Nurturing leads might not be as glamorous as social media, or as thrilling as writing an eBook, but it’s dang important, and it works. Nurtured leads produce, on average, 20% more sales opportunities than non-nurtured opportunities. 35-50% of sales opportunities go to the vendor who responds first. Honestly, you can’t expect to keep your company afloat on revenue from the 4% of your first-time website visitors who are ready to buy. You need a strategy in place to draw the other 96% through your sales funnel.

What is a Marketing Funnel?

On a very basic level, the marketing funnel was developed as a concept because your company has more leads who enter at the top, than paying customers who come out the bottom. Information that converts first-time website visitors into leads is known as top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content and it’s typically based on broad concepts, such as “How to Get Low Interest Rates Financing a Car." Offers that convert leads into clients is far more granular and specific, and it’s known as bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU); it may be a product comparison sheet between two different models of cars. We’re here today to talk about the Middle-of-the-Funnel (MOFU), and how you can do everything in your power to ensure that you don’t alienate any leads:

1. Marketing and Sales Aren’t on Speaking Terms

A little hard feeling between marketing and sales may be the way of the world, but you need to get along. Seriously. You simply can’t generate qualified leads without a long conversation with your sales team about the information they need to qualify potential customers. If you’ve completely disregarded their advice, all bets are off on how many of your leads actually make it through your funnel.

2. You’re Over or Under-Nurturing

Sending a daily note just to “check in” won’t leave anyone happy with your brand. Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula about how often you should email your leads, but research has indicated that 80% of sales happen somewhere between the 5th and 12th point of contact. It’s up to you to map the typical length of your sales cycle, and determine whether best practices for your organization dictate emailing once weekly or twice monthly.

3. You’re Not Scoring Leads

Even though an estimated 79% of B2B marketers haven’t established lead scoring, it’s really not the practice you want to skimp on. No one likes spending time trying to squeeze a sale out of an underqualified lead, which is why you need to use a combination of implicit (behavioral) data, and more traditional factors such as budget, authority, time, and need to determine which leads are really worth continuing to nurture in the first place.

4. You’re Following the Letter of the Law

Every lead you nurture should be expecting to hear from you, no exceptions. The Federal Trade Commission’s Can-SPAM Act requires businesses to add a clear link to their privacy policy during the conversion process, but building a high-quality list may require a little more effort than just that. Asking your prospects to confirm their interest by clicking a link in an automatically-generated email, a concept known as “double opt-in,” could vastly improve the quality of your leads from the start.

5. You’re Not Writing for Your Buyer Personas

Please tell me your email marketing efforts aren’t limited to sending a quarterly newsletter to everyone who's ever come in contact with your brand. The average consumer encounters 5,000 marketing messages a day. That means that no one has time to read your copy on how your employees’ holiday potluck went. Keep it highly relevant, and tailored to your buyer personas. Address their perceived barriers and their specific decision criteria to get the best results.

6. It’s Not Personal

Are you really starting your emails off with “Dear Valued Friend?” Or even worse, does your marketing automation software allow you to personalize, but the contacts’ names are in a totally different font and color than the rest of the text? No one wants to feel like they’ve been copied-and-pasted or mail-merged into a pre-existing template. Make it truly personal, and call your contacts by their first name.

7. It’s Not Mobile-Optimized

As smartphones and tablets continue to become a more and more ubiquitous part of daily life, mobile-optimizing your emails isn’t optional. In fact, 63% of mobile users will simply delete an email without a second thought if the images don’t load correctly.

I’ve barely brushed on all the myriad ways you can make the middle of your marketing funnel a magical place where leads fall deeper and deeper in love with your brand. Relevant content and timing are crucial, but what’s most important is utilizing data and A/B testing to determine what works best for your brand.

Jasmine Henry is a Project Manager at Inbound Marketing Agents and co-author of The Science of Enterprise Lead Nurturing. Connect with her on Twitter: @jasminehenry10