Customer Journey Design: Adoption 101 Lead Nurture Campaign
Overview
Put yourself in a marketer's shoes for a moment. Your ads are working, people are landing on your website, and traffic is climbing. Success! But now what?
When you're marketing a service that requires significant financial, emotional, and personal commitment (say... becoming a parent?), traditional conversion metrics like clicks and form submissions don't tell the full story.
Through website analytics and conversations with prospective families, we discovered many visitors were still in the information-gathering stage when they first started coming to our website. They weren't ready for the CTA’s we were offering like talking with a social worker, attending a webinar, or filling out an application. They were trying to understand what adoption looked like and whether it was the right path for their family.
Rather than pushing for a major commitment, I focused on lowering the barrier to entry. We created four tailored "Intro to Adoption" guides aligned with our different programs, designed to meet people at the very beginning of their journey—when they're just starting to ask questions.
In exchange for an email address, visitors received a resource guide that contained helpful, jargon-free information about adoption that answered common questions and introduced key considerations. In return, we gained the opportunity to continue the conversation through a thoughtfully designed email journey that educated, built trust, and guided prospective families toward the next step when they were ready.
Objective
Create a scalable lead generation and nurture system that lowers barriers to engagement, delivers educational content aligned with audience needs, and guides prospective families from initial interest to program inquiry through educational content and automated email journeys.
My Role & Responsibilities
I led the strategy, content development, automation design, and implementation of the campaign.
Research & Planning
Completed professional training in customer journey mapping.
Analyzed website behavior and conversion patterns to identify user drop-off points.
Evaluated audience needs and common questions raised during program webinars and inquiries.
Mapped the prospective parent journey to understand information needs across key decision stages.
Identified opportunities to introduce lower-commitment conversion points aligned with user intent.
Content Development
Worked with designers, content marketers, program leaders, and social workers to translate complex program information into clear, accessible content.
Developed four program-specific Adoption 101 guides tailored to different adoption pathways.
Structured content to answer foundational questions while introducing additional considerations for prospective families.
Journey Design & Automation
Designed lead capture pathways using landing pages, gated content forms, and automated email workflows.
Created automated email journeys that progressively introduced webinar invitations, educational resources, family stories, and program information.
Built automated nurture sequences that adapted content based on user behavior, including email engagement, content downloads, and webinar registrations.
Campaign Execution
Monitored performance and optimized messaging, content, and conversion pathways over time.
Outcome
The campaign established a scalable lead generation and nurture model that created a significantly stronger connection between website traffic, program inquiries, and webinar attendance.
By introducing lower-commitment entry points and delivering educational content tailored to user intent, we generated hundreds of additional leads while creating a more thoughtful and supportive experience for prospective families.
Within four weeks of launching the campaign, we received more than 400+ form submissions.
Platform + Technology Used
Google Ads
Meta Advertising
Mailchimp
WordPress
Google Analytics
Canva & Adobe Creative Suite
GoToWebinar
Zapier
Key Takeaways
Meet Users Where They Are
Visitors may be ready to take action, but not necessarily the action you're asking them to take. Smaller, lower-commitment conversion opportunities can better align with user intent.
Education Builds Trust and Customer Journey
Providing value before asking for commitment created stronger engagement and improved lead quality. By answering common questions and reducing uncertainty, we established credibility and built trust before introducing higher-commitment actions.
Nurture The Journey
People rarely make major decisions after a single interaction. A thoughtful nurture journey balanced education with opportunities for action, allowing prospective families to engage at a pace that felt manageable while gradually building confidence in their next steps.
