You're nurturing wrong. Let's fix that.

Adam Sockel (00:01.271)
You're listening to Bold Calling, an award winning podcast presented by Orem where every episode we bring on the biggest and brightest minds in the tech and sales industry for discussion about their biggest challenges and the unique ways they're working to solve them. I'm your host, Adam Sokol, and this is going to be the first episode of season three of our podcast where we're going to do something a little bit different. Going to have two guests on every single episode. One of them will be one of my fantastic coworkers and someone else will join us who is.

external that we adore. So today I am joined by Sarah Reese and Chris Miller, two heads of DemandGen. Sarah is the head of DemandGen here at Orem and Chris is the head of DemandGen at Warmly. So first things first, hello both of you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Sarah Reece (00:47.478)
Thanks for having us.

Chris (00:48.839)
Hello, thanks for having me.

Adam Sockel (00:50.061)
Yeah, and before we dive into our key conversation here, which is gonna be all about nurturing and what that actually means and how to do it properly, before we dive into that, for context, Chris, can you explain to our listeners what Warmly does so they have a little idea of why we're having this discussion today?

Chris (01:07.499)
Sure, so Warmly is a full funnel orchestration platform for go-to-market teams. And so it will de-anonymize the individual and companies visiting your site. It's going to monitor their buying signals and then allow you to kind of convert your warmest leads that we identify through automated personalized engagement at scale through chat bot, email, and LinkedIn.

Adam Sockel (01:29.647)
Ooh, that was succinct and well done. That was really good. I like that a lot. So you mentioned, obviously, Warm Leads, the name of your company, Warm Leads is what we're talking about. The way you get Warm Leads is through nurturing. So before we dive into best practices about nurturing and all these different things, I want to ask you both first, just like, what does nurture mean to you? And Sarah, I will start with you. What is nurturing?

Sarah Reece (01:57.514)
I find nurturing to be very triggering, which I feel like is why you put me on this podcast, because I come from a world of marketing nurture, where you bring in really low quality leads, anybody with a pulse, you put them into an overcomplicated email sequence, maybe you spend a couple hundred grand making it dynamic and insane, and hopefully if they do enough things, you throw them over the fence to sales and say, hey, this person's ready to buy something.

And I hate it. So that I think is what nurturing means to a certain section of the traditional audience. When I think of nurture today, what we do at Orem, nurturing is more about this like holistic, comprehensive way of surrounding qualified people within your ICP with a message that resonates with them and working in partnership with sales to trigger the right conversation at the right time through the right platform.

Adam Sockel (02:57.465)
Chris, what do you think about that as a definition?

Chris (03:00.531)
Yeah, I think I really kind of agree with that, is just really, find nurturing to be very similar in the sense that like, it's really just kind of an extension or a continuation relationship between your brand and your messaging with your, with your ICP, whether they're a prospect, lead, an end stage opportunity, wherever they kind of are. Nurturing is just sort of an extension of the messaging and the things that they really need to see in order to make that final decision, which you ideally want to be obviously a customer.

Adam Sockel (03:28.953)
Yeah. And, you know, this is very much an open discussion, obviously, and I want to kind of keep it that way. But I will say when we're talking about the like Sarah at the worst version of this is just like chucking people into a list. Parthy, who's the founder of Letter Drop, he was on one of our first episodes. He talked about how he's terrified to even like like a LinkedIn post because he knows someone's just going to chuck him.

right into an email nurture and all of sudden he's getting three emails a week from somebody who he's never even heard of. And, you know, that's obviously the bad example of this, but at its best, Chris, as you said, it's relationship building, it's creating a reason to trust and believe in a brand so that when they're ready to actively engage, you know, they know who you are, but...

I have a few what feels like simple questions, but they really aren't. then this next one, and Chris, can kind of start, like, why do you think nurturing matters? Why is it actually a thing that people should care about?

Chris (04:32.651)
Yeah, think nurturing is, I think another one of the things I think that marketing does a lot is come up with fancy terms for things that are just.

good marketing. So if you, if you circle back around to the, to the original answer of it being kind of a continuation of your brand and messaging is that nurturing is important because marketing's job isn't really done after whatever that initial phase you have is like marketing's job is not done at MQL. Marketing's not job has not done it like awareness or branding. Right? So like if, if your demand or marketing motion is holistic, which it should be,

a large amount of the things that you do or initiatives that you kind of undertake would kind of qualify under nurturing, right? So if you're following up with people after a webinar, if you are helping with sales enablement development, or even if you do have certain kind of low touch appropriate email automations, right? Like a lot of the things you do are gonna kind of qualify under nurturing.

So I've found in my career, it's best to do good marketing as opposed to bad marketing. So like, if you care about these things, right, good nurturing is just good marketing.

Adam Sockel (05:46.383)
provocative. It's better to do good marketing than bad marketing. like that's very, very risque. I like it. That's beautiful. Yeah. Sarah, what do you think? Why? Why does this matter? Why? Why? Why?

Chris (05:53.226)
It's my first hot take of the episode,

Sarah Reece (05:55.372)
you

Sarah Reece (06:01.49)
Yeah, I mean, I think Chris hit the nail on the head, especially when we talk about people who are already in pipeline and having active conversations with sales. The job doesn't stop with the seller. They're still out there in the wild on LinkedIn, listening to podcasts, doing whatever people do on YouTube. And those are all opportunities to have a moment of influence and delight with them to make sure that your product stays top of mind as they're moving through the cycle. And then I

Chris (06:11.05)
you

Sarah Reece (06:31.336)
even take nurturing above the funnel when I think about the, you know, the statistic that everybody talks about now in demand generation, which is like 93 to 95 % of your audience is not in market at any given time. And so you want to be surrounding them with your messaging for when they experienced that moment of need. And I feel like that's like,

What I consider once you become in pipeline, we're more like doing demand acceleration. But this stuff that's happening with demand creation above the funnel and then demand acceleration when they're in the funnel, I think that that is all under the umbrella of nurturing a human being from unknown to known to prospect to customer.

Adam Sockel (07:16.469)
And people who are a part of the marketing sales experience, partnership, friendship, whatever you want to call it, are probably already understanding why this is all so hard to measure. The ROI of nurturing, we didn't even prep this as a question, but I just think about it, like you said, above the funnel, peak behind the curtain, that is a lot of what I do.

Chris (07:31.188)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (07:42.057)
here at ORM is all the content I created. A lot of it is above the funnel. So when people are ready to be in that funnel, they know who we are and what we stand for and the things that we, you know, want them to engage with. Spoiler alert, this podcast is part of that. If you're listening to this, you are above our funnel and we will be reaching out to you in the not too distant future. But, you know, I'm thinking about all of the different ways that people can nurture. And I'm curious what you both think about what channels are the ones that people should be focusing on. And Sarah, we can we can start with you like

What channels should be being used to nurture your prospects or future prospects?

Sarah Reece (08:19.734)
So I feel like I have kind of a spicy opinion on this because it's very different from the way that I was brought up in marketing, which I think, I believe that nurture channels are kind of your brand channels. I think, you you said that this podcast is above the funnel and I agree with that, but I also think that people who are...

in pipeline who've gotten into our retargeting pools, have started connecting with Oromites on LinkedIn, they're going to be exposed to this podcast. And it's going to be a way for them to continue to get to know us and build,

trust with our brands to make them feel confident when they're signing the dotted line on their contract. So I think that that's how I like to approach nurture, which is when you ask the ROI question, why I cringed a little because it's very hard to calculate the ROI on that. But to go back to like the meat of your question, I think that the most effective channels for nurture are your brand ones.

Adam Sockel (09:24.686)
Chris, what do you think?

Chris (09:26.441)
Yeah, I think I would agree with that. think that a lot of nurturing is also super context dependent.

Right? So, so where you're nurturing is really going to depend upon what's my goal with the nurture. Where is somebody at in terms of their relationship with, with our brand or where they are in their journey or funnel, whatever you kind of want to call it. Right. So in going back to the idea that almost anything can be nurturing, you know, for us at Warmly, right. If somebody visits a, you know, a competitor page, we have a whole different set of steps that they now engage with, both in terms of like the chat bot that they're engaged with.

maybe like reaches out to them on LinkedIn with just a connection request, what types of advertising they may kind of see next, right? All these different sort of stages that are very different than if somebody came to maybe our homepage or came to our specific pricing page, right? So the channels are completely context dependent. And if you're not making your nurture context dependent, you're probably being a little bit too general with your efforts and you're going to see probably a lower

rates of conversion or lower rates of goal achievement, whatever that goal may be.

Adam Sockel (10:36.431)
I want to ask you if there are channels that you think are not great for nurturing and why you think about that. The reason I bring this up is obviously at Orem, more big believers in the phone. And at first glance, if someone were to say, is the phone a good way to nurture? People will probably say no, because the phone is to book meetings. That's what it's there for. But the reason I bring this up is there's this belief from a calling standpoint that positive outcomes are

just as important as booking a meeting and a positive outcome of a phone call could be you gained more information, you got a new contact, you understood who the buyer is. And I've talked to a lot of our customers who use the phone, especially if they're reaching out to like enterprise accounts, they use the phone as a way to build their relationship and say, not trying to book a meeting, we're hosting this executive dinner or we have this webinar or here's this piece of content that I know you as a DevOps.

Chris (11:06.218)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (11:33.583)
manager would really, really appreciate. I just wanted to send that over to you and they kind of build their relationship by getting these positive moments. And so to me, I think it's a really great way to nurture. And but I also appreciate people are like, no, we have to just be making phone calls to book these meetings. But I do want to know from you guys, like, are there channels you think people should not be nurturing through?

Yeah, go ahead, Chris.

Chris (11:59.849)
Yeah, I mean, just it's, it's a neck of my ear the answer, I mean, again, it is, it is context dependent again. Like if there is no really bad marketing channel, which means there's no bad nurturing channel. It's, it's, it's more just about like how it's used and where it's appropriate. Should you be putting somebody who you met at an event for 10 seconds into like a three call, 10 email nurturing sequence?

Probably not, right? But like, if you've got an enterprise account where you're to have to have a ton of discussions anyway, like a human to human nurture sequence is completely appropriate where you need to continue to have conversations over and over again. So if there's no bad marketing channel, just which one's effective, it's the same thing with your nurturing channels.

Sarah Reece (12:51.944)
Yeah, and I tend to agree with exactly what Chris said, know, immediately as I'm trying to think through. Because obviously I sit on a side of very much that's like brand is demand and all of that is nurture.

I would say you have to think about efficiency. So if I'm thinking about a bad nurturing channel, I'm going to use the word bad to mean inefficient. So a Super Bowl ad, very inefficient way to nurture your database. One touch, millions of dollars, that's not it. A blimp comes to mind too. But I think that the tactics that Chris described really help.

drive home that idea that it is very contextual, what tactic, what message, the segment, the personas you're talking to, they all need to be nurtured in their own special way.

Adam Sockel (13:44.483)
Just to put a bow on it so people understand. People think Orem is a very large company. We are not purchased Super Bowl ad large yet. So just frame of context, not to give away the sauce about R-A-R-R. I want to ask you both, because you both sit at the seat that really is the cross-section of marketing and sales and understanding how these two teams can and should interact.

If people are familiar with ORM, they're probably familiar with an entire massive event that Sarah helped co-imagine all about the dumpster fire relationship that is marketing and sales. so thinking about that, I want to ask you both in terms of nurturing how that relationship should work because there's sales sequences where your sales reps, your SDRs, your frontline are doing all sorts of different messaging themselves and then there's marketing newsletters and all these different things.

I would love to first hear like, how do you ensure as that demand gen head, the person who's kind of that linchpin between these two teams, how do you ensure you're not overdoing it and sort of like burning out these prospects? And Sarah, we'll start with you on this one.

Sarah Reece (14:58.678)
Well, you'll just never hear me use the word nurture in general when I'm describing these tactics to the sellers at all. And oftentimes to leadership, because I do think that leadership tends to think of nurture as like this multi-step email. Maybe we get a little multi-channel activation and I don't want our tactics to be pigeonholed and like segmented out to be just a nurture thing.

So much so that when we were doing our FY25 planning a little, you know, inside Orem baseball, we're doing our FY25 planning and the question was brought to me again, as it's been brought to me for the past three planning cycles, Sarah, is it time for email nurture? And I said, we are already doing email nurture. We send a monthly newsletter. And I think that that is the most that a marketing email nurture should ever be. And it should only be that way if your marketing newsletter is as delightful as ours is.

Newsletters for newsletter's sake are disgusting and I don't promote those. Feel free to edit that out if you want to.

Adam Sockel (16:02.826)
No, I'm good, I'm- no, for people who watch the video version of this, I am laughing because I am the person who brought it up to Sarah, and I also am the person who writes our marketing newsletter, so it's funny on both accounts for me, so no, I'm keeping all this in.

Chris (16:05.77)
you

Sarah Reece (16:13.344)
But I am the one who told you, hey, Adam, what do you think about doing a newsletter? And in the background, I'm like, I can't believe I just said those words out loud. But just like my psychiatrist is the only person that I would allow to mess with my brain chemistry, Adam is the only content marketer that I would trust to write a newsletter. So yeah, I don't talk about it in terms of nurture, but it is really complicated to sell

Adam Sockel (16:34.775)
Thank you.

Sarah Reece (16:43.06)
the sales campaigns to the sellers. Because like you were saying, Adam, you think about the phone in terms of booking meetings. And so for example, we're working on a campaign with our sales team right now where

the selling motion may not end up in booked meetings immediately. It is a lot more kind of that enterprise play. Like you talked about, Chris, where we're gonna have to a lot of conversations. And so we have to really strategically coach the sales team on the mindset to go into those conversations with. Information gathering and referrals are as big of a win as booking that meeting. And...

Chris (17:08.596)
Right.

Sarah Reece (17:22.506)
That to me is the nurture. And I guess the last thing I'll say on that point is having it come from the sellers. I feel like once we know who you are, we should treat you like we know you. And so that's why I don't do a ton of marketing email. I don't want it to come from marketing at or Sarah at. I want it to come from the SDR or AE that you're most likely to work with. And we can fudge that through our automation system. So that's why the sales relationship is so essential on our end, because I do all of my nurture.

through the sales team.

Adam Sockel (17:55.235)
Yeah, I will say before I get to you, Chris, like Sarah mentioning who the emails come from. That's something I didn't think about how important it is until we started. If you get the Orem monthly newsletter, which is called straight to voicemail that I write, it comes from me because of this. we wanted to come from a person. The drawback to that is I can't tell you how many like support questions I get because everyone gets our email. And if they don't know who their CSM is, they'll just be like, Adam, can you help me with this request? And I'll be like,

Chris (18:03.7)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (18:26.203)
that is an interesting, it's good to have it come from the cell. So I apologize. Chris, talk to, you know, I would love to hear your thoughts on the relationship between the two teams and how to make it work properly.

Chris (18:32.65)
Yeah.

good, I love that story because it is very relatable when you put your name or content information on something like this and it immediately is used to jump the queue, so to speak, for any kind of question or support need that's on your mind. Like, good, I've got a workaround now. So.

Adam Sockel (18:50.892)
Yes.

Chris (18:58.847)
Yeah, a couple of things I was wanting to kind of talk about on those sorts of things. think, yes, the alignment on sales and marketing is crucial, especially if you think about it in terms of like splitting out between even just top of funnel or enablement and bottom of funnel, because, know, what brings somebody into the funnel should be what kind of takes them through it, right? Like you're not...

You're not going to walk into a store looking to buy pants and then only walk out with a shirt. mean, that does happen, but like you're usually there for what brought you there. Right. and then, you know, the other point I think, sir, you were making about limiting the amount of, let's say marketing emails or automation as nurture is a, is also another good point that like, you don't always have to be nurturing, right? Like you like it's, it's not always the best play. And so, you know,

There is a bit of nurturing, I think, that happens a lot because of maybe a misalignment with marketing and sales, especially when it comes to goaling, where like, you know, sales is constantly, you know, trying to show that they've sourced everything for the pipe and marketing may be attempting to inflate their revenue influence number with nurturing because they need to kind of like show like,

a line chart going up in a meeting somewhere. And that just leads to shittier outcomes kind of across the go-to-market motion. Right? So like, if you, if you really want to kind of like fix your nurturing or be doing like proper or good nurturing, the alignment should really be on like, what does the person on the actual journey that you're trying to convert to a customer need and like who is best to supply that need. And if it's marketing needs to have a couple of resources to send to them.

great, have marketing kind of put that together. If sales needs to be the person that's just contacting them and continuing to build that relationship, great, let them do that, right? That's all part of it. So like the way you keep from stepping on each other's toes is you just have to be very honest about the needs of the prospect, not really the needs of the department. Like when you put that in front of what that sale is going to need or what that person is going to need, that's when you really run into those issues.

Adam Sockel (21:19.456)
So you look like you have thoughts or response on that or just total agreement with the head nod.

Sarah Reece (21:24.35)
I just love that Chris brought up the metrics because that's something that I can easily forget from my seat at Orem because we are so lucky to have a sales team that believes in the type of demand generation that we do and that has worked so well. And so we don't find ourselves in the metrics conflict. Sure, I own a revenue number. Sure, I own a pipeline number. But at the end of the day, we as a company own a revenue number and we're all

aligned from a revenue leadership perspective that we work as a team to get there and so we don't find ourselves in credit battles such that exactly what Chris said if I owned a crazy sourced number I'm just gonna throw a ton of activities at these people and game the system but it's not gonna result in revenue outcomes and so I focus on like efficiency rates like the efficiency of the tactic and if I can do less marketing with more overall revenue for the

Chris (22:12.692)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Reece (22:24.062)
company, that sounds fabulous to me. So yeah, I just I really I'm really glad that Chris brought that perspective up because I know a lot of people aren't in the luxurious position that we're in at Orem to not have to face those battles.

Adam Sockel (22:41.965)
Yeah. And I want to ask, like you guys have been talking about alignment and it's something at the risk of like going into a much larger conversation, but tactically from a messaging standpoint. Cause if, if you are on the same page with your sales team and understanding who is going to be sending messages, who's going to be conversing and, know, understanding like, it's the sales team are going to be having their sequence, but at the same time, your, your marketing team, your brand is doing X, Y, and Z event. And

dinner and weird thing on LinkedIn and I am talking about Orm specifically now, but like, I want to hear from you guys. How do you keep, how do you guys, again, like that linchpin between the two teams, how do make sure that people are aligned on messaging and kind of keeping that same tone so it's not jarring? And I'm aware that this might be something that's easier for smaller teams because it's easier for them to meet, like tactically, know, like Chris, how are you making sure that everyone

is on the same page and kind of presenting the same version of Wormly throughout the experience for your prospects.

Chris (23:45.547)
Yeah, I think the place it starts, I think is a kind of a bit of a decision on who owns the messaging and then who, you know, helps execute the messaging. Right. I kind of have an idea in my mind that like, oftentimes it's me who really owns a lot of the messaging and then we kind of filter it down from there. But I am fine with kind of

giving up certain aspects of that. Maybe sales has a better idea. Maybe even our, kind of C-suite has like something that they want to communicate. So sometimes when it comes down to, messaging consistency, I'm less concerned about spending all day to find the perfect idea. I'm, I'm more concerned with us all agreeing to the same idea. And like sometimes it's actually worth yielding.

to a different idea if more people are aligned on it. And I think that actually helps with alignment a lot. And then if things don't work out the way that you would think, or there's ways to optimize, there's obviously a conversation to be happened later. But like, if you're, you can spend too much time worrying about perfect, and that's gonna get in the way of things being done and things being good. And I think that actually has more negative effects than like finding the perfect idea to execute on. So.

having kind of like assigned owners and have it be from maybe a singular voice and then everything kind of, you know, filters down from there. Personally, I try to meet with, you know, our head of revenue, head of sales, asynchronously every day, at least synchronously once a week, right? Sales and marketing should be in constant conversation, even if it's just to chat about ideas or things that have come up or conversations that have been had or things that they're hearing, right?

If you're in, if you're in demand or you're in marketing, you try to stay as close to the customers as possible through customer conversations or, you know, being at events or whatnot, but there's, there's going to be nobody closer to your market than sales. They're always having conversations. That's their whole job. so it's, it's best to kind of augment your own experiences and what you've been learning with people who are actually closing the deals or talking to, to people every day in your market. So I think you take those ideas.

Chris (26:08.306)
and then you're able to kind of formulate that into messaging or, you know, an idea that you're going to follow, but it has to come up from the bottom and then you can kind of like optimize it and filter it back down.

Adam Sockel (26:23.343)
Yeah, I think it's also realistic to understand. This is something I don't think enough companies think about. I don't really think about it a lot often either. But no single prospect is going to see all of your messages everywhere. You can be so obsessed with your own messages, with your own content, with your own things, because it's your job. spend uncertain amount of hours. work in SAS a week here to get obsessive about this. And it can be kind of hurtful to even think about like,

Okay, well that LinkedIn post that we put out got 12,000 impressions and that email that we sent to 20,000 people had a 30 % open rate and the call boots that we reran had a 7 % connect rate. So like, let's do the numbers. All these people aren't really going to see all of your messages. So to your guys point, I think it's okay. like you want to have a singular, like you want to all be marching in the same direction, but I think it's okay if it's not a hundred percent like identical.

Chris (27:06.943)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (27:20.799)
Marketing is just as much a numbers game as sales is in some ways, right? Like not everything you put out is going to be a hit. You just need to continue to put out things.

Adam Sockel (27:30.247)
Well, other than Oram, everything we do is a hit. It's a total blast. And yeah, thank you. Sheesh, sheesh. Thanks, Chris. By the way, so I have a couple more topics I want to touch on. I do want to warn you both. I'm going to ask you of like, in the before we get to our final question, I'm going to ask you about a great example of nurturing that you have been nurtured, like somebody sending you a message of some kind. I'm going to give you a few minutes to think about that because

Sarah Reece (27:32.684)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (27:33.108)
Sorry, yes, present company excluded, obviously, right.

Sarah Reece (27:35.66)
Thank you.

Adam Sockel (27:55.552)
Sarah and I like to joke a lot that we're like marketers who hate marketing. So it may be hard for you to think of one, but I have one I'll get to in a minute. But before we get to that, do you think there are instances where nurturing is a complete waste of time, whether it's like size of company or just are there moments where you're like, no, there's we don't need to be talking to these people that often. Sarah, we will start with you.

Sarah Reece (28:21.6)
I'm gonna ask you to edit this out and defer to Chris because I did not prep for this and I feel like he did. So, I don't know. Or just leave that in. I don't care.

Adam Sockel (28:27.566)
It's okay.

Okay. Now we're good. can edit that out. Chris, Chris, as I was saying before, do you think there are instances where nurturing is a waste of time, whether it's company size, ROI, whatever it might be?

Chris (28:33.201)
Yeah.

Chris (28:48.218)
I think some of the times that it's a waste of time to nurture, I can speak from a couple things. So I can tell you it's certainly a waste of time to nurture me if I download a resource or type in my email out of morbid curiosity for something. So that is definitely one of them. So anytime I send out a very low, intense signal, which I think is like,

I want to see something behind like an email wall and you start sending me a ton of emails. That's a big waste of your time and effort and you should stop doing that. I think that's actually true for quite a lot of people unless you have a massive market that you're playing an enormous numbers game with. In my own career, I've definitely experienced times where like I have learned when nurture kind of is and isn't appropriate. I've spent some time doing demand gen and kind of like

lower tech, let's say industries. and so, you know, I've, I've essentially been in roles where we're marketing to, businesses or business owners or managers who are very customer facing for instance, and have very full days, where their priority is, is like, they're not at their desks, they're out serving customers, they're out actually like managing their business. So I think that like nurturing, nurturing people who do not have like time at their desk.

you know, as a, as a marketer, right. I'm, I'm sitting here in front of my computer. if I have an interesting notification or email pop-up, chances are I have a chance to switch gears and take a look at that. If I were to be up on my feet or, or in front of like, you know, a service desk or somewhere else, I probably don't have that kind of time. So if your market is a bunch of people who don't have a lot of time on their hands and maybe they check email a few times a day or maybe even not at all, or maybe that's not really what they're even looking at.

as their communication channel every day. Things like that are times where nurturing is a big waste because they're probably not gonna see it, they're probably not gonna interact with it, and it's just not the way you kinda get through to them.

Adam Sockel (30:57.206)
makes sense. Sarah, you have any thoughts to follow up on that?

Sarah Reece (31:00.246)
I just, again, I have to appreciate Chris's perspective. I've been in the B2B tech game for so long that thinking about people who are B2B but out in the field and more customer facing industries totally slips my mind. And I think that that's the perfect answer because as I'm trolling through instances where I don't think nurture is appropriate.

my mind immediately goes to the maturity of your business and the volume of team members and investment that you have. But even when I start going there and I'm thinking, when I first started at Orem and there's two marketers, we're not doing nurture, we're not doing a newsletter because we don't have enough time to write good content. I will never do bad marketing just like my friend Chris, so I'm not going to write you a bad newsletter.

But I am still doing nurturing things with automation. Shout out to Warmly for making it pretty simple to do smart sequential messaging nurture style campaigns on your website, in your email inbox, and on their LinkedIn. And so that's a way that even if you are small, you don't have a ton of resources, you can efficiently execute a well-crafted nurture campaign.

Adam Sockel (32:20.451)
Just get warmly, ungate all your reports. People will be much happier to come to your website. They won't have to give you email address. And then you can talk to people that way.

Chris (32:26.731)
Yeah. Can't cannot emphasize enough that the whole point of this podcast is to buy warmly. Like I can't, I can't emphasize that enough, you know? So thank you for saying.

Sarah Reece (32:28.629)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (32:33.09)
Yeah.

Sarah Reece (32:33.886)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Sockel (32:35.426)
Yeah, this was very thinly veiled. I'll do that part for you. okay, I'm gonna, the last question we're gonna get to in just a moment is like low hanging things that people can do to like immediately improve their nurturing. But before we do that, I wanna ask you guys if there is an experience that you have had when you have been nurtured that you have been like, that was actually really good. And I will start out of fairness so you two have a moment to think. I am a sucker and I'm opening myself up to I know I'm gonna get these now and that's okay.

I'm a sucker for when people send me LinkedIn DMs with video, like under a minute and they're clear and concise and they say like, Hey, Adam, I see that you had up content at Orem and I see that you guys have been posting about X, Y, and Z. We're able to do some things that helps you out. would love to have a moment of time with you. Like it, I'd for whatever reason, I do pick up cold calls because I work here, but I see the notification for LinkedIn DM and like,

I have that specific type of OCD where I have to clear notifications. So I will at least look at it. And then if I see it's a video and I see it's like 58 seconds, I'm like, okay, I will watch it and I will always respond to those. So for me, that shows me even if they have been quote unquote, nurturing me through my email and other places that I haven't seen, it shows me that they've been paying attention to other stuff we've been doing. And I immediately feel like, all right, I'm at least going to give this human being a shot. are there things, examples that you both have?

experienced personally. Either of you can jump in if there's something. Have I vamped long enough for one of you to give an exam?

Sarah Reece (34:08.34)
I knew immediately when you asked the question, but I will say I don't like video because it makes me feel obligated to respond because I mean, you could be using, but I don't like people who make me feel obligated. Don't put me out. You are coming into my environment and not making me feel guilty for not replying because you took five minutes to make a video for me unless you're using a deep fake. So I don't like it because it makes me feel pressure and I don't want to respond to you anyway.

Adam Sockel (34:16.536)
That's why it works.

Chris (34:18.078)
D-

Adam Sockel (34:35.63)
You

Sarah Reece (34:38.668)
The best nurture I've seen was from a webinar and it was pretty recently with Sendoso actually. Shout out to Katie Penner because the email came from her. After the webinar there was a follow-up with the recording and a link to claim a gift. I think and it was a gift that was like

valuable like it was a Yeti like semi valuable it was a Yeti mug and like a Yeti mug is like something I'm not gonna buy myself and the last one I have is like kind of gross so like sure I'll claim the Yeti mug thanks guys and it just kind of stood out to me because it was more than here's a recording will you have a conversation with me about buying my software and it's like

No, I'm not going to, but you know, I enjoyed the webinar. Thanks for the recording. And sure, I'll remember you because now I have a Yeti mug and if I turn it the right way, I can see your logo. So thought that was clever.

Adam Sockel (35:35.214)
Chris, how about you?

Chris (35:38.378)
I think I'm in kind of the same boat where I'm very resistant to any marketing, which is really weird because I should be putting myself in a position to where I'm like very accepting that everything works, but I'm like very resistant to it. I'm like, this is horse shit. This isn't going to work, but it's like, I'm in the same business. So I should be more receptive to it. But I think the things that work on me are probably,

which I guess is maybe much more traditional demand creation as opposed to very specific nurturing. But like, if anybody is doing read receipts on emails from me or open tracking on emails, just know that that is very like bad information. Cause I'm just clicking the down arrow on my inbox to clear that big red number that's stressing me out. I'm not reading it. But what does kind of work for me is I think just kind of like sort of constant exposure.

that sort of peaks my curiosity at a certain point. if like, if I see something where there's a number of people who are on my feed or that I follow on LinkedIn all the time that have like, are talking about maybe a specific app, this kind of just recently happened with me with an app that we're kind of like testing out ourselves, where it sort of just got to kind of like a critical mass of people kind of talking about it and the things you could do with it, right? I'm a big kind of like,

example person. So if I'm seeing nurture around a lot of playbooks, a lot of people talking about the possibilities and things you could build with, you know, specific software or an app that really starts to, to peak my curiosity to a point where I'm like, okay, I've seen like four or five different things I could potentially build with the software. should at least try a demo. I want to see if I can build these things myself.

Adam Sockel (37:22.83)
So for those keeping track at home, send Adam a video, send Sarah a gift, and send Chris your entire network.

Chris (37:30.696)
Yeah, that's how it is.

Adam Sockel (37:35.79)
Last question for you both as demand gen experts and gurus. What are one or two low hanging things people can do right away to start improving their nurturing? And Chris, we will give you the floor first.

Chris (37:47.669)
Yeah, think the first thing you probably do is do less. If you've got like, you know, it's no longer 2015, so having, you know, 30 different paths in a nurturing workflow does not equal marketing success, I think. If you've got a ton of different automated emails that are being sent out or different messaging, chances are, especially if you're a small marketing team, if you're a series A, series B, maybe even a...

Maybe even a serious C depending upon how that marketing department is shaped out. you probably don't have a ton of people that are producing a bunch of stuff. And if you're stretching yourself very thin with a bunch of different nurture emails or other pieces, the chances that it is just not good content that you're putting out, it's not your best work is very high because you're stretching yourself too thin. So if you really want to improve simplifying means that you can spend more time crafting more meaningful materials that are going to resonate.

That's really kind of the first thing you can do is just do less so that what you do more of has more of an impact and it's just a higher quality.

Adam Sockel (38:56.098)
make sense? Sarah, how about you?

Sarah Reece (39:00.428)
Simplify was also my first, my intuition, like do less, do less. The other two are kind of related ideas. I would recommend looking at your nurture program and seeing which parts of it could come from a person. Is there any opportunity to turn your...

Adam Sockel (39:07.203)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (39:07.69)
Sorry.

Sarah Reece (39:24.37)
marketing nurture into a sales outreach sequence. For example, if that's something that makes you feel very uncomfortable, me saying that, that seems like a pretty good indication that you need to be working more closely with your counterparts in sales. And so what a great opportunity to try that in one small step. And then the final thing I'll say, and this isn't self-serving because of where I work, but I will say push to the phone. We have all been

trained to death by our security team about phishing and scary emails and not clicking on links and LinkedIn's inbox functionality is terrible and there really is no better way to have a conversation and further to further your relationship with somebody than to do it over the phone and there are a lot of tools out there I know one that I'm a particular fan of called Aurum that allows you to do this efficiently

through your outreach sequences.

And the bonus point for marketers is when you start working with your sales team and you start pushing to the phone, if you're using a tool like Aurum, there are others, there's this thing called a sales floor where you can sit on the sales floor with your sales team and you can hear them calling out on the nurture sequence. You can hear them having live conversations with prospects, testing your messaging, using their own messaging. And then you can actually talk to the sales reps in real time to talk about

how they think the sequence is going so that you can go make changes to the emails, to the LinkedIn messaging, to the outreach messaging, or even your website and your marketing campaigns, your Warmly flows too, to be responsive in real time and be even more effective. You can't get feedback quicker than you can get it over the phone.

Adam Sockel (41:17.291)
Love that. I will put in our show notes, Sarah and Chris's LinkedIn's as well as the Warmly LinkedIn and website. They do some really wonderful stuff on just like tactically how to find the people who are interested in your platform and how you get connected with them. believe we also shared a video of the Warmly CEO kind of using both our tools at the same time, which was extremely cool. I will share all that in the show notes. Chris, Sarah, thank you both so much for joining me today.

Chris (41:45.3)
Thanks Adam, thanks for having me.

Sarah Reece (41:46.176)
Thanks, Adam.