The purpose of marketing automation is to save yourself time and grief when it comes to marketing processes: sending emails, measuring leads, doing a proper follow-up to their process, and sending them off to Sales when ready. But having to constantly deactivate and reconfigure a nurture campaign to meet expectations, can make you feel like your technology is more trouble than it’s worth.

Not all processes are perfect. Often incomplete information or a lack of standard processes can cause your nurture campaign to suffer. But using smart resources like templates can help! Our Oracle Luminary, Alejandro Muñoz, has these three best practices to share when it comes to replicating successful campaigns and finding the right balance.

1. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Any new nurture campaign can be replicated and adjusted with just a few minor edits to the selected template. Of course, not all campaigns work the same way, but goals and methodologies can be similar within the same organization, which will enable you to make use of past successes.

Optimize the new nurture campaign by first deciding whether you want to keep your options open to continually edit it, or whether it should be completely automated. If you have all your information and assets ready beforehand, go for the completely automated campaign!

2. Shared Filters and Integrating with Salesforce

It’s common to pull out contacts when they’ve interacted with a specific CTA, but that’s no reason to stop nurturing them. Using a shared filter will enable you to move your contacts further through the marketing funnel without neglecting to provide useful information.

Here, integration with your Salesforce campaign is key. By notifying your Sales team of a contact’s behavior throughout the nurture campaign, they can pick optimum times to reach out and make sure the prospect feels appreciated rather than attacked. They’ll also be better equipped to tailor their message to the prospect’s needs or interests.

Remember, a well-informed Sales team can make less cold calls and more meaningful interactions.

3. Pump the Breaks

When it comes time to setting up your nurture campaign, consider adding a “wait” step after the contact has moved into a different level of the nurture. If your lead has interacted with your content and moved onto a deeper layer, you don’t want to spam them right away; a 2-day waiting period before sending the next email is best, as you’ll give them enough time to rest, but not enough time to go cold.

The Takeaway

For Alejandro and his team, implementing these techniques has helped them standardize processes and spend less time creating and reconfiguring existing campaigns. With additional time to focus on analyzing and comparing results, the team can now enrich future campaigns with the knowledge they’ve acquired from past ones

Get a step-by-step overview of these best practices in Alejandro’s Oracle Marketing Cloud Academy blog post, or download our 5 Tips to Improve your Campaign Management infographic.