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Attending Conferences When Shopping for Software

Posted on April 28, 2011 by in CRM, ROI

If you’re thinking about implementing a new tool like marketing automation, it can be helpful to attend a relevant industry conference to learn more about your options, see latest and greatest technologies and speak with users of various systems.

It’s become a norm for marketers to become extremely busy during conference season, as the events present an opportunity to learn a lot in a short period of time. Aside from networking and getting to know people in related industries, software is changing so quickly that attending a few conferences can help you understand the latest technologies.

The Value of Attending a Conference

Let’s take the example of a marketer who’s looking to purchase a marketing automation tool to streamline their workload and improve their campaign ROI.

Because marketing automation is a growing field that’s closely related to CRM (customer relationship management) tools, if you plan on utilizing elements of marketing automation in your business, you can expect to learn a lot from attending a CRM conference, particularly if your CRM vendor holds their own annual users event. Whether it’s gathering ideas from current users or a talk on best practices by one of the top minds in the field, you’ll come away with innovative ideas for implementing marketing automation and also get a clearer picture of what to look for while shopping for a vendor. Whatever conference you attend, be sure to speak with as many marketing automation vendors and users as possible. This way, you can get a good view of your different options and what features each vendor offers.

If you’ve narrowed down your choice to a few specific vendors, you may want to stop by a marketing automation user conference or users group. Here you’ll see a lot more talk about specific techniques and technologies.

At an event, you will learn everything you need to know about the latest products and technologies. You can learn best practices for each product and get a sense of different company cultures. Conferences are great for those involved in the decision making process as well as those who’ll manage the technology because they are can inspire users to head back to work and improve internal processes.

Convincing Your Boss

Ok, so you’re on board, but there’s the tiny matter of budget. If you know why you need to go to a conference, it should be easy to convince your company to sponsor your trip. Quite simply, the things you learn will improve your company’s productivity and will eventually add value to the bottom line. If you miss out, your company may be left behind by competition utilizing practices that you don’t know.

Be sure to do your research regarding which conferences are most valuable to attend before asking your company to pay for you to go. It is much more likely that you will be given clearance to attend a few of the major events than if you ask to go to every conference you can find.

Peek Into a Prospect’s Past

Posted on April 18, 2011 by in CRM, Marketing Strategy

Past and Future signMany times when buyers are doing their initial research and preparing to buy a new product, they may visit many websites and browse different offerings. At this time, these “lurkers” may not be ready to fill out a form to be contacted – or even to give their email address in exchange for a white paper or product information. They want to do their research on their own time and become comfortable with a brand before they are ready to engage with a sales rep.

Many companies use a software solution that will track visitors on their website, allowing them to see the company or location of a “lurker.” These same companies also tend to use a CRM solution to manage their interaction with prospect during the sales cycle. But what’s missing is the link between these two phases. At some point, the person is ready to connect with you. They may request a call or download content from your website. If your systems aren’t tied together, you will have no visibility into the pre-conversion activities a prospect may have completed.

By using a marketing automation system, you can tie together the anonymous viewing activities, which are saved in the system, with a newly converted prospect. That information can the be connected with a lead record in the CRM. This allows sales reps to take a peek back at the full history of a person’s interaction with the brand. It also allows the marketing department to pinpoint the true origin of a new lead (perhaps a Google search from 6 months ago). Using a marketing automation system, you can effectively travel back in time and gain a more complete understanding of your prospects. By understanding their history, you can more easily offer the best solution to create a relationship that will last long into the future.

Spring Cleaning for the Marketing Department – Part 2

Posted on March 28, 2011 by in Analytics/Reporting, CRM, Email Marketing, Site Design

It happens every year – you’ve spent an entire weekend cleaning out your house only to be relaxing on Sunday afternoon and realize the basement hasn’t been touched. Almost immediately your mind initiates an internal debate to decide whether or not it’s really necessary to clean the basement. You may argue that the basement is in decent condition and most guests only see the main part of the house anyway. Is it really necessary?

For the productive marketer, spring cleaning has involved updating the company’s marketing materials (white papers, email templates, etc.) – the main part of the house – to reflect product improvements and service upgrades. But chances are that your marketing automation vendor has also been busy this past year rolling out new features to make your life easier. So, instead of taking Sunday afternoon off, finish up all of your spring cleaning and revamp your marketing automation strategy to take advantage of all of the new features.

Key Marketing Automation Upgrades

  • Compatibility – A versatile marketing automation solution strives to integrate with as much technology as possible. You may have been reluctant in the past year to upgrade your software in fear that your marketing automation solution would be incompatible. Take the time to find out if your vendor has achieved compatibility with the latest web browsers, email connectors, and CRM solutions.
  • Reporting – Given that a huge selling point of marketing automation is marketing ROI, it’s important for marketers to be using the latest tools to demonstrate the value of their marketing efforts. Most vendors know this and are constantly updating their reporting features to let marketers create better tables, charts, and graphs for the higher-ups. Often when you first implement a marketing automation tool, you get caught up in the tactical campaign elements and you don’t spend time understanding how you can report on your data. With the end of the quarter approaching, this is a great time to think about how you can use reports to show that your hard work is paying off.
  • CRM Integration – Most marketing automation vendors are continually improving their integration with the different CRM systems. Because each CRM has its own API and functions differently, the engineers are having to learn each system and figure out ways to implement the new features. This means that little upgrades are constantly being made to better improve CRM integration and you may have overlooked some. Now is a great time to revisit your vendors blog or feature list to find out what new improvements have been made. Often, to take advantage of new features you need to update your integration package, so be sure you’re working with the latest and greatest edition of your tool.
  • Automation – The key to marketing automation is the ability to take time-consuming tasks away from marketers and automate them. Ideally, when you first started marketing automation you handled the basics of automating scoring, grading, drip nurturing, etc. It’s probably time to take automation to the next level and really see what the possibilities are. Think through what other areas of your marketing campaigns you may be able to automate, and work with the sales team to find out how you can use automation to help them as well.
  • Other Features – Luckily for marketing automation customers, the industry is continuing to grow and the landscape is getting more and more competitive. The only way for vendors to succeed is to innovate and differentiate their offerings. Keep tabs on your vendor’s blog and other outgoing news to be informed of the next big announcement. For instance, your company may have recently added connectors to plug in to other marketing resources like a chat solution to sync on-site chats with with prospect activities or a Jigsaw connector to help you find more information about people in your database.

With your marketing automation strategy revamped and your marketing materials refreshed, your company is ready to generate some great leads and exceed quarterly goals.

The Sales Team is Key to Marketing Automation Adoption

Posted on March 18, 2011 by in CRM, Lead Nurturing, Lead Scoring, ROI

Sales Advocate

Make Sales your #1 Fan

When implementing a new system, it is important to get buy-in from other users. Often in the case of marketing automation, the purchasing decision is made by the marketing team. In order for the implementation to be successful, it should be emphasized that the tool may be called marketing automation, but the sales team will see great benefits as well.

If you take the approach of just dumping a new tool in the lap of your already busy sales reps, they may be a bit overwhelmed and feel that they don’t have time to learn a new system. Instead, you should hold a collaborative meeting and explain the benefits of the new system and how it will make the sales process easier.

Sales benefits of marketing automation include:

  • More detailed information in the CRM, including a record of prospect activities
  • Daily and real-time alerts on active prospects
  • Anonymous visitor tracking to see who’s surfing your site
  • Automated nurturing emails to take education and follow-up out of the hands of sales
  • Lead scoring and grading to show a rep the hottest leads
  • Improved reporting to help identify the source of the best leads
  • Less junk and fewer duplicate records in the CRM

Gaining champions in the sales department will help ensure that your new investment is embraced across the organization.

Social Capital: Enhancing Lead Nurturing with Social Media

Posted on July 9, 2010 by in CRM, Lead Nurturing, Social Media

There’s endless buzz these days about social media and how it’s going to change the course of marketing as we know it. B2B marketers are scrambling to keep up with this trend by mastering the intricacies of social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. There’s no question that these applications can be powerful tools for marketers who want to spread their message to potential customers. But consider social media from a different perspective. What sort of value can marketers get from these tools when using them to craft relevant messaging that will optimize their lead nurturing efforts?

As it turns out, social media outlets offer a wealth of valuable prospect data that’s there for the taking. Social media profiles typically contain obvious items that you might already have in your prospect records, such as job title and company name. Oftentimes you can see past distinctions, employment history, and other information that marketers typically find helpful. But don’t dismiss the rest of that profile data as unimportant. You can still get plenty of value out of it! Knowing more about your prospects can only make things easier for your marketing and sales teams. Small tidbits such as knowing a prospect’s alma mater, favorite sports team, or weekend hobbies can help establish and build the kind of friendly rapport and ongoing relationships that lead nurturing requires in today’s extended sales cycle.

Since you’re making use of what is essentially freely available public information, you shouldn’t feel like a virtual stalker for collecting prospect data in this way. But there is a very fine line between tailoring your message to appeal to prospects and making them feel like you’re some creepy marketer watching their every move. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Even though they’ve made this information public, it would still intimidating for your prospects to be contacted by some eerily omniscient salesperson with a zenlike ability to somehow sense their every like and dislike. So make sure that your team knows how to use this valuable information appropriately.

Here are some examples of how a salesperson might use, and abuse, prospect data collected through social media channels.

Example 1: Who’s the Boss?

Prospect X is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, as evidenced by the virtual shrine on his Facebook page.

  • Appropriate – While engaging in the usual sales call banter, your sales rep might casually work in something like, “Yeah, I’m dragging a little bit today…stayed out too late at the Springsteen show last night.” If the prospect doesn’t bite and keeps quiet about their love for The Boss, the rep can assume that they’ll probably need to make a stronger connection with this prospect in order to be effective.
  • Inappropriate – Sending Prospect X an unsolicited copy of the latest Bruce Springsteen album comes off as overly personal, which can backfire: “Hey! Did you get that Springsteen CD I sent you out of the blue? You’re a big fan, right? How do I know that? Well, uhh…doesn’t everyone love The Boss?”
Example 2: Trick or Tweet?

Prospect Y has been tweeting increasingly often about her dissatisfaction with your competitor.

  • Appropriate – Knowing full well that Prospect Y is unhappy with the competitor’s product, your salesperson could ask casually, “So…is your current solution meeting your needs?” If Prospect Y responds as expected, it is an open invitation to explain what you have to offer and highlight why your product is more suitable.
  • Inappropriate – The salesperson cuts right to the chase with something like, “I see on Twitter that you’re using our competitor. Clearly you need a change.” This will not only weird out the prospect, but the sales rep’s presumptuous tone will likely be a big turnoff.
Example 3: The Missing Link?

Prospect Z’s LinkedIn profile lists an undergraduate degree obtained at ABC University.

  • Appropriate – Once they’ve gotten Prospect Z talking about college football, your salesperson can mention, “My favorite team is the ABC University Sharks.” An engaged prospect should perk up and mention that they went to school there, thereby establishing that all-important connection your  sales rep is looking for.
  • Inappropriate - The salesperson makes a clumsy attempt at forging a connection, saying “You went to school at ABC University, didn’t you? I’m not sure, but I think my cousin went there.” Attempts like this will only fall flat with your prospect, perhaps even raising the red flag that someone’s been doing a little too much snooping on LinkedIn.
Social media is power. Use it wisely.


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.

I Don’t Need Marketing Automation, I Have a CRM

Posted on September 24, 2009 by in CRM

Because marketing automation is a relatively new technology, our team often encounters people who are prime candidates to benefit from this type of tool, but don’t fully understand what it is. Often people mistakenly believe that they if they already use a CRM, such as salesforce.com, then there is nothing they need in a marketing automation system. In reality, marketing automation is designed to aggregate data and enhance, not replace, other sales tools, like a CRM or a paid search platform.

How is marketing automation different from a CRM?

Marketing automation is a database of your prospects, much like a CRM. However, it also offers an entire suite of marketing tools to help manage these prospects. While some CRM systems offer similar tools, most of them don’t do so with the ease and sophistication of a marketing automation system. Examples of these features include the following: large-scale email management, drip nurturing programs, lead scoring and grading, micro-level activity tracking of both anonymous and identified visitors, ROI reporting, database deduplication, file hosting and simple form and landing page builders.

Through bi-directional syncing, the systems work together to keep all data up-to-date, and even provide a single sign-on to make the collaboration a breeze for sales users. Using the systems together allows the strong points of each one to shine, making the marketer’s life easier.

So, wait, do I need a CRM to use marketing automation?

No, a marketing automation system is a stand-alone tool. While it nicely compliments a CRM system for higher-volume users, it can also be used independently to manage a prospect database.

Understanding Your Prospects Before the Sales Call

Posted on September 9, 2009 by in CRM

When calling on a prospect, the more you know about the person you’re calling, the better. Understanding what type of company you’re calling on, what product (or aspect of your product) they are interested in and their role within the organization all go a long way toward helping you frame a conversation. A good marketing automation tool can help you collect this information and leverage it effectively.

Building a Prospect Profile
If you’re focused on inbound marketing, its likely that your new leads come in through some type of web form, allowing you to collect useful information like job title or company name. Effective landing pages use thank you content to nudge people along, encouraging them to download additional materials. This not only shows intent, but it also gives you the opportunity to collect additional data points on your prospects. Advanced form technology called progressive profiling allows you to ask different questions on each form, based on your existing database, to slowly and painlessly develop a robust prospect profile.

Using the Prospect Profile
Once you’ve built a profile on your prospect, look for a few key pieces of information to help frame the conversation and touch on the right pain points. The basics include the prospects score (how active they were on your site) and grade (are they a good fit for your product?). You’ll also want to take a look at their activities. Which white paper did they download? Which data sheets did they view? What pages did they spend the most time on? Are there any search terms present, either terms that brought them to you or keywords searched for on your actual site? All of this information is at your fingertips before you even pick up the phone to call.

Connecting with Outside Resources
Connectors with tools like LinkedIn and Jigsaw make it easy to query an individual or a company to learn even more about the call you’re about to make. Not only can they help you fill in gaps in the profile, they can give you deeper insight into both the person’s role in the company and their other business interests. Many people use LinkedIn to showcase their blogs, talk about their specialties and area of focus. All of this information can help you strike up a meaningful conversation with someone who was previously just another name on your call list.

Many people think that marketing automation take the human touch out of the sales process, but really it is exactly the opposite. The information at hand allows you to get to know your prospects before the call, ensuring a that you approach them in a way that is tailored to their needs, rather than with a blanket sales pitch.

Set Sales Up For Success (and Succeed Yourself)

Posted on May 13, 2009 by in CRM, Sales

In today’s economy everyone is responsible for the bottom line. Marketing can no longer get away with conceptually interesting branding initiatvives and attention-grabbing PR stunts if they can’t be tied back to cold, hard cash.

In this changing world of marketing most departments, especially in the B2B environment, are chiefly responsible for supporting the efforts of the sales team. This typically involves helming the lead generation efforts for your company. When it comes to leads, having loads of inbound leads is great, but what’s more important is having quality leads that become lifelong customers. Start feeding these Grade-A leads to your sales team and they will start singing your praises!

Enter marketing automation. How can it help you become a hero to sales?

Marketing automation makes tracking your campaigns easier. Easy to deploy landing pages that you can create in a snap and copy over and over for new campaigns makes it easy for you to segment your traffic and quickly eliminate any ineffective channels. Same goes for search. Go beyond cost-per-click and tie your paid keywords to actual opportunities and sales. Ditch the terms that do you no good.

Marketing automation helps prioritze leads. Automated scoring, grading and prospect routing helps assess incoming leads and send them to sales. With the leads come easy-to-interpret scores based on activity and grades based on matching your ideal customer profile. Sales can jump on the hottest prospects while they’re still hot, and its all because of the legwork you (or your handy marketing automation tool, shh, we won’t tell) did for them.

Marketing automation teaches you about your market. You’ll be armed with more information than ever about who’s on your site, what they are looking for, the types of search terms they use and where they come from. With anonymous visitor capture you may even uncover trends that lead you to pursue a vertical you didn’t realize was a great match for your product.

Marketing automation keeps junk out of your CRM. Yeah, so you might still generate some less than perfect leads. Happens to the best of us. Using your marketing automation system as a “holding pen” before assigning leads in the CRM means no one has to know about those junky leads – and it helps you de-duplicate your database records. A clean CRM means a happy Sales team.

Better leads mean higher efficiency and more sales. Marketing automation helps you build the back-end system you need to show where marketing fits in that picture and helps cement your value as part of the revenue-building machine.

A fun cartoon from our friends at MarketingSherpa

A fun cartoon from our friends at MarketingSherpa

How Marketing Automation is Like the Snuggie

Posted on May 6, 2009 by in CRM, Marketing Strategy

At first glance, you may think I’ve gone mad. How could a marketing automation system, a tool that’s designed to help marketers show ROI, be anything like the soft, fleecy Snuggie sensation that’s sweeping the nation? I argue that not only does marketing automation have a lot in common with the Snuggie, in some ways it is even better. Yes, better. Let’s examine the facts:

The Snuggie frees up your hands for important tasks, like changing the channel. Marketing automation frees up your marketing resources so you can spend time on other important tasks.

Marketing automation systems come equipped with the tools you need to create logic statements to automate previously manual tasks. Need to assign you sales leads by geographic region? Easy. How about pre-qualifying those leads using customized scoring and grading before they even make it to the sales reps? Just a few more clicks and your new system will be applied to all of your incoming leads, while you move on to the next task on your ever-growing to-do list. You can also set up personalized, triggered emails to nurture leads through the sales pipeline, allowing you to stay in touch with prospects without lifting a finger.

The Snuggie is buy-one-get-one-free, a great value. With marketing automation, you can manage all of your online marketing efforts with a single, low-cost program – also a great value!

While you can find marketing automation solutions in a variety of price ranges, many programs are available that offer multiple easy-to-use marketing solutions for one low cost. Using just one program, you can create and send emails, build landing pages and forms, track a prospect’s exact movements across your website, identify anonymous visitors  and add a search box on your site. Not only can you create all these great marketing components, but you’ll be getting meaningful reports on each of these modules and you can integrate with your CRM platform, Google AdWords and more for easy sharing of information. In fact, some small companies may even find that marketing automation eliminates the need for an additional lead management system like a CRM. Whew! How’s that for value-packed?

And now (drum-roll, please), I will prove that marketing automation is indeed a step ahead of the Snuggie…

The Snuggie is one size fits all. Marketing automation can be tailored to your needs.

Your marketing campaigns are unique, why shouldn’t your marketing automation tool match your needs? Look for a flexible system that offers a variety of pricing plans, allows you to integrate with tools you love like Jigsaw, Google Analytics or your existing CRM and has an open API so you can customize it even further.

Warning: Marketing automation is not machine washable.

Warning: Marketing automation is not machine washable.