How to Set Up Intent-Based Nurture Campaigns with 6sense

Jordan Backues

Looking for a multi-channel demand gen play to progress accounts through the buyer stage? At 6sense, our “always-on” intent-based nurture campaign does just that.

This approach tailors emails and ads to each account’s intent signals and buying stage, leveraging 6sense segments and our new Audience Workflows tool for seamless execution across key channels.

Built with our MOPs Director, @julzjames, we meet weekly to optimize and ensure each touchpoint is impactful. Here’s a step-by-step guide to build this campaign and engage prospects at every stage. Make each interaction count! 

Step 1: Group Your Keywords for Targeting 

Start by grouping the keywords that align with your audience's intent signals. This helps you map each keyword group to a specific buying stage, allowing you to focus your messaging. We recommend starting with 2-3 keyword groups for simplicity. For example, if your accounts are researching 'sales engagement platforms' and 'sales tools,' group these keywords together. Then, you can tailor your ads and email copy to match this focus. 

Step 2: Select Your Audience Buying Stages 

Next, it’s time to define the buying stages you’re targeting. At 6sense, we focus on nurturing accounts in the **Awareness** and **Consideration** stages.  The goal is to get these accounts to move to down the buying stage and 6QA which is when sales will begin personalized outreach.  

By filtering for these stages, you’ll ensure that your nurture campaign reaches accounts most receptive to the level of content you’ll provide. 

Step 3: Define Personas for Targeted Messaging 

The next step is to select the personas you’ll be targeting for each keyword group and buying stage. At 6sense, we target 2-3 personas per keyword group. We create distinct talk tracks for each persona within a campaign to personalize messaging, whether through emails or ads, to address their unique perspectives and pain points. 

Step 4: Align Content with Buyer Stages, Intent Signals and Personas 

Now, it’s time to identify the content that will resonate most effectively. For example: 

- **Awareness Stage Content**: Broad industry insights, best practices, or high-level guides that help accounts explore the landscape. 

- **Consideration Stage Content**: More in-depth content like case studies, product comparisons, and solution-specific insights. 

Ensure each piece aligns with your keyword group intent topics to keep your email and ad message relevant and engaging. 

Step 5: Create 6sense Segment 

Once you have your keyword/intent groups, buyer stage, personas, and content mapped out, you’re ready to build your segment in 6sense! Here is a screenshot of one our segments from our intent based nurture as an example:  

Step 6: Build Your Engagement Strategy 

Now it’s time to map out your email and ad cadence. Decide how many emails to send, when to launch ads, and which email platform to use. At 6sense, once an account enters the segment, we start by adding them to the ad campaigns, followed by email outreach through Marketo using 6sense-branded emails rather than messages from an individual. Each email aligns with the account’s buying stage and intent signals, helping to warm up accounts before direct engagement. 

We send one email every two weeks over a 90 day period. This consistent touchpoint keeps the brand top of mind without overwhelming recipients. If an account progresses to a higher buying stage, we shift them to the next content stream, avoiding redundant messaging and keeping content relevant. 

Step 7: Execute Your Campaign with 6sense Audience Workflows 

Quick note: we’re excited to use our new tool, Workflows, to execute campaigns! Currently in beta, Workflows will be available to all customers in Q1 2025—so reach out to your AE or CSM to learn more. 

**What is Audience Workflows?** It’s a tool that automates campaign distribution by pulling from your pre-defined segments and pushing audiences directly to the channels you select. 

At 6sense, we are using Workflows to streamline our intent-based nurture campaigns. For example, with this campaign, we send emails through Marketo (our MAP) and ads on LinkedIn. Workflows makes it simple to move targeted audiences into both email and ad campaigns, ensuring cross-channel execution is seamless, precise, and consistent. 

Step 8: Track Performance and Optimize 

Woohoo, you made it! Finally, monitor your campaign’s performance by analyzing metrics like the segment performance report, open rates, click-through rates (CTR), impressions, and account progression. This monthly check-in helps you assess which messages resonate and where improvements are needed. Messaging or strategy should be updated quarterly if applicable.  

**Why This Works** 

With this always-on, intent-based nurture approach, you’ll be engaging prospects with highly relevant messaging tailored to their needs. By aligning content with each account's intent signals and current stage, you’ll increase the chances of progressing accounts through the buyer’s journey without overwhelming them. 

Feel free to reach out with any questions or share your own best practices for building nurture campaigns in 6sense! 

julzjames

Love these intent Nurtures. They're so good at moving accounts/contacts through buying stages and progressing them to 6QA - and what happens then? They get pushed to Conversational Email for our AI Agents to take over and work them until they are ready for a meeting and then they get handed to our BDR team.

Thanks @Jordan Backues for getting this posted!

sophieoneal1

@Jordan Backues I absolutely love this, amazing work! I'm planning for 2025 now and want to get something similar set up for our ICP.

One question I have for you - When you email the recently purchased contacts from your MAP, are you giving them the option to opt-in? I would love more insight as our MOPs team is hesitant to email anyone who hasn't explicitly or implicitly opted in!

julzjames

Hey @sophieoneal1 - I'll hop in and answer this one as I run all of our compliance programs. This one would really be up to your legal team and you MOPs team to decide how to email recently purchased contacts via orchestrations. At 6sense we look at Email Opt In and Email Opt Out/Soft Opt in rules and countries and regulations and make decisions on who we can email. For some Email Opt Out/Soft Opt In countries we are able to email them without explicit opt-in as long as we are following certain rules (unsubscribe links, HQ address, etc).

I hope this helps?
Thanks

Julz

Vera Antonovich

Hey @Jordan Backues, thank you for this post, really informative!

Can you please elaborate more on the email audience - do you guys send the nurture emails to all people in the account (by persona messaging, etc.) or you send only to the individuals who engaged? If individuals - how can you achieve this? (our stack is SFDC and SF Marketing cloud)

Thanks!