One of the reasons nurture is often found to be ineffective is the lack of effort put into personalization & targeting. Marketers build the basic nurture first, but because it is never yields results, they never bother with the more targeted streams.
In an era where personalization is more talked about than ever, it’s pretty clear that most brands just aren’t willing to put forth the work required to truly get personal. You see the same thing with ABM. We talk about it like it’s this pure, 1:1 experience. Yet most brands ABM efforts look curiously similar and generic to their demand gen brethren. Not to say some aren’t doing great work here, but these are very much the exception to the rule.
We fall short of real personalization and relevance because it’s hard. It’s time consuming. It’s unfamiliar. It doesn’t feel quite enough like the marketing we’re most familiar with. And these are all true. Just remember there’s a difference between actually changing your strategy versus doing what you’ve always done but calling it something different.