A nurture sequence is a planned series of touches, usually email but sometimes ads and sales outreach too, aimed at leads who showed interest but are not ready to talk to sales. Good nurtures respond to behavior: someone who reads pricing content gets a different next step from someone who only read an introductory guide. The goal is to build understanding and trust until the lead is ready for a conversation.
How it differs from a drip
A drip sends the same series on a schedule. A nurture branches. It uses lead scoring, page visits, email clicks or product usage to decide what comes next, and hands the lead to sales when certain signals appear. In practice many teams use the words interchangeably, so agree on definitions internally.
Building a B2B nurture
- Segment by role, company size or use case, since each cares about different outcomes.
- Map content to buying stages: problem, approaches, evaluation, justification.
- Define handoff triggers, such as a pricing page visit plus a demo video view.
- Coordinate with sales so a lead is not nurtured and cold-called at the same time.
- Retargeting ads to the same segment can reinforce the emails.
Measuring it
Judge nurtures by how many leads become qualified opportunities, and how quickly, compared with similar leads who were not nurtured. Email clicks are useful along the way, but they are not the outcome.
Example
Two tracks by role
Hypothetical company Saddlecroft splits guide downloaders into practitioners and managers. Practitioners get technical how-tos and a free tool; managers get a cost model and a customer story. A manager who visits the pricing page is routed to an account executive with a summary of what they read.
Common mistakes
Nurturing with sales pitches
If every email asks for a demo, the sequence is a countdown to unsubscribing. Mix in content that is useful on its own.
Questions
Yes, in product-led SaaS, usage events are often the best signals. A nurture triggered by product behavior can be more relevant than one triggered by a content download.
