Producing ebooks and other gated content is a great way to capture leads, but if you don’t have a lead nurture process in place, you could be wasting your time.
With Ortto, you can create playbook campaigns where messages are automated at a regular cadence with the goal of nudging customers to take actions across the customer lifecycle. Playbooks are ideal for lead nurturing because you can set them up so that when leads qualify to enter (i.e. fill out a capture form to download an ebook) they are sent a series of relevant messages.
You can also set an exit criteria which will trigger a lead being taken out of the playbook. This could be when they have received all of the messages in the playbook, or they haven’t opened an email in over 30 days. Or if you have an onboarding journey in place, you may wish to exit them when they sign up to avoid overloading their inbox.
Check out Ortto’s blog to read about the difference between playbooks and journeys.
In this blog, we will provide a 5-step plan to building an effective lead nurture playbook for ebook downloads so that you can keep your audience engaged and moving down the sales funnel.
Step 1: Define the objective of the playbook
First, define the objective of not just your nurture email sequence but of your ebook. What will the ebook be about? Who is it for? How and where will you promote it? Will it be gated or ungated? What will your lead nurture strategy look like? A lot of this depends on your audience – who they are, what pain points they have, and what stage of the buying journey they are at.
Once you have determined the contents and purpose of your ebook, you can consider the objective of your lead nurture emails. If the ebook is TOFU, your lead nurture emails will likely have the primary goal of establishing a strong customer-brand relationship and building trust. If your ebook is for MOFU leads who are already acquainted with your brand and product offering, and actively looking to address a specific pain point, the objective of your lead nurture emails would be to continue to educate the lead about how your offering can solve their challenges.
This is also a time to think about metrics. Set up KPIs around the number of opens, clicks, and click-throughs to gauge how effective your lead nurture emails are, and consider how you will report on these metrics.
Step 2: Determine the number of messages and the cadence
Once you have defined your objectives and your ebook is near completion, it’s time to think about what your playbook will look like.
You can add as many messages as you want into a playbook, but it’s wise to set limits or you risk adversely impacting your email deliverability. Depending on your ebook topic and the content you wish to share, your playbook might include between four and 10 emails.
Messages in playbooks should be sent at a regular cadence in order to keep your audience engaged. For an ebook download lead nurture playbook, send emails every 4-10 days. Too frequently, and you could end up being directed to spam. Too infrequently, and you risk being forgotten about.
Step 3: Prepare the email content
Lead nurture emails should be short and sweet. To be effective, they should have a catchy subject line, some well-crafted copy, and a clear CTA. Ortto’s AI subject line tool will predict the open rate of your subject lines and write alternative subject lines that will garner higher open rates, helping you to increase open rates without A/B testing.
In terms of the content within your nurture playbook, you can use different types of content as long as they’re relevant to the ebook – as you know this is what resonates with the lead – and are aligned with your objective.
Say a B2B SaaS company that offers a suite of products to help HR personnel improve their people management processes produces an ebook on talent acquisition. Their playbook email sequence might look like this:
Message 1: Ebook download confirmation – A thank-you message with a link to download the resource, ‘The ultimate guide to talent acquisition in 2022’
Message 2: Bonus content – A glimpse at an additional section of the ebook, ‘Top tips for beating a talent shortage’ with a link to download
Message 3: Additional resource – A summary of a blog post that delves deeper into best practice recruitment, with a link to the blog
Message 4: Additional resource – A downloadable report on hiring trends in 2022
Message 5: Product mention and use case – An explanation of how the Recruitment product can address key recruitment challenges discussed in the ebook, with a link to the relevant product page
Message 6: Customer testimonial – A relevant testimonial or case study that details how the company/product offering has helped a similar company boost their talent acquisition efforts and solve their challenges
Message 7: Book a demo – A prompt to book a demo or a chat with the sales team
Message 8: Direct sales outreach – An email from a sales representative to schedule a call or a demo
As you can see in the example above, it takes time to warm up cold leads, especially as they may not be acquainted with your product offering. Any messaging that is too salesy may be off-putting, so messages in the playbook should focus on the ebook content and the relevant pain points, and then slowly move to how the product can address those challenges. Then, when someone has taken a number of actions (i.e. clicked through emails, downloaded additional content, etc.), sales can reach out.
Stage 4: Set up the nurture playbook, test, and go live
Now that you have developed your messages, you can build a playbook. (Remember to test it before you go live by sending each message yourself or your colleagues to check there are no errors or typos.)
Creating a nurture playbook is easy in Ortto. Follow the 10 steps below.
Sign into Ortto and click Campaign
Click New campaign, select Playbook and then Next
Select a template, or Start from scratch. Click Create
Give your playbook a name, and select your entry and exit criteria (i.e. Enter when submitted widget form; Exit when They receive all messages)
Click Add message – Create new message
Complete the message Setup, Template, Design, and then Review
Before you Publish, click Send test and enter your email address
Hit Publish to set the email live in your playbook
Repeat steps 5-8 to add more messages
When you’re happy with your playbook, click the toggle in the top left On
Stage 5: Measure playbook success
What gets measured, gets managed. Be sure to track the metrics you determined in Step 1, such as conversion rate, open rate, and click-through rate.
For example, you may notice that one of your emails outperforms the others, which could indicate that the content is more relevant to your leads, or the subject line is more eye-catching, and vice versa. Or, you may notice that leads are not warmed up enough by sales outreach, which could indicate the need for a new strategy.
It may take time testing and reworking a playbook to get it right. But hopefully once you have the formula that works for your brand and resonates with your audience, setting up a new playbook for each ebook will become easy.
Final word
Playbooks are a great tool for nurturing ebook leads, because once you’re happy with your playbook emails, you can set and forget. This means you can work more efficiently.
Author
More by Ellie Wiseman
Ellie Wiseman has no more articles
