Automated marketing technology allows us to gather lots of lead data. But at the same time, the amount of data we have at our disposal can be a bit overwhelming and marketers can 
quickly lose sight of the goal: to give people what they want. Segmented messaging is key to moving prospects down your inbound marketing funnel without creating churn in your lead base. At a high level you want to nurture your leads with communications and offers that align with their needs and interests. This article shows how to segment your messaging based on the single most important lead quality—qualification—then create a workflow that automates your email messaging to that group. Once you get that down, you can move on to segmentation based on what leads are interested in. I will follow up with an "interest workflow" article.
The one thing you should always ask yourself when looking at your leads is: "Is this person here to consume helpful information or are they looking at my product as a potential solution?" Both have the potential to be nurtured to a point of sale, but to do so, you will need two very different sets of messaging.
So how can you tell who is on your site for learning and who is there for purchasing?
You need an offer that screams, "I want to see your product." As inbound marketers we were taught to provide informational resources that do not "sell" our products or services, but rather provide prospects with helpful information to establish trust and blah blah blah. However, you should always have a "Middle of the Funnel Offer" (MOFU) that is all about you.
Step 1: Create Your Product Tour
The easiest example is a "product tour." Take all the information in the "solutions" or "our product" section of your website and pull it all together into one offer and put it behind a form. Make sure you clearly articulate "who" your product was designed for and "how" it will help them solve their problems. This should be done on your MOFU landing page.
Step 2: Set Up Your "Triple Shot"
For consistency, you want to make sure that all your new leads get the same opportunity to take your middle-of-the-funnel offer. Remember, 90 percent of your leads are going to enter your inbound funnel at the top. They find a blog article and convert on a contextually-aligned "Top of the Funnel" offer: a white paper, for example.
When your new lead converts on that TOFU offer, you are given three chances to plug your middle of the funnel "product tour" without pissing them off:
- Thank-you page
- Follow-up email
- The PDF
#1: Thank-You Page
#2: Follow-Up Email
#3: The PDF Whitepaper
Step 3: Create Your Lead-Nurturing Emails
Step 4: Automate
Alright nerds. You have been patient. Here is a super-simple way to automate your email messaging based on your new "qualification based" strategy. These are a series of screenshots outlining the steps you need to take, IN ORDER, to automate your segmented messaging using HubSpot's "lists" and "workflow" tools.
The next two steps are optional. I like to put people into lists when they have gone through each workflow and have not made it to the next step of the funnel. I use these two "quiet" lists to send out monthly blog updates. This will keep you top of mind with good prospects who may develop a need for your services in the future.
You will see that these lists are manually triggered as the last step of each respective workflow.
So there you have it: segmented workflows based on qualification. This is something I build into all inbound funnels at the get-go. Segmenting your workflows based on what a prospect is interested in will be the next step to increasing email nurturing conversions and getting more people to identify themselves as marketing or sales qualified.
Please: If you have questions about workflows or automated messaging, feel free to reach out. mtraylor@imrcorp.com
-Max