Your nurture strategy is lazy marketing

Most B2B nurture campaigns are set up to slowly lose a lead. You know the type — 10 emails, four blog posts, three whitepapers, one webinar recording, two soft CTAs, zero replies. Sending someone a 10-email sequence after a webinar isn’t nurturing. It’s spamming — and it’s lazy. 

I’ve seen this play out more times than I can count. A prospect engages with your webinar, campaign or event, and, instead of building a relationship, you hand them off to sales and toss them into a mindless drip campaign — as if they’re on a conveyor belt to conversion. It doesn’t work. It never has.

Marketers have confused activity with strategy. Drip campaigns are the poster child for that confusion. Let’s break down what real nurturing looks like and how to build something better.

The typical nurture sequence: Lazy by design

Marketers today are doing plenty of activity — but we’re not learning, listening or connecting.

The old playbook looks like this:

• Host a webinar.
• Hand off the list to sales.
• Enroll leads in a 7-10-touch nurture.
• Push whitepapers, blogs and datasheets.
• Pitch a trial or demo.
• Wait.
• Get nothing.
• Blame sales.

There’s no insight. No conversation. No relationship-building. Just a series of disconnected asks built around your content calendar. This is content-based nagging, not nurturing.

Dig deeper: 5 email lifecycle programs you need — and one to drop

What nurture should do

More than automating content blasts, R.E.A.L. nurture is about building actual relationships with your audience. It stands for:

• Relationship-building.
• Empathy-driven insights.
• Active listening.
• Low-pressure engagement.

The R.E.A.L. nurture system does three things:

• Learns about the buyer’s mindset and psychology.
• Identifies what’s stopping them from moving forward.
• Builds trust and preference for when they are ready to buy.

This takes intention, curiosity and yes, actual human interaction. Let’s go through how this works in practice.

When the webinar ends, the real work begins

Let’s say you host a webinar on “How to Cut Campaign Waste with Smart Segmentation.” You get 300 attendees. They stay and engage. Interest is there.

The standard approach is to:

• Hand leads to sales.
• Drip emails about your segmentation features.
• Push for a demo.
• Then — crickets.

Here’s the better approach.

Step 1: Start a conversation, not a sales pitch

Genuine nurture starts with curiosity. Before sending content, ask a question that shows genuine interest and invites a response.

Subject line: “Curious, How Do You Segment Your Campaigns?”

Body copy:

Thanks for joining the webinar! I’d love to know, how are you currently segmenting your audience?

1. Manually.
2. I use a marketing automation tool.
3. I use my CRM platform.
4. I use a CDP.
5. I’m not segmenting at all.

What’s been working? What’s still a challenge?

Why this works

You’re not pushing a PDF. You’re asking for a point of view. This shows you’re interested in them and opens the door for a real conversation.

Pro tip: Add a one-question poll or embedded survey to capture answers and segment future messaging based on real input.

Dig deeper: The failsafe approach to building strategic nurture paths

Step 2: Learn their role-based goals

Your nurture should explore the context behind the click. Use emails, polls and 1:1 invites to learn things like:

• Are they trying to get promoted?
• Are they overworked and trying to automate more?
• Do they want to prove ROI to leadership fast?

Below is an example email.

Subject: “Quick Question About Your 2025 Marketing Goals”

Body:

I’m curious, what’s the No. 1 thing you’re focused on this quarter?

• Proving ROI?
• Improving campaign performance?
• Cutting down on manual tasks?

Based on their answers, adjust your messaging. Let them self-identify, then customize follow-ups based on their response.

Step 3: Acknowledge what’s stopping the sale

Most marketers skip this step altogether. They never stop to ask, “What is stopping this person from buying?” They could be:

• Already using a tool and locked in until Q2 of next year.
• Happy with what they have, but open to better.
• Overwhelmed and don’t have the bandwidth to evaluate.
• Lacking buy-in from finance, IT or leadership.

You’ll never know unless you ask. That’s where small-group conversations come in. They surface what your emails never will.

Invite them to a candid, no-pitch discussion about what’s really holding marketers back from switching to a new solution. Make it human and useful. Then use those insights in your future emails and sales motions.

Dig deeper: Finding the sweet spot between relevance and discovery in B2B lead nurturing

Step 4: Bring in human touchpoints

Have someone from your team (sales, CS, marketing) reach out personally, without pitching. The goal isn’t to close, it’s to connect.

Here’s what that looks like in practice — a short, personal note that opens a conversation instead of a sales pitch.

• “Hey, I saw you attended our webinar on segmentation. I’m chatting with a few marketers this week about their data cleanup challenges. Mind if I ask a couple of quick questions? No sales talk, just research.”

If your audience knows your representative by name and likes them, your open rates and demo responses will likely increase later.

Practical tools to make this work

These are the tools that turn genuine nurture from theory into practice.

Nurture is a strategy

You’re not going to win deals pushing more gated content. You’re going to win by knowing your audience, building trust and showing up when they’re ready — not when your calendar says it’s time to send email seven. Kill the drip. Start a conversation. Build the kind of pipeline automation can’t replace.

Dig deeper: How data-driven email nurturing transforms the B2B sales funnel