Insights

5th May 2026

How to Optimise Your Marketing Nurture Campaigns for Maximum Impact

By Julian Wisdom

Your nurture campaigns aren’t failing because of bad content – they’re failing because of bad strategy.

Nurture campaigns are more than just a few workflows that you leave to run in the background, with the hope that leads will convert. Yet for some reason so many marketers and organisations still treat nurtures like a generic drip campaign.

The truth is, using the same messaging, the same cadence and the same content, (regardless of where leads are in their journey), is more like spamming than nurturing. The result: nurtures that have low engagement, exhaust audiences, frustrate your sales teams and miss vital opportunities. If this sounds like your organisation’s current nurture approach, it’s time to get back to basics.

Let’s walk you through the seven areas to address in order to optimise your nurtures for maximum impact.

1. Who are you trying to target?

Let’s start with an easy question. Do you have an ICP?

If those three letters don’t mean anything to you, then let’s change that. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) identifies the perfect leads or accounts for your product or service. It’s also essential in ensuring your nurture campaigns have a clear direction and focus.

Here are some factors you should consider when building out your ICP:

Industry / vertical
Company size
Geography / region
Tech stack

Your ICP shouldn’t only exist in a slide deck, but it should actively dictate your nurture logic. once you identify who you’re trying to reach, you will also be able to determine how, when and why to speak to them.

2. Don’t leave sales out

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve noticed when marketing teams are building out nurtures is not including the sales team in the process.

The idea of a nurture is to communicate with leads over a period of time, with the eventual goal of them becoming MQLs to be handed over to sales.

With that in mind, it’s essential to align with sales to understand their specific processes, the issues they face and the approaches that have worked well from their perspective. To kick off those conversations with sales, some of the questions you can ask are:

What signals usually indicate readiness?
Which personas influence final decisions?
What content has helped close deals?
What is a clear definition of an MQL / SQL?

Before you build a single workflow or nurture stream, ensure you align with sales, and utilise the information you’ve gathered from those conversations to feed into the strategy, structure and logic of your nurtures.

3. Segment your nurtures

If you’re current nurtures consist of one nurture stream that sends out emails to your entire database…it’s time to turn it off!

Segmentation is the difference between blasting out any email and sending an email which feels relevant. Now that your ICP has been built, this will make it even easier to segment your nurtures.

Rather than putting your whole database into one nurture, you can create nurtures for specific segments such as:

Industry
Job role / seniority
Buying stage
Account tier

Segmentation isn’t about complexity, it’s about relevance. If everyone gets the same nurture journey, how will they feel understood and valued?

4. Streams need strategy

Not all nurture streams serve the same purpose. That’s why it’s important to identify a strategic workflow.

Your goal is to nurture leads over time. For example, if a new lead enters your database after seeing an ad for a free whitepaper, filling out the form and downloading the asset, your first email to them shouldn’t ask them to ‘speak to our sales now’.

Why not? Because why should they – how will that help them?

A new lead is likely to know little about your company, so rather than put them off and try and force a conversation with sales, why not provide them with relevant information about your company and service. This approach helps to build a rapport, gain interest and influence their potential buying opportunity.

Breaking down your nurture streams into the following will help take your leads on a clear, structured journey:

Awareness stream – Inform and educate to build credibility and engagement
Consideration stream – Introduce your methods, services, differentiators without pushing for an immediate purchase
Decision stream – Your messaging becomes more direct, with the goal to push leads to become MQLs and get passed over to sales.

5. Content is crucial

Now that we have established the different nurture streams, deciding which content sits in which stream is also important.

Creating a context matrix is the best way to get this done. A simple file will help you optimise your content for your nurtures, outlining the following details:

The name of the asset
The content topic
The URL to the asset
Whether the asset is gated or ungated
The nurture stream it should belong to (awareness, consideration or decision).

Here’s an example of what content should be placed in which stream:

Awareness stream:

Checklists
One-page whitepapers
Short blogs
Guides
Short videos

Consideration stream:

Case studies
Reports
Solution guides
Expert interviews

Decision stream:

Product demos
Free trials
On-demand webinar
Request to be contacted by sales

Remember, a nurture is only ever as strong as the content inside it.

6. Make it personal

In today’s AI-content driven age, personalisation is more than just inserting someone’s first name. Fortunately, we have platforms such as Marketo, HubSpot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement that allow you to take personalisation to the next level.

One of the ways to achieve this is by using dynamic content. Dynamic content in emails is the ability to change specific parts of an email automatically, based on contact data, behaviour or segmentations. Parts of the emails that can be changed are text, images, Call to action (CTA) buttons and subject lines.

Instead of creating multiple emails, you can create one version of the email and use dynamic content to change the content of the email based on segments, persona or behaviour. Not only will this save time when creating emails, but it also allows for the nurtures to speak specifically to different contacts depending on where they fall in your segmentation.

Rather than having just a generic email, the email is now focused on the contact’s interest and should help increase engagement.

7. Don’t be scared to test

If you’re not testing, then you’re guessing. A/B testing should be implemented to provide you with insight and understanding of what’s working well, what content and actions your contacts respond to best, and what performs less well.

Rather than giving your contacts one variation of an email, with the hope of great performance, test different variants and use these insights to help your nurtures perform even better.

Here are a few things you could A/B test:

Subject lines
Preview text
CTA wording
Email length
Sending time
Whole email

Identify what works well, what your audience engages with and use this as strength when building future nurtures.

Nurture optimisation: a strategic, sales-driven and results focused approach

Optimising your nurture campaigns isn’t about blasting out as many emails as possible and hoping that some of them will land with the right person at the right time. It’s about building a strategic, segmented, sales-aligned system that helps nurture contacts towards an informed buying decision.

When implemented correctly, nurtures can deliver huge impact and ROI for your marketing campaigns, for sales, and for the wider business.

If you haven’t reviewed your nurture campaigns in the last six to 12 months, now is the time to take stock. Measure them against these seven steps and you’ll be ready to deliver a refreshed, targeted and results-driven nurture strategy.

Need help turning these steps into a high-performing nurture programme?

CRMT digital can help you audit, redesign and optimise your nurture strategy across platforms like Marketo, HubSpot and Salesforce Account Engagement, ensuring your messaging is segmented, sales-aligned and built to convert.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your current workflows, get in touch with our team and let’s map out your next nurture journey.

Get in touch

FAQs

How do I choose the right audience for a nurture campaign?

Start with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and translate it into clear entry criteria (industry, company size, region, tech stack, job role/seniority, and intent signals). If you can’t describe who the nurture is for (and who it’s not for), you’ll end up with generic messaging that underperforms.

What should I align with sales before I build the workflow?

Agree what “ready for sales” actually means (MQL/SQL definitions), which signals indicate readiness, which personas influence the decision, and what content helps progress deals. That input should shape your nurture goals, your progression rules, and the CTAs you use in each stream.

How many nurture streams do I need and how do I structure them?

A practical starting point is three: awareness (educate and build credibility), consideration (introduce your approach and differentiators), and decision (more direct conversion-focused messaging). Keep the objective of each stream clear and use rules to move people based on engagement and buying-stage signals, not a one-size-fits-all cadence.

What content should go into each stage of the nurture?

Use a content matrix to map assets by topic and buying stage. Awareness typically works best with lighter, educational formats (checklists, short blogs, guides, short videos). Consideration can introduce proof and depth (case studies, reports, solution guides, interviews). Decision content should remove friction and invite action (demos, trials, on-demand webinars, “talk to sales”).

How do I improve performance once a nurture is live?

Combine relevance with continuous testing. Increase relevance through segmentation and dynamic content (e.g., swapping copy, CTAs, or modules by persona/industry/behaviour), then A/B test the levers that drive outcomes: subject lines, preview text, CTA wording, email length, send time and even whole-email variants. Review results regularly and use what you learn to refine stream logic, content and progression criteria