Personalization is about much more than a handwritten envelope or note. It’s about matching everything you send to what you know about each individual on your nurturing list. In other words, what you send must be highly relevant and useful to each recipient, even if it means you have to send something different to everyone on your list. This is not a time to strive for efficiency, automation, and mass mailing. Rather, it’s an opportunity to show that you care enough to take the time to stay in touch in a meaningful way.

This brings up another important point: your efforts to stay in touch must come across as genuine and sincere. Whatever you send to the people on your list—as well as how you communicate with them—must clearly show that you’re committed to developing a productive and valuable dialogue, even if these leads aren’t ready to hire you anytime in the immediate future. This is not something you can fake. So if your motives are anything but genuine and sincere, you may want to rethink lead nurturing as a strategy.