8 - Nurture Timeout

Defining Nurture Timeout

Let's say that one of your company's leads turns out to be a competitor. Yikes! You'd want to disposition that lead immediately, and you'd probably want to make sure that it couldn't become active again. But let's say that a different lead is dispositioned because they have no budget right now. That's a lead you might want to re-qualify in a few months, when their fiscal situation has had a chance to improve. You can make this happen with Funnel Metrics by using Nurture Timeout.

Nurture Timeout is a date field on the lead or contact. The timeout is based on the status reason, and it specifies the time period during which a lead or contact cannot re-qualify.

• Example 1: Status Reason: ‘Competitor’ sets the nurture timeout date to Today + five years
• Example 2: Status Reason: ‘No budget right now’ sets the nurture timeout date to Today + three months

A lead or contact is not eligible to re-qualify until after the Nurture Timeout Date has passed. If an individual performs an action that would trigger an MQL after that date, however, it will simply re-qualify as usual.

But what if you want to leave the door ajar? Imagine that the lead you dispositioned for financial reasons receives an unexpected boost to their budget a few weeks later. You'd want them to be able to re-qualify right away, especially if they reached out to you in response to a high-value campaign like a demo request. That's exactly why Funnel Metrics includes a Campaign field labeled Bypass Nurture Timeout. If checked, it allows re-qualification of a lead or contact within the nurture timeout if they respond to that specific campaign.

Nurture Timeout Workflow

Here's an example of the Set Nurture Timeout workflow:

The field update appears below:

To view the lead/contact nurture timeout rules that were set up in your org, navigate to Salesforce Setup > Workflow Rules.