• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Many B2B marketers are stuck in the old practice of reaching out to all their contacts with the same drip. A far better way is to adjust each step based on engagement. But how?

Nutshell, a CRM and marketing automation platform, is offering a feature called Smart Sequences that it says tailors outreach paths to each recipient's behavior.

The goal is to have teams spend “less time guessing and more time having the right conversation at the right moment," says Chris Cain, vice president of product development at Nutshell. 

Using this new tool, email teams can trigger the appropriate messages when the contact takes any one of several possible actions—i.e., opens, clicks, replies or goes quiet, the company says. 

Using branching logic, Smart Sequences also lets brands set wait times and business-hour windows, while automatically halting a sequence when a conversation starts. And, the new tool connects email journeys with forms, lead capture, and pipeline management, it adds. 

As Cain explains it, “Smart Sequences makes every follow-up smarter by reacting to what actually happens after send.”

Now this may sound like kindergarten-level development in this age of artificial intelligence and dynamic email. But all too many teams are still bogged down in manual activity. 

In the case of Smart Sequences,  each step is tied to live CRM data, allowing sales and marketing teams to personalize messages and create behavior-based journeys.

B2B marketers are certainly being supported with many advanced solutions these days. For instance, Validity is helping firms track competitors and benchmark their emails against what the rivals are sending. 

Are you a B2B startup? It might be wise to check out tech solutions like these.