How frequently should we be "touching" our prospects in our nurturing programs?

Hi Dave! As ever, it's THEIR choice, not ours. The right and honorable approach is for marketers to ask prospects when, under what circumstances, how often, and in which media they want us to be in touch and then we should do what they tell us. Anything else ... random/algorithm-driven e-mail for example ... comes off as presumptuous, disprespectful, SPAM, etc.

Case in point: at a marketing conference last summer, a presenter proclaimed that marketers should "touch" prospects ... both responsive and non-responsive ... at least 36 times a quarter. There was an audible gasp in the room. A woman stood up and protested, "That's not marketing ... that's harrassment and stalking." Roger that.

This is always a "tricky" area. For existing, active customers/clients, I agree with Michael that letting the customer determine the frequency of contact is desirable. Now if you have thousands of customers, that is not feasible but if the list is manageable, that is good practice.

For "keep in touch" communications, we have found that weekly emails seem to work best. We send a twice monthly "Leadership Tip" that goes to everyone on our email list supplemented on alternate weeks by email messages that range from calling attentions to someone else's article or paper to promotional pieces for our Webinar Series and Assessment Products.

A good way to assess if the frequency rate is too high for your customers is to monitor the unsubscribe rate. If you receive a flurry immediately following a release, then people may be telling you that they are tired of seeing your content. Also, if the rate is increasing, in general, that could be a similar indicator.

For anyone desirous of receiving our Leadership Tips, simply go to www.glowan.com and complete the sign-up information on the home page.

I'm wondering if the problem isn't included in the question itself.

Allow me to explain. When you "nurture" someone, it is an individualised, one-on-one, person to person type of deal. How do you quantify that? How do you say "I want you to do something very nurturing once a week?"

Several problems: 1) Some clients will require more than that, just to believe you care and can be trusted. 2) Some clients will feel like you are smothering them to death. 3) This micromanages the nurturing.

I used to do some leadership versus management seminars (from 1987 to 1995). One phrase I coined is this:
Managers manage resources and give instructions.
Leaders lead people and give vision.

You just cannot "manage" a task like "nurturing." Attempting to do so simply invalidates the whole thing.

You give your people the "vision" of being nurturing, what that means to the company, and train them on what it means to nurture, then turn them loose to use their own experiences and insights to do their best work. If you don't think you can trust them to do the best job under those conditions, then I submit you don't have the right people in the position.

So I think the question is focused on the wrong thing. No planned, or ongoing, or routine activity will be "nurturing."

Weekly or monthly emails are not "nurturing," they are content with advertising included. The monthly "get together" is probably not nurturing, it is an assignment.

A personal example: I have a friend who wants me involved in his business. I'm interested, and one day I might venture into biomedical research. The last several times he has called, nothing business related was discussed. Nothing. I know what he does; he knows what i do. We chatted about life and the weather and how my latest project is going and how he loves living in California close enough to the coast that he can go splash and play, and if I ever venture out that way to stop by. He is nurturing our relationship. It will bear fruit, and we both know it -- just not today.

So, y'all: put THAT into a "training program" with weekly and monthly goals.

You can't.

He makes a few phone calls a day and visits a few folks a week -- but his list is thousands long. He knows each of us personally; well enough that when one of us pops into his head, he can say "Yea, I'll call Lee today..." and it works.

" . . . pushing their content and products." Nurturing emails should be educational, and, as noted above, based on points in the sales cycle (typically defined by the last response they made).

SPAM is defined as email that isn't relevant to the recipient. Send me something USEFUL. Send me a case study, that illustrates how a company in MY INDUSTRY has benefited from your product. Send me a study that shows the ROI for implementing your solution.

But be realistic about your prospect's time. No one has time to read all the emails they receive every day. We typically read only the most important emails first; we might then read other non-essential emails -- but typically only those that really sound worth reading. (And on days when we're really busy, we might not read any non-essential emails at all.)

Be sure your Subject line promises value. Be sure every email in your series delivers on that value. Never assume every prospect has read every email. In each email, you might also include a quick summary of a prior email, with a link to read the entire message.

Whenever you can build in a link to other related materials in your email, be sure you have enabled tracking on that link. Keep track of who clicks and on what topics they click, to help determine which prospects are engaged, and how to send them the most relevant messages.

more than once a day is entirely too much for me. Due to having so much that I am seeing in my email inbox.

There are different ways to nurture and who are you nurturing? If it is customers I would say it depends upon the situation, in the beginning it may be once a week, over time ti drops to every 3 or 4 weeks.

If you are nurturing people on your newsletter then it is however you have set it up to be. One, twice, a month.

Those who I am connected to from Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook I do send out a warm message on Holidays like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving as way just to touch base with them. People really do appreciate it.

If you are nurturing a relationship, like Lee has a guy who is nurturing their personal relationship for future business together.

And then there are this who have newsletters and just sell, sell, sell they send out daily, weekly a way too much for me.

If you are going to nurture a friendly relationship, then it's really up to the people involved.