conversation
 Keep the right content in front of existing customers to drive upsell revenues
The era of multi-channel nurturing has arrived. And here are today’s expert B2B
marketers and brands to walk you through the proven strategies, techniques, and
potential results you can achieve in this new world of nurturing.
1
Forrester, “Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide the Buyer’s Journey,” Lori Wizdo’s Blog, October 4, 2012, http://blogs.forrester.com/lori_wiz
do/12-10-04-buyer_behavior_helps_b2b_marketers_guide_the_buyers_journey.
Textbook Strategies and Proven

3. Cetera Financial Group
CHALLENGE: A significant portion of existing contacts are not engaging with
nurture emails.
PROVEN STRATEGY: Use display and social ads to re-engage known contacts
who are not responding to emails.
Cetera Financial Group is one of the nation’s largest families of independently managed
firms, and is the cornerstone of the retail advice division of RCS Capital Corporation
(NYSE: RCAP), which is focused on serving the needs of investors with best-in-class
solutions.
Cetera’s Story
For many B2B marketers, getting known prospects to open their marketing emails
can be challenging. In fact, 79 percent of B2B marketers admit that their email open
rates never exceed 20 percent.2
Eric Hansen, director of recruiting marketing at Cetera
Financial, not only wanted to increase email engagement with Cetera’s contacts, but
also sought to use email nurturing to educate and eventually nudge these prospects
toward a purchase.
Cetera uses Oracle Eloqua’s marketing automation system to nurture its known
contacts via email— enabling segmentation and automation of email delivery to
prospects and customers for whom Cetera has an email address. By combining the
power of its existing marketing automation platform with multi-channel nurturing,
Cetera was able to add display and social advertising to its existing email nurture
campaigns, directly from within the Eloqua Campaign Canvas. As known contacts
received emails week after week, synchronized display and social ads were also
delivered to them everywhere online, reinforcing content and messaging across
multiple channels.
2
The State of B2B Lead Nurturing Survey, Bizo, May 2014.

4. By targeting display and social ads to its known contacts, Cetera can engage with these prospects anywhere online, if
they are unresponsive to an email featuring the same message and offer.
The Results
After nurturing prospects wherever they traveled online online using display and social
advertising, Cetera drove more than 900 new website visitors from these business-
demographically targeted ads. What’s more, visitors who were exposed to the ads
viewed 27 percent more pages and visited the website 13 percent more often than
those who had not been exposed to the ads. Cetera was able to attribute nearly $1
million in new business directly to its multi-channel nurturing effort.
“We had a financial advisor complete a webinar registration
over a year ago, and he began receiving our emails. One
email sent 4 months ago made him click, but his subsequent
web actions didn’t trigger any adjustment in his lead score.
About a month later, after we’d implemented [multi-channel
nurturing], he received a Facebook ad, clicked, indicated
interest, and later closed—representing over $100k in new
revenue.
”
Eric Hansen
Director of
Recruiting Marketing
Cetera Financial
Display Ad Facebook Newsfeed Ad

5. Human Capital Institute (HCI)
CHALLENGE: Accelerating prospects through the sales process once they’ve
converted into leads.
PROVEN STRATEGY: Use display and social advertising to reach known contacts
beyond the inbox, increase their level of engagement with email, and ultimately
shorten the overall buy process.
Human Capital Institute (HCI) is the global association for talent management and a
clearinghouse for best practices and ideas. Its network of expert practitioners, Fortune
1000 corporations, government agencies, global consultants, and business schools
contribute constantly evolving information, the best of which is organized, analyzed,
and shared with its members through research, education, and events.
HCI’s Story
The sales cycles for HCI’s individual-level training courses and strategic HR conferences
are typically six to eight weeks, and can be even longer for its Corporate Membership
and Corporate Training offers. Nurturing is critical to moving leads through the sales
process at HCI, and in the past has been done by sequencing email messages to its
database of known contacts—prospects who have provided their email addresses.
HCI regularly updated its known contacts with emails that shared information about
upcoming HCI and industry events. HCI uses the Oracle Eloqua marketing automation
platform to send emails to its known contacts with new offers and upcoming events.
But HCI’s email open rates average around twenty percent, leaving eighty percent of its
known contacts unaware of its latest offerings.
HCI is now able to reach these known prospects by adding display and social
advertising to its nurture campaigns. As contacts receive new emails, they also see
display and social ads that feature the same messaging, creative, and calls to action
wherever they travel online.

6. As HCI’s database of known contacts receive emails about upcoming HCI events, they also see display and social ads that
feature the same messaging, graphics, and calls to action.
The Results
In two months of using multi-channel nurturing, HCI drove 82 incremental known
contact registrations via display and social ads, helping to further engage these sales
ready prospects and turn them into customers.
“Nurturing our anonymous website visitors through display
and social advertising has vastly improved the quality
and quantity of leads we generate at HCI. What’s more,
synchronizing these channels with our existing email nurture
campaigns helps speed known prospects through the sales
cycle.
”
Angela Young
SVP of Marketing
HCI
Display Ad Facebook Newsfeed Ad

7. MyCorporation
CHALLENGE: Filling the marketing funnel with enough quality, targeted audiences
in order to meet the increasing demands of a growing sales pipeline.
PROVEN STRATEGY: Use broadly targeted display advertising to reach precise
business audiences at scale, and prepare them to buy using multi-channel
nurturing.
MyCorporation is a leading provider of online document filing services for clients who
wish to form a corporation or limited liability company. For more than fifteen years,
MyCorporation has helped small business clients and real estate investors incorporate
their businesses in a reliable and affordable manner.
MyCorporation’s Story
Like any fast-growing businesses, MyCorporation needed to fill its demanding sales
pipeline with highly targeted prospects—specifically small- to medium-sized business
owners, entrepreneurs, real estate investors, and other professionals. MyCorporation
had a strong focus on bottom-funnel marketing activities including email, SEO and
paid search, but needed a way to continuously reach new audiences at scale.
After incorporating targeted display and social advertising into its mix,
MyCorporation was able reach more prospects and drive more of them to its website.
In addition, by supplementing its broadly targeted display advertising efforts with
multi-channel nurturing, it was able to continuously communicate with its prospects
throughout the buyer’s journey from initial brand awareness to purchase.

8. Visitors to the “Start My Business” section of MyCorporation’s website are nurtured with related display ads, and the calls
to action encourage prospects to begin the process of incorporating a business.
The Results
In just six months, MyCorporation used targeted display advertising to drive over
4,000 new website visitors—from its target audience of SMB professionals—helping
build brand awareness and engagement, and funneling more qualified prospects into
its anonymous, multi-channel nurture program.
“We’ve seen quick growth in our return on investment from
multi-channel nurturing. What started out at around 80
percent which quickly grew to 140 percent plus and growing,
and we continue to beat our cost per lead targets.
”
Deborah Sweeney
CEO
MyCorporation

9. AtTask
CHALLENGE: Converting more of its anonymous website visitors into leads.
PROVEN STRATEGY: Combine both business demographic profile and online
behavioral insights to determine the most relevant content and messaging for
prospects.
AtTask is a cloud-based Enterprise Work Management solution that helps marketing,
IT, and other enterprise teams conquer the chaos of excessive email, redundant status
meetings, and disconnected tools. Unlike other tools, AtTask Enterprise Work Cloud is a
centralized, easy-to-adopt solution for managing and collaborating on all types of work
through the entire work lifecycle, which improves team productivity and executive
visibility. AtTask is trusted by thousands of global enterprises, like ATB Financial, vCars.
com, CISCO Systems, Covario, Electrolux, National Geographic, Schneider Electric, Trek,
and Penn State.
AtTask’s Story
Up to 97 percent of the visitors to AtTask’s website and landing pages leave without
converting—a challenge shared by most B2B marketers with savvy products and long
sales cycles. It had tried its hand at website retargeting with different vendors in the
past, but its previous experiences with the technology missed its CPL targets and
wasn’t cost efficient.
Multi-channel nurturing provided a retargeting-like solution, but was more catered
to AtTask’s B2B sales cycles and enabled it to better speak to the unique needs and
interests of different website visitors. Using website navigation, anonymous visitors’
business demographic data, and more, AtTask developed a variety of nurture paths
for different audience segments. For example, after visiting (then leaving) the AtTask
website, IT professionals that had visited the “Solutions” page would see display and
social ads specific to the company’s IT solutions, while all other (non-IT) visitors would
see different sets of ad creative and calls to action.

10. Because IT professionals that visit AtTask’s “Solutions” page are exhibiting a stronger buyer intent than other
visitors, they can be nurtured differently with product-specific ad creative.
The Results
In less than two months, AtTask drove hundreds of incremental conversions via multi-
channel nurturing—a large percentage of which were driven through the “Pricing” page,
indicating strong buyer intent.
“In B2B you can’t expect most of your anonymous visitors to
convert on their first visit to the website. With multi-channel
nurturing we’re seeing more prospects convert at a higher
conversion rate.
”
Micah Beals
Director of
Digital Marketing
AtTask

11. DocuSign
CHALLENGE: Driving increased value from its high volume of website traffic and
massive contact database.
PROVEN STRATEGY: Nurture anonymous visitors and known contacts with display
and social ads directly from its marketing automation system.
DocuSign helps organizations achieve their digital transactions for dramatic ROI,
increased security and compliance, and better experiences for customers, partners,
suppliers, and employees. DocuSign automates manual, paper-based processes with
the only open, independent, standards-based DTM platform for managing all aspects of
documented business transactions.
DocuSign’s Story
As a SaaS company that delivers value to both B2C and B2B markets and companies
ranging from small- to medium-sized business to the Fortune 500, DocuSign uses
more than 25 different buyer personas to help personalize its marketing programs to
prospects of all different shapes and sizes.
The big opportunity for DocuSign was to do more with what it already had: millions of
visitors to its website monthly and a massive database of known contacts that weren’t
yet customers. The company deployed multi-channel nurturing (via an integration with
its existing marketing automation system) to develop a variety of personalized display
and social nurture paths for each group in order to generate more leads and fuel more
opportunities for sales.

12. DocuSign prospects that sign up for a free trial are nurtured with display and social ads that feature case studies from
successful customers to reinforce the impact and value of DocuSign’s products.
The Results
As a result of its multi-channel nurturing efforts, DocuSign saw a dramatic lift across
multiple success metrics, including repeat website visits, pageviews, actions, and
more. Most notably, in just a few months, it generated 685 responses which included
475 conversions from anonymous visitors, and 210 responses from known contacts
nurtured via display and social ads. All of this resulted in 15 influenced opportunities
for its sales team.
“Precise business demographic data combined with
customized nurture paths allows us to serve sequenced
display and social ads to only our most high-value, anonymous
prospect segments—all of which helps us increase lead
volume and optimize lead quality from the moment a person
first becomes interested in our brand.
”
Meagen Eisenberg
VP of
Customer Marketing
DocuSign

13. Conclusion
The B2B buying process continues to be complex, long, and unpredictable. But
marketers now have the ability to reach prospects early and often throughout the
buying process—and anywhere online —with multi-channel nurturing through display
and social advertising. Whether your objective is to better monetize your anonymous
website traffic, drive more engagement from your existing email database, or acquire
more customers, multi-channel nurturing is fast becoming the most effective route to
achieving these goals.
866.497.5505 | www.bizo.com | Follow us on Twitter: @bizo