According to the B2B Lead Generation Blog in 5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails, it's all about making your emails seem like you know the prospect. And that means you most certainly shouldn't be sending out "one size fits all" emails. Imagine three people: a major customer who's bought red widgets from you in the past; a prospect who recently made an enquiry about blue widgets but never bought; and someone who left his business card at an exhibition stand last year. If all three came into your office one by one, would you give them the identical sales presentation about red widgets? Of course not. Which is why your emails need to be segmented down to the finest possible level. Perhaps instead of starting at the top and breaking our lists down, we should be thinking about our prospects on an individual basis, and re-building them up into groups.

Your prospects are all individual people

This is a 2,700-word article which attempts to bring together marketing strategy with a management/manufacturing philosophy, so it's not for the faint-hearted. But if you're interested in the way sales and marketing work together, and can spare 15 minutes, I would thoroughly recommend giving it a go. There are several thought-provoking nuggets along the way, and once again, the point is made about the "major failure of many sales processes: instead of respecting where the customer is along their journey, they assume every prospect is ready to buy now and proceed to give them a sales pitch."

Start by defining what a sales lead actually is