How to Build an Application Nurture Journey

Overview

Applications, especially in sectors like insurance, finance, and education, serve as a pivotal gateway to sales.

Unlike lead generation forms which often capture the mere interest of a potential customer, applications signify a deeper intent, potentially reflecting a customer's readiness to make a commitment. This higher engagement level demands a more structured outreach cycle.

Leveraging High Engagement

Given the high engagement level of applicants, it's essential to have an outreach cycle that's more involved. Combining regular calls with timely application reminder messages and emails that resonate with your audience will ensure they remain engaged and are more likely to convert. For the purposes of this article, we'll design our application nurture journey with the fictitious Regal Coding Academy as an example. In the context of our example, this could mean:

• 6 Calls Attempts:
  • Day 1 - Immediate
  • Day 1 - A few hours later
  • Day 2 - Morning
  • Day 2 - Afternoon
  • Day 4 - Midday
  • Day 6 - Late Afternoon
• 9 SMS Messages:
  • Day 1 - Immediate,
  • Day 4 - Morning,
  • Day 6 - Midday,
  • Day 8 - Afternoon,
  • Day 10 - Late Afternoon,
  • Day 14 - Afternoon,
  • Day 16 - Midday,
  • Day 20 - Morning,
  • Day 24 - Midday
• 6 Emails immediately following each call attempt
  • See this guide for how to set up email for your agents

Determine the Right Cadence

Your outreach's cadence should be aligned with the application/sales cycle period specific to your business and adjusted based on data about what times lead to better answer/response rates. This ensures your messages are timely and relevant.

Putting The Journey Together

Part 1 - The Constant Journey (Call 1 & All SMS)

This journey triggers from the application event and contains your first call, and the SMS outreach. Any SMS experiments would be added here as well.

Step 1 - Trigger & Subscribe SMS

Choose your trigger event carefully. This should be your initial application event. Ensure you don't trigger on duplicates or subsequent update events. 

STEP 2 - Create The Call Task and wait a brief period before sending the first nurture SMS

STEP 3 - Add the remaining SMS

The messaging conditional flow would look consistent for as many SMS as you choose to send. Use the delay nodes to add more variation to your messaging frequency.

Part 2 - The Dynamic Journey (Call 2)

Step 1 - Trigger with Filters

This journey triggers from a non-connected application call, in the filters you want to check for a shared attribute among all your Application Call Campaigns, such as the word "Application" in the campaign name. Then you want to ensure your checking for the right disposition(s). Additionally, as a best practice, you should only trigger if the contact is still eligible for calls, for example, their application status is still in the "Submitted" stage.

Step 2 - Dynamic Call Creation

Finally, you check for the specific campaign ID of the call in question and then create the follow up call. 

Best Practices for SMS

1. Content Experiments: Regularly test and refine your SMS content to resonate best with your audience.
2. Personalization: Personalizing sms messages can significantly improve engagement and conversion rates.
3. Call to Action: Each message should have a clear call to action guiding the applicant towards the next step in their journey.

The key to a successful application nurture journey is to recognize the intent of the applicant and to offer them consistent, personalized, and timely engagements that guide them towards a final commitment. With the right approach, you can maximize conversions and drive significant growth for your business.