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Off-Label Uses of Marketing Automation – Part 3

Posted on December 29, 2009 by in Analytics/Reporting, Lead Nurturing

Using marketing automation tools to gain leverage with customers (as detailed in Part 2) is an excellent example of an off-label use of marketing automation. But perhaps the most intriguing story I’ve heard yet is of a marketing automation specialist who lost a client to a competitor. Making use of the keen sleuthing capabilities of their marketing automation tools, the vendor was able to see that shortly after the client left, they started visiting the vendor’s website again. The vendor reached out to the ex-client with an innocuous inquiry as to how their new implementation with the competitor’s product was going, casually mentioning that they’d noticed the ex-customer’s recent visits to the site. As it turns out, the competitor’s product leaves much to be desired, and the ex-client is very dissatisfied. Several months of nurturing later, the original vendor has set up a demo with the old customer, and the prospects of winning them back look very good.

Remember: Marketing automation works great when used as prescribed, but you can maximize your ROI if you get creative with off-label uses of marketing automation tools.

Prospect Tracking: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Posted on October 16, 2009 by in Analytics/Reporting, CRM

Marketing automation software allows you to track a prospect’s online interactions, including links clicked, how long they spent on each page on your site, which forms they filled out – and which they abandoned (you can even capture that abandoned data) and which emails they opened. This information all comes together to help the sales team form a powerful pitch that is perfectly tailored to the prospect’s needs. Were they interested in widget A or widget B? Which white papers did they download and what does that tell you about the unique challenges they are seeking a solution for?

In addition to this tracking information, users are also getting email alerts when their prospects take action, reports detailing unidentified visitors in the past 24 hours and using new advancements like desktop alerts and mobile applications to keep tabs on their prospects 24-7. All of this data at your fingertips means you know much more about your prospect than they probably know about you. This puts you in a powerful position – one you’re going to use to your advantage during the sales process.

It is important to use this information wisely. Though most people are aware of the ability to track activities online, some people may still be adverse to the idea of being tracked. The first time you call a prospect within a few minutes of them visiting your website, they may brush it off as a coincidence. If you call them within a few minutes every single time they visit your website, they may be a little bit intimidated. It is important to make sure you and your sales team are on the same page about how much is too much.

The exception to this, of course, is when someone requests immediate follow-up, as with a support form or a contact form. In these cases, a fast response time can been seen as impressive. For those moments, marketing automation give you a leg-up by sending you alerts. Some marketing automation systems even incorporate web-to-phone technology that can instantly connect sales and service representatives to incoming prospects by phone as soon as a request is submitted.

As a general rule, simply keep in mind that when calling on prospects you should use your insider knowledge to wow them with a personalized pitch, not scare them by coming on too strong.

Maximizing Your Marketing Spend

Posted on September 15, 2009 by in Analytics/Reporting

Tracking, analyzing and revising your marketing spend strategy can be a tricky process. It’s easy to see how much you’re spending, but it can be hard to see what you’re getting for all that cash. If you can develop a system for tracking your spend and boosting your results, getting that marketing budget will be a lot easier next year. Enter marketing automation.

Track costs on a per-campaign basis. Create an individual campaign for each of your marketing efforts. For example, a trip to a trade show may be one campaign and an email sponsorship may be another. Then, for each campaign, enter the associated cost in your marketing automation solution.

Tag your leads. Now that you know what you’re spending, find out which campaigns are driving the most leads. You can associate your leads with a campaign by tagging your landing pages with the campaign. Each new visitor that converts on the page will carry the associated campaign as the point of origin. Leads that are collected offline, such as at a trade show, can be tagged when they are imported into your database.

Collect the right metrics. Once your campaign data is entered and your leads are tagged, you can start tracking your metrics. To determine the effectiveness of your campaigns, you’ll want to look at a few different numbers:

  • Number of new leads per campaign
  • Number of qualified leads (usually leads you pass on to sales) per campaign
  • Number of opportunities per campaign, or the opportunity value of those leads

Since your prospects are tagged with the appropriate campaign, you can easily create reports that help you produce the above metrics. Your marketing automation system will come with reporting capabilities and can also sync with your CRM for seamless opportunity tracking. Once you know which campaigns are performing the best, use that data to adjust your spend and reduce wasteful spending.

Lead Grading

Posted on July 13, 2009 by in Analytics/Reporting, Lead Scoring

Last time I spoke about how lead scoring works and how it helps triage leads.  This time I want to discuss another topic, lead grading, that works along with lead scoring to make work easier for both marketing and sales departments.

As previously stated, lead scoring is an automatic tool that scores a prospect based on their activity on your website.

Lead grading is another tool within the lead nurturing process that grades a customer based on how close they are to your ideal customer profile.  Lead grading is different from lead scoring because it is not based on activity, rather it is based on criteria.

Some examples of criteria used to grade a prospect include:

  • industry
  • location
  • company size
  • department
  • job title

Other criteria can be added to the list as other standards for grading as well.

Lead grading can be automated, manual, or a combination of the two.  Prospect grades can be automatically programmed to increase or decrease based on any criteria.  Additionally, grades can be manually altered depending on the qualities of a lead.

Combined together in marketing automation these two tools make lead nurturing simple.  Both lead scoring and grading compose lead qualification, which is necessary to make the nurturing process straightforward for both marketing and sales.

How Marketing Automation Can Track ROI and Qualify Leads

Posted on July 2, 2009 by in Analytics/Reporting

According to a study on small businesses marketers, 63% cannot track the ROI of their marketing campaigns and 56% do not qualify leads before sending them to sales. These are high numbers especially when budgets are tightened and every penny matters.

Marketing automation can make matters easier and more efficient.

To Track ROI:

  • Reporting tools to track every campaign on large and small scales
  • Go beyond cost-per-click by tracking the more relevant cost-per-opportunity
  • Ability to sync with Google Analytics for more data analysis features
  • Ability to sync with Google Adwords and track data on paid search campaigns
  • View statistics of email open and click rates

To Qualify Leads:

  • Lead scoring automatically scores prospects based on activity
  • Lead grading prioritizes leads based on how well they fit your customer profile
  • Connectors such as LinkedIn and Jigsaw make it easy to view the prospect’s credentials

By using marketing automation, small businesses can change the statistics and begin seeing better returns on their investment.

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