Most marketers use email as their main lead nurturing tactic. A recent MarketingSherpa survey found that 58% of those who stop reading, disengage, or unsubscribe list lack of relevance as a key factor. Relevance matters a lot especially when it comes to lead nurturing content and emails.

As B2B marketers, we should have it drilled into our brains that relevance must be an essential part of our lead nurturing and overall marketing plan. But be honest with yourself: How well are you really connecting with your audience?

I'm looking beyond email unsubscribes and I'm thinking differently about how I measure lead nurturing engagement.

You need to start considering all those prospects that are simply ignoring your emails. I read a blog post on Unsubscribes and Content Relevance by Steve Woods definitely worth checking out.

What's an unemotional unsubscribe? If you've reached out to a to future customer via email over a period of 3 months or more with a minimal amount of activity and no clicks, that a likely indication of "emotional unsubscribe."

It's a common phenomenon. I receive emails often from companies that "know" me, but their emails certainly don't show it. Their creative and graphics-laden emails don't speak to my concerns at all. And each irrelevant message I receive is basically programming me to ignore or delete future messages from them. I don't even bother to unsubscribe. Does this sound familiar?

So, how do we align our communications with what is relevant to our audience? Here's five ways you can connect more relevantly with the future customers your nurturing:

1. Relevance to their stage in the buying process: Be sure to provide different kinds of information to your prospect based on what point they are in the buying process. If they are an early stage lead and they are just starting to get familiar with the business issues you solve, don't send them the same copy that you would send someone who is on the verge of making a decision.

2. Relevance to their industry vertical: Industry information will more than likely tell you what pains your prospects are experiencing, while company size will give you a hint as to the resources they have available to tackle these challenges. Be sure to add this information to your marketing data often so that you can easily define your target segments based on these indicators.

3. Relevance of their role and job function: What's their job function? What part to they play in the buying process (influencer, decision maker, information gather). For example, our experience shows that a decision maker is heavily involved at the very start and the very end of the buying process, but leaves the middle of the process up to the influencers. For your niche, you'll need to investigate who gets involved at which point in the process so that you can segment your messaging.

4. Relevance of timing: Learn about these lead nurturing time factors. You'll also want to think about the favorable trigger events you can utilize to your advantage. Trigger events are a great way to change the physics of the buying process and yet another way that we marketers can go beyond the lead.

Trigger events matter for two key reasons. First, they may indicate the status quo in an organization is changing, and secondly, they can contribute to the development of timely and relevant sales and marketing messaging. Read The Physics of Trigger Events for Lead Generation to get a look at a trigger event mind map. It will show you some of the possible trigger events you can track.

5. Relevance of message medium: This is the hardest to get right. Each audience responds differently. That's why you should test, test, test. Try different subject lines. Try different copy and calls to action. Try different mediums (don't rely on email only nurturing). The response to your A/B tests will help you understand which style is most relevant and effective with your audience.

As you develop lead nurturing tracks this is extremely useful because you can leverage what you've learned to reuse that content again and again.

I realize that new social media trends have opened up many avenues in which marketers can create and nurture relationships. However, I believe email can still hold its own. But, in order to keep it effective, more than ever you'll have to create meaningful, informative, attention-grabbing content... in a style easily perceived to be directed exclusively to the recipient.

If you're not prepared to do the work it takes to stay relevant with your prospects, then at least prepare for more "emotional unsubscribes."
More resources:

"Engage prospects while guiding them through buying process" for more advice about being relevant in the buying process from B2Bonline.

For more on email testing, read "E-mail Testing: A Real-World Approach." This article provides a simple road map to follow and outlines testing scenarios in the way people really think (or should be thinking) about testing.