Email Nurturing Overview

Sometimes one follow-up call isn’t enough. A prospect who wasn’t ready to buy six months ago might need several touchpoints over time before they’re ready to engage again. Email nurturing lets you maintain relationships with recycled contacts through automated email sequences until the timing is right.

This article explains what email nurturing does in Rizer, how it supports your recycling efforts, and when it makes sense to use it.

What Email Nurturing Does

Email nurturing sends automated email sequences to contacts from your recycled deals. Instead of a single re-engagement attempt when the callback date arrives, you can stay in touch throughout the waiting period with helpful content, updates, and check-ins.

Think of it this way: recycling tracks when to follow up. Nurturing maintains the relationship in between.

A typical nurturing sequence might look like:

• Week 1: “Just checking in — here’s an article you might find useful”
• Week 4: “We’ve made some improvements since we last talked”
• Week 8: “Quick question — has anything changed on your end?”
• Week 12: “Thought you’d want to know about this industry trend”

Each email is a light touch. Not a hard sell, not a desperate plea, just a reminder that you exist and you’re thinking about them. When the prospect is finally ready to buy, you’re top of mind rather than a forgotten conversation from months ago.

How Nurturing Supports Recycling

Recycling and nurturing work together but serve different purposes.

Recycling Handles Timing

Recycling answers: “When should we reach out for a real conversation?”

You set a callback date based on when circumstances might change — budget cycles, contract renewals, feature releases. When that date arrives, the deal becomes ready and someone reaches out for a genuine re-engagement conversation.

Nurturing Handles the In-Between

Nurturing answers: “How do we stay relevant while we wait?”

Between recycling a deal and the callback date arriving, weeks or months pass. Without nurturing, you’re silent during that time. The prospect forgets about you. When you finally reach out, you’re starting cold again.

With nurturing, you maintain presence. The prospect gets periodic emails that provide value, share updates, and keep the relationship warm. When the callback date arrives and you reach out directly, they remember who you are.

They’re Complementary, Not Redundant

You can use recycling without nurturing. Deals get tracked, callbacks happen, some convert. That works.

Adding nurturing improves the odds. Prospects who’ve been nurtured are warmer when callback time comes. They’ve seen your name in their inbox. They know you’re still around. They might have even engaged with content you sent.

You can also use nurturing without the full recycling system, but that’s not really what Rizer is designed for. The power comes from combining them — targeted nurturing based on recycling data, flowing into well-timed re-engagement conversations.

What Makes Rizer Nurturing Different

Rizer’s nurturing is designed specifically for recycled contacts, which makes it different from general marketing automation.

Targeted to Loss Reasons

You can create flows that target specific recycle reasons:

• Contacts who left because of missing features get updates when features ship
• Contacts who left because of pricing get content about ROI and value
• Contacts who left because of timing get periodic check-ins about their situation

Generic marketing blasts the same message to everyone. Rizer nurturing tailors the message to why they didn’t buy.

Connected to Recycling Data

Nurturing flows use the data captured during recycling:

• Products they were interested in
• Competitors they chose
• Features they wanted
• Reasons they gave

This means you can send highly relevant content. A contact who lost to Competitor X gets different nurturing than one who went with an in-house solution.

Designed for Re-engagement, Not Acquisition

Marketing automation typically focuses on new leads — moving strangers toward becoming customers. Rizer nurturing focuses on people who already know you and had specific reasons for not buying.

The tone is different. You’re not introducing yourself. You’re maintaining a relationship and addressing the specific situation that caused them to say no last time.

Key Concepts

Before diving into setup and configuration, let’s cover the terminology.

Flows

A flow is Rizer’s term for a nurturing workflow or email sequence. Each flow contains:

• Audience criteria — Who should receive this flow (based on products, recycle reasons, competitors, etc.)
• Email steps — The actual emails in the sequence
• Timing — How long to wait between emails

Flows run automatically. When a contact matches the audience criteria, they enter the flow and start receiving emails according to the schedule.

Steps

Each email in a flow is called a step. A step includes:

• The email itself — Subject line, content, call-to-action
• Timing — How many days after the previous step (or after entering the flow) to send
• Sender — Who the email comes from

A flow might have 3 steps, 5 steps, or 10 steps depending on how long you want to nurture and how frequently.

Audiences

The audience defines who enters a flow. You set criteria like:

• Deals vs. leads
• Specific products
• Specific recycle reasons
• Specific competitors
• Segments or territories

Contacts who match the criteria enter the flow automatically when they’re recycled. The audience is dynamic — as new deals get recycled, matching contacts start receiving the sequence.

Domains and Senders

To send nurturing emails, you need:

• A verified domain — A subdomain you own (like mail.yourcompany.com) that’s been verified through DNS records
• Senders — Email addresses on that domain that emails come from

You can’t send from a generic Rizer address. Everything comes from your domain with your branding.

Cohorts

Cohorts are folders that organize related flows. You might have cohorts for:

• Different products
• Different regions
• Different campaign types

They’re purely organizational — a way to keep things tidy when you have many flows.

When to Use Nurturing

Nurturing isn’t required for every recycled deal. Here’s when it makes the most sense.

Good Candidates for Nurturing

Long callback periods

If a deal won’t be ready for callback for 6 or 12 months, that’s a long time to be silent. Nurturing keeps you present during the wait.

Timing-based losses

Deals lost because “not the right time” are perfect for nurturing. The prospect was interested but circumstances weren’t right. Stay in touch until circumstances change.

Budget-related losses

Prospects who wanted to buy but didn’t have budget benefit from nurturing that provides ongoing value. When budget becomes available, you’re their first call.

Competitive losses with long contracts

If a prospect signed a 2-year contract with a competitor, you have a long wait before they might reconsider. Nurturing keeps the relationship alive during that time.

High-value opportunities

Big deals justify more effort. Nurturing is a relatively low-effort way to maintain presence with prospects who could become significant customers.

Less Ideal for Nurturing

Short callback periods

If you’re following up in 30 days, there’s barely time for a nurturing sequence. A single email or two might work, but a full flow probably isn’t necessary.

Hard no’s

Prospects who were fundamentally not a fit probably don’t need nurturing. If they’ll never be a customer, nurturing just annoys them and wastes your effort.

Explicit opt-outs

If someone asked not to be contacted, don’t nurture them. Respect that boundary.

Very small deals

The effort of creating and managing nurturing might not be justified for very low-value opportunities. Focus nurturing on deals where the payoff is meaningful.

What Nurturing Requires

Before you can start nurturing, you need to set up some infrastructure.

A Custom Sending Domain

You’ll need a domain you own — typically a subdomain like mail.yourcompany.com or email.yourcompany.com. This requires:

• Access to your domain’s DNS settings
• Adding records (SPF, DKIM, CNAME) that Rizer provides
• Waiting for verification (usually minutes to hours, sometimes up to 48 hours)

Using your own domain ensures good deliverability and builds your sender reputation. It also means emails come from your company, not from Rizer.

Verified Senders

You’ll create sender profiles — the email addresses that appear in the “From” field. These include:

• A name (like “Sarah from Acme”)
• An email address on your verified domain
• Optionally, a reply-to address if different

You can have multiple senders for different purposes — sales reps, marketing, support, or specific individuals.

Email Content

You’ll need to write the actual emails. For each step in a flow:

• Subject line
• Email body with your message
• Call-to-action (link, button, or invitation to reply)

Rizer provides templates to start from, but you’ll want to customize the content to match your voice and your audience’s needs.

Time to Set Up and Maintain

Nurturing isn’t set-and-forget. Plan for:

• Initial setup: 1-3 hours for domain/sender configuration
• Creating flows: 30 minutes to a few hours per flow, depending on complexity
• Ongoing maintenance: Periodic review of performance and content updates

The investment pays off if you have enough volume and long enough callback periods to benefit.

The Nurturing Setup Process

Here’s an overview of what’s involved. Detailed steps are covered in separate articles.

Step 1: Add Your Domain

1. Go to Settings > Nurturing > Domains
2. Add your sending subdomain
3. Rizer gives you DNS records to add
4. Add those records in your DNS provider
5. Return to Rizer and verify

This takes 15-30 minutes plus waiting for DNS propagation.

Step 2: Create Senders

1. Go to Settings > Nurturing > Senders
2. Create sender profiles with names and email addresses
3. Test that emails send correctly

This takes 10-15 minutes.

Step 3: Create a Flow

1. Go to Nurturing > Flows
2. Create a new flow with a name and default sender
3. Define the audience criteria
4. Add email steps with content and timing
5. Activate the flow

Creating a flow takes 30 minutes to a few hours depending on how much content you need to write.

Step 4: Monitor and Optimize

Once flows are running:

• Watch performance metrics (opens, clicks, unsubscribes)
• Adjust content that isn’t working
• Refine audience criteria based on results
• Add new flows for different segments

This is ongoing work as long as you’re using nurturing.

How Contacts Enter and Exit Flows

Understanding flow mechanics helps you design effective sequences.

Entering a Flow

Contacts enter a flow when:

1. They’re recycled (either manually or through auto-recycle)
2. They match the flow’s audience criteria
3. The flow is active

Rizer evaluates contacts daily against active flows. When a match is found, the contact enters the flow and starts receiving emails.

A contact can only be in one instance of a flow at a time. If they already completed or exited the flow, they don’t re-enter automatically.

Moving Through the Flow

Once in a flow, contacts receive emails according to the step timing:

• Step 1 might send immediately (or after a short delay)
• Step 2 sends X days after Step 1
• Step 3 sends Y days after Step 2
• And so on

The timing is per-contact based on when they entered. Everyone gets the same sequence, just starting from their entry date.

Exiting the Flow

Contacts exit a flow when:

They complete the sequence — They received all emails in the flow. The flow is done for them.

They unsubscribe — They clicked the unsubscribe link in any email. They’re removed from this flow and won’t receive future nurturing emails from any flow.

They’re manually removed — Someone removes them from the flow in Rizer.

The deal status changes — If the recycled deal moves to Ready for callback, Recycling completed, or Won after recycling, the contact typically exits nurturing flows.

Re-engagement Supersedes Nurturing

When a deal becomes ready for callback, nurturing takes a back seat. The deal is ready for direct human engagement. Automated emails have done their job; now it’s time for a real conversation.

What Good Nurturing Looks Like

Effective nurturing shares some common characteristics.

Provides Value

Every email should give the recipient something useful:

• Industry insights they’d find interesting
• Helpful resources related to their needs
• News about changes that affect them
• Educational content about solving their problems

If every email is just “checking in” or “following up,” it feels like spam. Give them a reason to open your emails.

Respects Their Intelligence

Your prospects already evaluated you. They know what you do. Don’t start from scratch with “let me introduce our company.”

Acknowledge the relationship:

• “Since we talked about [their situation]…”
• “I know [product] wasn’t quite right at the time because…”
• “Given your interest in [capability]…”

Treat them as the informed decision-makers they are.

Matches Their Situation

Nurturing should address why they didn’t buy:

• Lost to pricing? Share ROI stories, value insights, or news about pricing changes
• Lost to timing? Check in about their timeline and share relevant updates
• Lost to missing feature? Update them when features ship and share roadmap news
• Lost to competitor? Share differentiators and case studies (without trash-talking)

Generic nurturing wastes the rich data you captured during recycling.

Isn’t Aggressive

Nurturing is a slow burn, not a hard sell. The goal is staying present, not pressuring.

• Don’t ask for meetings in every email
• Don’t use desperate language
• Don’t increase frequency when they don’t respond
• Don’t make them feel guilty for not buying

The right tone is helpful and patient. You’re there when they’re ready, not pushing them before they are.

Has Clear Calls-to-Action

Even soft touches should have a direction:

• “Reply if you’d like to chat” — Invites conversation
• “Check out this resource” — Offers value and tracks engagement
• “Let me know if anything has changed” — Opens dialogue about timing

A call-to-action doesn’t have to be “book a demo.” It just needs to give them a path forward if they want one.

Nurturing Flow Examples

Here are some common flow patterns to consider.

The “Not the Right Time” Flow

For prospects who liked you but timing didn’t work:

Step 1 (Immediately): “Nice meeting you — here’s that resource we discussed” Step 2 (2 weeks): Share an industry insight relevant to their situation Step 3 (4 weeks): “Quick check-in — has anything changed on your end?” Step 4 (8 weeks): Share a customer story similar to their situation Step 5 (12 weeks): “Wanted to make sure you saw our recent update”

Tone: Helpful, patient, keeping the door open.

The “No Budget” Flow

For prospects who wanted to buy but couldn’t:

Step 1 (Immediately): “I understand budget is tight — here’s a resource on making the business case” Step 2 (4 weeks): Share ROI data or customer success metrics Step 3 (8 weeks): “Planning for next quarter? Here’s what other teams in your situation did” Step 4 (12 weeks): Offer to help with budget justification

Tone: Supportive, providing ammunition for internal conversations.

The “Competitor Win” Flow

For prospects who chose someone else:

Step 1 (1 month): “Hope the implementation is going well — let me know if questions come up” Step 2 (3 months): Share industry news or insights (no pitch) Step 3 (6 months): “We’ve made some improvements since we talked — thought you’d want to know” Step 4 (9 months): “Approaching renewal time? Happy to chat if you’re evaluating options”

Tone: Gracious, non-pushy, planting seeds for the future.

The “Missing Feature” Flow

For prospects waiting on something you’re building:

Step 1 (Immediately): “Thanks for the feedback on [feature] — it’s on our radar” Step 2 (Varies): Share roadmap updates or progress on the feature Step 3 (When feature ships): “Great news — [feature] is here” Step 4 (1 week after): “Would love to show you how it works”

Tone: Appreciative, keeping them informed, celebrating when you deliver.

Measuring Nurturing Effectiveness

How do you know if nurturing is working?

Email Metrics

Track standard email performance:

Open rate — Are people opening your emails? Industry average for B2B is 15-25%. Below that suggests subject line or deliverability issues.

Click rate — Are people clicking links? Industry average is 2-5%. This indicates engagement with your content.

Unsubscribe rate — Are people opting out? Keep this under 0.5%. Higher rates suggest your content isn’t resonating or you’re emailing too frequently.

Bounce rate — Are emails failing to deliver? Keep this under 2%. High bounces indicate list quality issues.

Business Metrics

Ultimately, you care about outcomes:

Re-engagement rate — Do nurtured contacts convert to conversations when callback time comes?

Win rate — Do nurtured deals win at higher rates than non-nurtured ones?

Time to win — Do nurtured deals close faster once re-engaged?

These are harder to measure but more meaningful. They tell you whether nurturing is actually driving revenue, not just generating email activity.

Flow-Level Analysis

Compare performance across flows:

• Which flows have the best engagement?
• Which audiences respond best?
• Which step timings work best?

Use insights from high-performing flows to improve underperforming ones.

Common Nurturing Mistakes

Learn from what doesn’t work.

Too Much, Too Fast

Sending daily or even weekly emails burns out your list. People unsubscribe, mark you as spam, or just stop opening. Space emails at least 1-2 weeks apart for most flows.

All Pitch, No Value

If every email asks for a meeting or pushes for a sale, prospects tune out. Most emails should provide value. Save the direct asks for when the timing makes sense.

Ignoring the Recycle Reason

Generic nurturing ignores the rich data you have. A prospect who left because of budget needs different content than one who left because of a competitor. Use what you know.

Set and Forget

Flows need maintenance. Content gets stale. Links break. Offers expire. Performance changes. Review your flows periodically and keep them fresh.

Poor Deliverability Hygiene

If your emails land in spam, nothing else matters. Keep your sender reputation healthy by:

• Using proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Not emailing unengaged contacts forever
• Honoring unsubscribes immediately
• Keeping bounce rates low

No Coordination with Sales

If your sales team is reaching out while nurturing is still running, prospects get mixed signals. Coordinate so nurturing pauses or ends when direct outreach begins.

Is Nurturing Right for You?

Nurturing takes effort to set up and maintain. Consider whether it makes sense for your situation.

Good Fit If…

• You have significant volume of recycled deals
• Your callback periods are typically 3+ months
• You have resources to create and maintain content
• Your deals are valuable enough to justify the effort
• You’re already doing some form of follow-up email

Maybe Skip If…

• You have very few recycled deals
• Most callbacks happen within 30-60 days
• You don’t have bandwidth to create content
• Your deals are very low value
• You’re already overwhelmed with other priorities

You can always start with just recycling and add nurturing later. Get the basics working first, then layer on nurturing when you’re ready for more sophistication.

Getting Started

Ready to set up nurturing? Here’s the path:

1. Set up your domain — See “Setting Up Domains and Senders”
2. Create senders — Same article covers this
3. Build your first flow — See “Creating and Managing Flows”
4. Define your audience — See “Building Audience Segments”
5. Design your emails — See “Designing Email Templates”
6. Monitor performance — See “Tracking Performance”

Start simple. One flow for one segment. Get it working, learn from it, then expand. Trying to launch a dozen flows at once usually ends in none of them being good.