I created a comprehensive email marketing strategy for our team’s integrated campaign goals around pipeline acceleration, nurturing our in-stage opportunities and getting them through the sales cycle more quickly. I built a series of overlapping nurture streams and engagement programs in HubSpot to deliver content at the right time.
The Challenge
The goal of this campaign was to accelerate leads through the sales funnel by addressing key decision-making pain points and driving urgency among prospects who were stalled in mid-funnel and late-funnel stages. I would need to develop 5 to 6 email sequences to nurture contacts with relevant, educational content, which needed to be automated by stage-based triggers between Salesforce & HubSpot.
To add to the complexity, the Motus platform featured a diverse product line with several different types of opportunities, each with their own set of pain points and value props. These included:
- Fleet Vehicles to FAVR program
- Cents-Per-Mile (CPM) programs
- Car Allowance programs
- Managed Mobility Services
The Tactics
- Audience Segmentation – Contacts were segmented based on deal stage, key persona (Finance v. HR), and industry. Many emails utilized dynamic content based on these criteria, so as to deliver more tailored content specific to each audience.
2. Partnered with Content Marketing – I worked with the content marketing manager to identify the top performing marketing pieces to use for nurture streams, and where possible, fill content gaps. We developed content streams in Pathfactory specific to each nurture track. This helped us track engagement minutes spent viewing content on the website, which could then activate further outreach.
3. Marketing Automation workflows in Hubspot – Created a series of of workflows for each nurture track, dynamically triggered by various enrollment triggers. Incorporated sales notifications when high engagement thresholds were met.
4. Performance Reporting & Iteration – Given the volume of specific nurture streams, I built reporting dashboards in HubSpot to monitor each campaign’s performance. I collected engagement metrics on a quarterly basis and adjusted subject lines, messaging, and CTAs if open rates or CTRs fell below benchmark standards. I also ran significant A/B testing across all email tracks.
Results
- In the first quarter, open rates averaged 35% higher with an average CTR over 15%, well above benchmarks. The more relevant content led to improved engagement overall.
- Within two quarters, the average deal cycle had declined by 8%, meaning deals were closing almost a month faster on average. This exceeded our initial OKR goal of a 5% reduction in deal cycle length.
- Contributed to an overall 22% increase in closed-won revenue in H1 of 2024.
The success of this campaign was rooted in personalization, timing, and alignment with sales efforts. By addressing specific buyer needs and providing a mix of educational content and bottom-of-funnel content like ROI calculators., this project laid the groundwork for an ongoing alwauys-on campaign that can continue to evolve.