What You Need to Know About Lead-Nurturing Messages In a post at Marketing Interactions, Ardath Albee recalls a B2B client who thought her proposed lead-nurturing messages might be too brief. Albee begged to differ. "Inundating prospects with more links and choices rather than improving the personalization, value and contagiousness of your email message is not the right answer," she explained. "The purpose of a lead nurturing email is NOT to: Be everything to everyone; get any old click; ask for a lot of time; or make a sale." According to Albee, your email has about 10 seconds to answer these questions: Do I need to know this right now? Is this subject matter relevant to my priorities? Will it be easy to get the information? What is my opinion of the sender? What do I think they want from me? In other words, your B2B customer won't waste his time digging through your paragraphs in search of your buried hook. "The only job of your lead nurturing email is to get the prospect to take an action that shows you their interest in the subject matter of your content offer," she notes. "There's just simply not time for much else." Albee recommends limiting such messages to 150 or—even better—100 words. And there's no need for graphics since many prospects will read your email on a mobile device. "If all I see is the emptiness of graphic boxes waiting to be downloaded in a preview, I just delete," she says. "Who has the time?" Conclusion: Brief works. When nurturing leads, keep your message short, sweet and relevant. If you would like help developing or improving your email marketing program, please give me a call at 440-519-1500 or e-mail me at john@x2media.us  X2 Media can help you target your content and get your message to the audience in a way that it is not only seen and heard, but remembered. Until next month….remember, “you don’t get a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression”. Always make it a good one!  From X2Media I would like to thank you for your time.    John E. Hornyak X2Media, LLC